Hello Cougar Nation!  A tremendous Thursday to you all.

Today, we continue the saga which has become America’s 28^th favorite dramady, a feature that we call “Khan-tucky Fried Thursday.”

Yesterday, Huddy started the midweek off with a bang, offering a post that was historic for us with respect to page views.  Then later in the day, it was announced that our Cougies are going to open the 2012-13 campaing on the season’s first night, and in front of a nationally televised audience no less.

And me?

Well, I spent the night checking out some videos, such as this, this, and this from our best friends at ESPN’s Pac12 blog.  And as I watched a few choice clips from our new head coach Michael Leach and compared his charisma, allure, intelligence, and personality to the other newbies in the conference, it just all hit me.

For more on that, read on.

Good morning and Happy Hump Day, Cougs! The dog days are almost here, my friends. My Capitals bowed out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs surprisingly gracefully which has limited my interest in the rest of that season. I'll keep up with the NBA playoffs, but I have no real vested interest in that. We're almost to the point where we are only left with -gulp- baseball for a couple months until football season finally rolls back around. I'm sure many among you are clamoring for an in depth Euro 2012 preview, but I'll spare you (maybe) and at the very least try to keep things Pac-12 related. One of the easiest ways to do that is to start ranking things. If you're like me, you see an article that is some sort of ranking and you are 86% more likely to read the article. They're easy to devour, they make for excellent conversation starters and most importantly, they're easy for me to write. It can never be overstated just how lazy I am. We're going to kick off what will potentially be weeks of me arbitrarily assigning rankings to the Pac 12 with the logos. We all know who has the best logo in the conference, but where do the other 11 fall after that? I'm sure you're absolutely dying to know so get your jump on and let's do this.

“Come on and ease on down, ease on down that road. Don’t carry nothing that might be a load.”

Welcome back to Utah, Coug fans. For our second trip to the Beehive state in 2012 we will visit the Utah Utes who reside in the heart of Salt Lake City. Let me assure you that this will be nothing like the trip to Provo. The Utes have had a lot of success the last few years highlighted by two BCS bowl wins and their recent ascension to the Pac-12. As a result their fans are loud and proud and they will go to great lengths to differentiate themselves from their rivals to the South. Read on to find out what else you can expect to find in SLC...

Happy Post-Mother's Day Cougs.  Here's hoping y'all were able to enjoy the great weather over the weekend!  It's funny, but for the months of, say, January - April I complain to my wife, "Why exactly do we live here??" as it basically rains sideways 9 out of 10 days.  But then you have days like the last three or four, and you're sheepishly finding yourself saying "....Oh yeah".

Yes, it rains a lot in the Seattle area, and the traffic pretty much blows.  But when you get a sunny weekend?  Absolutely stunning. 

Anyway, some links and the like to round up for you this beautiful Monday morning.....

Happy Friday Cougs, and welcome to the end of another week.  It is supposed to be a fantastic weekend weather-wise around the great Northwest, so here's hoping you get out of the house and soak it all in while it lasts!

There is a lot of "stuff" out there that surfaced the last day or so, points of interest and such.  You know, lists, predictions, etc, pretty much the best off-season "fodder" a fan of the sport might enjoy this time of year.  So we might as well round it all up for you, link style?  Here we go: