Where does Jake Dickert stand?
Good morning from Dallas-Fort Worth Airport! Where I’m stranded for the next nine hours! As you can see, I’m really excited about it!
There’s still nothing going on, but we’re duty bound to bring you Washington State Cougars content, so by god, that’s what we’re gonna do. The good news is that we’re fewer than two weeks for Pac-12 Media Day, which won’t be weird at all. I mean, you know that George Kliavkoff is just champing at the bit to answer question after question about why the conference hasn’t reached a post-2023 media agreement.
And when that’s done, he gets to face a verbal fusillade about what the conference plans to do in terms of expansion, and how it’ll support USC and UCLA in the year before they beat feet to the Big Ten. And that’s not even the fun part! I’m looking forward to Chip Kelly and Lincoln Riley facing more questions about 2024 (when UCLA travels to Hawaii, LSU, Indiana, Michigan and Rutgers, while USC heads to Maryland, Penn State, Purdue and Northwestern) than they’ll get about, oh, I don’t know, 2023!
But that’s down the road. Today, we’ll talk about the reddest of red meat for offseason content carnivores – RANKINGS! This time, it’s Pac-12 coaches, courtesy of CBS Sports and somebody named Cameron Salerno. To be clear, Salerno wrote the intro, but the rankings are actually extracted from the previous CBS ranking of all Power Five coaches, to which several football writers contributed.
Cougar coach Jake Dickert, with one full season and one half season under his belt, came in at 8th in the conference, sandwiched between Deion Sanders and Justin Wilcox. Aside – what a fall from grace it’s been for Jon Wilner’s favorite football coach of all time! Here’s what fine folks had to say about WSU’s head man:
Jake Dickert (57 overall): Dickert is a big riser from last season’s rankings. Initially ranked as the worst coach in the conference, he now he moves up a few spots to almost join the middle of the pack. He did a good job of stabilizing the roster in 2021 after Nick Rolovich was fired and later earned the full-time job. The 2023 Cougars will be an exciting watch with Cameron Ward under center. A breakthrough season and Dickert is surely a lock to rise up again.
So yeah, I’d completely forgotten about Dickert’s 12th-place ranking in 2022. I’m sure you all did, too. Then Dickert took WSU to Stanford and beat the ever-loving tar our of 4th(!!!)-ranked (and now jobless) David Shaw. He also beat Wilcox (then 6th), and Herm Edwards (9th and now fired). Oh, he also went on the road and waxed Jedd Fisch, leaping over the now 10th-ranked Arizona coach. Jake clearly took that game personally.
I do find it a bit odd that Sanders is already near the top half, considering that he’s never coached an FBS game, and barely has a functional roster. But we shall see. Anyhoo, even though I’m sure Dickert couldn’t care less about such a fruitless exercise as coach rankings, let’s hope he makes a similar leap on the 2024 list!
NBA Cougs
Former Cougar hoopster Mo Gueye made his summer league debut for the Atlanta Hawks on Friday night, and had a pretty good opener, despite the team falling to Sacramento, according to PeachTree Hoops.
The two Atlanta draftees had starkly different pro debuts. Second-round pick Mouhamed Gueye finished with 10 points, five rebounds, three assists, one steal, and one block. Lottery pick Kobe Bufkin didn’t have his best game, finishing with eight points on 14 shots, 0-for-8 on 3-pointers, four rebounds, three assists, and eight turnovers.
Gueye and the Hawks play their second summer league game Sunday night against Denver.
This Week in Parenting
Team Kendall is making its semi-regular summertime extended family round robin, and the first stop was to see Mrs. Kendall’s parents in the Indy ‘burbs. The longtime family friends hold an annual July 4th barbecue/pool party, so over we went. Mrs. Kendall and her mom couldn’t resist the urge to relive, some time in the past, by making two trays of Jell-O shots. They were giving the hard sell to nearly every partygoer, including…our teenager? I was chatting with someone when I looked to my right and saw the 14 year-old tossing one back. As I did a triple take, Mrs. Kendall jumped in and said she’d given it to him. When asked what he thought of it, he said it was like the other ones he’s had. Well then.
This trip was also a reintroduction to wiffle ball, which apparently they were unaware of??? “Dad, you should see how this thing curves!” Yeah, that’s crazy! Never heard of this alien sporting game! They played a little home run derby, and of course the old man hit a few out before my shoulder fell off, like it usually does. They also invented some sort of back yard game where each person has an oversized ping pong-type paddle, and they hit a big wiffle ball back and forth, in an attempt to get the ball past a tree but short of the neighbor’s yard. If you do that, it’s good for a point. The defender can block the shot, then gets to hit his next shot from where the ball lands after it’s blocked. First to 10 wins. Got all that? It seemed fun, and they were entertained.
