When he asked you where you wanted to go, were you thrilled or maybe a little scared since it was unexpected?

Same. Best non-vacation week of the year for me.

SEC Shorts conspicuously missing its Herbstreit endorsement this week.

Bo Nix announced he will play in the Fiesta Bowl.

Scoot Henderson has a career winning record of 5-4 and has won five of his last six games. Without Scoot, Blazers are 1-8.

I don't think the committee could reward a team with a playoff spot for losing a H2H and then not playing in a conference title game the following week if the team that beat them lost said title game and was left out. That would be a terrible precident to set. Any scenario where Ohio State qualifies should also require Michigan to qualify.

I think FSU, Texas, and Alabama would have to lose, and maybe even Oregon to be safe, depending on how you rate a one-loss Washington against OSU.

And then the transfer portal will follow and deplete them further. Oregon State football is pretty much toast. I've had a lot of feelings about the Pac-12 saga, but now with 108 seasons of Pac-12 football as we knew it over with forever, and with what's to come for the Beavs and WSU, I'm sick to my stomach.

Yeah, the Pac have created their own mini circle of suck among the one-loss teams, so head-to-head "transitive wins/losses" no longer apply:

Oregon State > Utah > UCLA > WSU > Oregon State

Just using Oregon's schedule, we're playing every team in the conference within the first two years except Nebraska. Wisconsin and Washington twice, with Washington a protected rivalry, and then finally Nebraska the next two years. It'll be weird not playing almost all the same teams every year.

In 2024:

• Michigan vs Texas, Oregon, USC, OSU, Washington.
• USC vs LSU, Notre Dame, Michigan, Washington, Penn State.

The Blazers welcomed Brogdon on Twitter (they didn't welcome Jrue), so they might keep him for now. It seemed he was unhappy when the Celtics announced that Derrick White was going to start over him after Smart was traded, so I don't know why he'd want to backup Scoot. Unless he's not going to backup Scoot, then I'd have to ask what the hell the Blazers are doing. But if he turns out to be okay with it, I'd be more than happy to keep him.

(Edit): They just announced that he's wearing 92, so it looks like he's staying for now.

Portland needs a back up point guard to replace him and some forward depth. Right now they've got seven other rotation players not including him, not yet knowing what they have in Kris Murray or second year Jabari Walker:

• Scoot
• Sharpe
• Simons
• Thybulle
• Grant
• Time Lord
• Ayton

Everyone else is super raw except for Knox, who probably won't get much better than he is. But perhaps they're more concerned with developing that raw talent than with depth right now, since expectations aren't necessarily going to be measured in wins this year. I guess we'll know once they trade him.

Jrue Holiday for Time Lord, Brogdon, a GSW '24 1st Rd Pick (top 4 protected), and a Celtics unprotected '29 1st Rd Pick.

Outside of all the media rumors and social media back-and-forth, who knows what that Riley-Cronin relationship is really like. Maybe it's fine and all the rumor bluster is just way overblown. Either way, I think it's going to be a lot easier for us to trade Jrue than Dame.

As a Blazer fan I wish him the best, no hard feelings. I hope he gets that championship. I'm looking forward to the new-look Blazers:

• Scoot Henderson
• Anfernee Simons
• Shaedon Sharpe
• Jerami Grant
• Deandre Ayton

Looks like we're going to move Jrue.

The effects of gravity spread at the speed of light. If the sun suddenly blinked out of existence, it would take eight minutes to both see it disappear from Earth and notice a change in our planet's motion. In other words, the planet would continue to orbit that empty space in the middle because the sun's gravity, much like it's light, would still be extending out to us.

The universe is expanding in every part of space all at once. Some places are so far apart that the collective expansion between them is growing at greater distances in a given amount of time than light can travel. And the same can be said for the effects of gravity, but the motion of objects caused by gravity at great distances is far, far slower than the speed of light.

Our galaxy is moving in a direction that is caused partly by something called "The Great Attractor." But even though it's causing us to move, we will never reach it, and it's influence on us will gradually weaken. And it's not even that far away compared to most of what we know is out there.

That being said, this news is interesting.

Can someone update the right column to show "Portland Trail Blazers" (the official spelling) rather than "Portland Trailblazers"?

I like how they got lazy in the second half of their ballot and just filled in teams at the beginning of the alphabet. The attention span for that troll job was really short.

I guess it could also be an early season computer poll, but I don't understand submitting one this early if it looks like that.

Eight Pac-12 teams. It'll pare down once they start playing each other, but really making the most of their last season together.

It's hard to take anything away from a game like that. Even the third string couldn't be stopped, and they were mostly running the ball like they were supposed to. I love watching us blow teams out, but this wasn't the same as that.

1. First downs don't stop the clock except the last two minutes of the 2nd and 4th Q.
2. Can't call consecutive timeouts.
3. 1st and 3rd Q can end on penalties, they are applied at the start of the next quarter.

I think the first one is really only going to make a big difference, but they want to reduce the number of plays in a game.