The annual UW coaches/media golf tournament was held this morning at Washington National Golf Club.

It’s a fun event that was instituted when Tyrone Willingham arrived. I played today with assistant coaches Bob Simmons (about a seven handicap) and J.D. Williams.

However, once we came off the course, Tyrone broke the news that coaching great Bill Walsh had died earlier in the day.

Willingham’s career benefited greatly from the Minority Coaching Fellowship created by Walsh in 1987 when he was with the 49ers. And their paths crossed again in 1994 when Willingham followed Walsh as head

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Somehow missing from my Media Day reports of yesterday was an amazing quote from new Arizona State coach Dennis Erickson. He pointed out that Washington is one of the few Pac-10 schools that doesn’t return its primary starting quarterbck from last season.

Then he added, “But they have Jake Locker. Locker, to me, coming out of high school, was the best I’ve seen.”

Erickson also had a good quote about USC, saying, “They should be in the league I was real successful in: the NFL.”

Erickson was joking about his NFL record at Seattle and San

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Pac-10 media day offered a chance to get in some time with UW coach Tyrone Willingham. I got in some one-on-one time with him to talk about officiating for a story I’ll have in the Friday paper. Specifically, I talked to him about whether an NBA-like officiating scandal could occur in college football. His answer — and the answer of most everyone I spoke to –- was yes.

Otherwise, there wasn’t much pure Husky news released. Tops might be Willingham’s seemingly optimistic attitude that the loss of a couple of his key recruits will be only temporary. He seems

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The 39 members of the media picking in this season’s Pac-10 football poll all picked the USC Trojans to win the conference championship this season.

The media picked Cal second, Washington State eighth and Washington ninth, ahead of only Stanford.

The poll results:

1.) USC

2.) California

3.) UCLA

4.) Arizona State

5.) Oregon State

6.) Oregon

7.) Arizona

8.) Washington State

9.) Washington

10.) Stanford

The Pac-10 football media day will be held Thursday in Los Angeles.

Early in the day, they will announce the results of the annual media predictions, and I’ll try to post those as soon as possible.

Then, we’ll get a pretty steady diet of meetings with the Pac-10 coaches and some key players, and I’ll post any highlights as time permits.

Also, just a few minutes after the event concludes, I’ll have a brief radio conversation about the event with the Groz on KJR, 950-AM at 2:20 p.m. The conversation also will be streamed over the

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The Western Athletic Conference’s desire to add a basketball team could click nicely with Seattle University’s desire to find a league for its eventual Division I basketball program.

As of now, it’s far more of a notion than a proposal. But the intriguing concept was raised this week in San Jose, as the WAC held its annual football preview for the media.

Expansion or contraction is seldom far off the radar for the fluid WAC, which over the past decade has had as many as 16 members, as few as few as eight, and is currently home to

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The coaches of the Western Athletic Conference and the media who cover the league agree that the Washington Huskies will play the two best teams the league has to offer this season.

Coaches and media in San Jose this week for the annual WAC football media days each picked Hawaii to win the 2007 league title and for Boise State to come in second. Those were also the only two schools given first-place votes in either poll.

Boise State, the five-time defending WAC champion coming off of an unbeaten season, will visit Husky Stadium on Sept. 8, while

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CSTV and the Washington ISP Sports Network have extended their online partnership, including a new look to the GoHuskies.com Web site.

And, since that’s obviously a key site for UW fans, you may notice that I’ve added a full-time link to it at the right under my photo.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll try to add more links for handy reference throughout the football and basketball seasons.