So now, after a week that featured go-karting, Top Golf, mini golf, multiple pool sessions, Culver’s milk shakes, ice cream, cake and god only knows how many secretly-absconded cookies, we’re off to Spokane for more of the same. Well, we should be, anyway. A lost fuel cap led to a delay led to more of a delay led to bad weather in DFW led to a missed connection, so here we sit until (hopefully) 7:30 or so Sunday night. Yippee.
Tales From the Road
Soooo, how long have you got? Because I could write a tome about this trip and we’re not even half way through. We’ll go with a few quick and not-so-quick hitters, starting with last week’s trip to Chicago.
- The guy in the exit row next to me who couldn’t be bothered to remove his earphones for 15 seconds while the flight attendant gave the exit row spiel. That guy sucks. Don’t be that guy.
- The people in the lounge who, upon hearing about the limited mixed drink menu until 10:30 a.m., complained that the menu didn’t contain more options. I’m sorry, sir, but your Jamaican Ten Speed will have to wait a few minutes. AND DID I MENTION THE DRINKS THEY BITCHED ABOUT ARE ALL FREE??!! Those people suck. Don’t be those people.
- The people who, despite multiple explanations from the flight attendant during boarding, can’t grasp the concept of proper overhead bag placement. Those people are idiots and they should be banned from flying. Don’t be one of those people.
- The United ticket counter at O’Hare is something else. When I presented my military ID in order to get a checked bag fee waiver, the lady helping me apparently wasn’t well trained enough to verify it. Instead, we had to wait, and wait, aaaaaaaand wait for an employee in a blue vest to do it. I feel like it shouldn’t take a specially-trained person to verify a ubiquitous form of ID while everyone stands and waits, but maybe that’s just me.
- Within a span of two minutes last Monday, I got five – yes, five – emails from American Airlines, each telling me my flight was delayed until a later time. It was like someone gave meth to the company “send email” button. After we were able to jump on a couple flights via standby, arriving in Indy at about 5:30, I noticed that the flight we were originally on, scheduled to depart at 7:30 a.m., finally left Pensacola at 6:34 p.m. My god.
- During that delay in Pensacola, while I stood at the counter for what felt like three weeks, I noticed a gentleman next to me who was also in need of rebooking. Admittedly, he didn’t stand out much from the crowd, what with his “Trump 24” hat, and dueling forearm tattoos which read “Trump” and “MAGA” respectively. I mean, I’d assume there are other acolytes out there who have “Ronald” and “Gipper” forearm ink, but I’ve never met them! The chef’s kiss came when he struck up a football-centric conversation with some other guys in line. He mentioned that he’s a Steelers fan, but that he hasn’t liked the coach for 10 years, mostly because the coach’s sideline demeanor is, and I quote, “too homie.” He then went on to talk about how he longed for the days of Chuck Noll. You probably know that Mike Tomlin is black, and that Chuck Noll was white. You probably don’t know that Tomlin’s career win percentage is .625, while Noll’s was .572, and Bill Cowher’s was .619. I’m trying to think of the real reason he doesn’t like Mike Tomlin. Hmm. It escapes me!
Book Club
Finished 1939 in a flurry so I could take a new book on the road. I really enjoyed it, especially the analysis of the collective moods portrayed by German and British citizens during the lead up to the war. Additionally, that Goebbels was something else in the realm of propaganda. If you like history, especially from the ordinary citizen’s point of view, I highly recommend it. The highly-regimented, government-sponsored German “vacation resorts” were also interesting to read about. Who doesn’t want to gather for morning calisthenics and Reich lessons when on holiday?!
Now we’re on to The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman. I know Klosterman mostly from his appearances on the Bill Simmons podcast, and I’ve always liked the way he deconstructs topics, and makes arguments I’d never thought of. I’m about 50 pages in, and his analysis of Generation X is really something. So far, quite good!
Non-Sports
Fishkill! I was there last month! Never gave a second thought to eating at IHOP, however. I was unaware of this turf battle, as well as the reason why so many towns up there end in “kill.” Turns out it’s the Dutch word for “lake.”
How Domenic Broccoli’s IHOP Empire Started a War in Fishkill
When Domenic Broccoli set out to expand his IHOP empire to upstate New York, he didn’t expect to find a grave site — or start a war.
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