It's a done deal, apparently.

The rich get super rich.

The university has reached a 20-year, $300 million deal with ESPN to create a 24-hour network devoted to Longhorns athletics. You can have your Big Ten Network and, in the future, your Pac-12 network. Texas gets an entire channel all to itself. And it's run by the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports.

Unbelievable.  Texas' athletic department already has the highest revenues in the NCAA (they're about double those of the UW, as an FYI).  This new TV contract, at approximately $32 million per year, will more than double their current take.  And it will put the revenue gap between themselves and the 2nd-highest grossing athletic department at about 15%.  That's a significant difference.  The Longhorns already have arguably the best facilities in the country, and they'll only get better.  It'll be interesting to see if the Longhorns are now going to be able to buy the best coaching staff in the country.

ESPN is hastening the destruction of college sports.  In a big way.

If this is what we really end up with, I couldn't be happier.  I'm certainly not concerned with losing 1,300 seats.  I love the fact that an even higher percentage will now be between the end zones.  This is going to be loud.

The west end entrance and football operations building sounds fantastic.  I love the idea of the glass over the tunnel.   

I certainly hope the design includes the ability to add a west upper deck in the future.

Link

Washington quarterback Jake Locker may be the odds-on favorite to be the first player selected in the 2011 NFL draft. But in the course of discussing playing both quarterback and safety at Ferndale (Wash.) High, Locker told me, “If I had it to do over again, I’d play defense. I like the contact. You can use your adrenaline. On offense, you have to control it.”

Ivan Maisel's Three Point Stance

We've all heard the "Locker to safety" stuff for years.  But when you look at how big Jake is as a QB, the fact of the matter is that if he would've come here to play defense, he'd probably be 240 and one helluva middle linebacker right now.

The format was #1 O vs #1 D, and #2 O vs #2 D.

For the starting D, the tackles were Duncan and Elisara, and Mathews and Crichton were at end.  I don't think Elisara took a single snap at end today.  Fellner didn't play, so Glenn got the start at safety.  All the other starters were the same as they've been pretty much all spring, except that Dan Kanzogowski started at right tackle.

The star of the defense was the secondary as a unit.  They pressed well when they were in man, they did a very good job of passing off receivers from the underneath coverage to the deep guys in zone, they closed very quickly on the short stuff, and they tackled well.  Boyles in particular was really good with the 1's.  He completely shut James Johnson down for long stretches.  Johnson could barely get off the line.  Other than one TD pass to Kearse on a seam route in front of Williams, the secondary did an excellent job of shutting down the passing game.   Locker was forced to check down or throw the ball away on probably half his passes.

Cooper was impressive.  He's just so smooth.  It's tough to tell how fast he's actually running.  As a defender, you don't know if he's in 3rd gear and looking to make a cut, or in 5th gear and about to run around you.  He started with the 2's (and had a 25 or so yard TD on the first or second series).  He had one really long TD with the 1's (50 yards or so), and was a shoe lace tackle away from breaking at least two more.

This wasn't Locker's best day.  He didn't look particularly sharp.  None of the QB's did.  Montana especially struggled with his accuracy all day.  I'm a lot more worried about the play of the backups than that of Locker; I was really hoping to see at least one of those two guys have a good day.  Price had a few completions at the end, but they were mostly when the 3's were rotating in on D. 

Semisi Tokalohi and Chris Robinson completely disrupted the 2's offense all day.  They were in the backfield nearly every play.  That's a negative statement about the UW's o-line depth and a positive one about the d-line's depth, I guess. 

Good two-minute drill for the ones to get into field goal position, and Folk nailed a pretty long one into the wind.

Barnett had a decent day with the 2's catching the ball, but he's just too small to be a viable tight end right now.  He was lined up as an H-back or in the slot most of the time.  Polk had a couple of drops in his first significant action of the spring.  Bronson had a bad day.  Probably 5 carries for zero yards, and a bad drop of a pitch on a toss sweep play. 

The #1 linebackers were solid.  Logan had a couple of nice blitzes, and looks pretty good in coverage.  For the 2's, Burnett did a good job of stepping up and filling, but he got knocked back a few times trying to take on a ballcarrier.  Good position, but he needs to get bigger and stronger.  I'm sure he will.  Matt Houston was active.  He played really fast today.  So did Jordan Wallace.

Lots of blitzing.  Lots of press coverage.  Much more of both than we saw last year (although this was just a spring scrimmage, I know).

Most of the units were "solid," except the #1 secondary.  There weren't any obvious busted assignments, there weren't many penalties (although one killed a big run by Fogerson), and there was only one turnover.  The effort was pretty good.  This team is obviously better than they were a year ago at this time.