Friday Morning Links

No rants or raves here -- just a collection of morning links.

~ Freshman QB Marcus Mariota is contending for the Ducks' backup duties as Oregon's fall camp concluded. Cliff "Batman" Harris' status for the Nevada game remains unknown.

~ Those weird sideline signal pictures used by the Ducks also got the ESPN treatment, which begs the question of what the sign for "Pretend you don't know Willie Lyles" would look like.



~ JuCo transfer Matt Faulkner will start for San Jose State. I have nothing humorous to add to this.

~ Texas Tech kicker Donnie Carona is struggling to find some consistency. Nothing here, either.

~ The newest members of Boise State's defensive backfield talk about what they can expect this year, but since the words "Rishard Matthews" and "pain" never came up together, I call BS.

~ The Las Vegas Sun's Ryan Greene offers up five signs the Rebels are headed in the right direction. No word on whether he was able to compile his list with a straight face.

~ A New Mexico student compares Lobo football to "Jersey Shore." Somewhere in this story there's a Snooki joke I'm just not seeing right now.

~ Fresno State's ticket office reports selling more than 12,000 tickets for the Bulldogs' season opener against Cal at Candlestick Park, guaranteeing the stadium will host at least one highly attended game this year.

~ DeWayne Walker sat down for a Q&A session with the Las Cruces Sun-News and showed enormous restraint in not begging the columnist to get him out of NMSU.

~ The UH athletics site offers up a preview of the Warrior secondary, as the Honolulu Star Advertiser recently switched to a subscriber-only format for their stories. Fail.

~ Sonny Dykes named Nick Isham the Bulldogs' starting QB. You know it's a ringing endorsement when an article's first sentence says he "didn't blow the...coaching staff away."

~ A writer for the Logan Herald Journal thinks Utah State has the tools to be successful in 2011. I'll let sleeping dogs lie rather than reach for a joke with the word "tool" here.

~ In response to an Idaho player who wishes to lead the WAC in sacks, Brett Roy was reported to have laughed and said "That's cute."