More from the WAC Football Kickoff in Salt Lake City:

• More cooperation on officials

The WAC and the Mountain West have combined officials this season, Benson said, calling the collaboration “the beginning of a regional officiating system.”

The WAC, Mountain West and Big 12 have expanded their “blended crew” experiment from last season. Instead of one “blended crew,” made up of officials from all three leagues which officiates games from all three, there will be two “blended crews” in 2008.

• While Pat Hill’s “anyone, anytime, anywhere” scheduling mantra has certainly given the Bulldogs a niche in the college football world.

But Boise State and Hawaii have proven that you don’t need to take on all comers to make the Bowl Championship Series.

So is Hill going to change?

Not a chance. Fresno State plays Rutgers, UCLA and Wisconsin this season.

“We recruit mainly in the state of California and we’re not the only show in town or in the state. We compete with the Pac-10, the WAC, the Mountain West. We needed a point of difference,” Hill said.

The problem with the scheduling is the Bulldogs’ emphasis is on its non-conference schedule — and not on the WAC schedule. Hill likes to say his team needs to peak for the first game of the season and keep it going.

“Maintaining that peak is something we haven’t been able to accomplish yet,” Hill said.

Wednesday, July 24

I apologize for the lateness of this first blog entry. I won’t bore you with the details, but sometimes I miss the old-fashioned ether net cord. Wireless is awesome — most of the time.

Anyway, onto the news of the day and, hopefully, some insight:

• Boise State, Fresno State share preseason favorite title

The Broncos took the media’s vote in a narrow contest. The Bulldogs were the coaches’ selection in a not-so-narrow contest. Fresno State collected seven of nine first-place votes.

Since coaches can’t vote for their own team, we know Pat Hill voted for Boise State and Chris Petersen didn’t.

That means just one other coach in the league — a league that has been dominated by Boise State for the last six years — voted for the Broncos.

Wow. I would love to know who it was.

• Boise State running back Ian Johnson and Hawaii linebacker Solomon Elimimian were voted preseason players of the year on offense and defense, respectively.

Not a huge surprise there.

Johnson was sort of a no-brainer, though I’m sure some media types voted for Nevada quarterback Colin Kaepernick or running back Luke Lippincott. Not sure who else would have been worthy of a vote — Jeremy Childs? Bear Pascoe? Chase Holbrook?

Elimimian had 141 tackles last season. That tends to attract attention among voters in these things. Teammate Adam Leonard had 105 and four interceptions last year.

If I voted in such things — and I tend not to because I believe the media makes itself part of the story when it votes in such things — I might have voted for Kyle Wilson or, and this might be a stretch, Ryan Winterswyk.

Another problem with voting on these things: People tend to vote for the players they’ve seen most often. I truly don’t remember Elimimian from last year’s Boise State-Hawaii game or the other Warrior games I watched on television.

But, obviously, enough people did remember him. Or they checked out his gaudy tackle numbers before they voted.

• WAC commissioner Karl Benson — definitely the only commish in college that would begin his press conference by giving out his cell phone number — spent part of his time on officiating.

He was very happy to announce increased cooperation between the WAC and the Mountain West Conference. The league’s will basically not have conference officials, but instead pool the officials between the leagues. The two conferences are also working more closely with the Big 12.

Count me in favor of anything that gets better officiated games.

College is instituting the horse-collar rule and giving coaches who correctly challenge a call another challenge up to two per game. Good.

But Benson also discussed some of the rule changes made by the NCAA which I have to take exception with.

Apparently — and we will see how officials handle this — there is no longer a sideline warning. Instead it will be a penalty. Great, another random judgment call for the officials.

Also college officials are now going to be more protective of the quarterback.

I agree that head-to-head contact should be minimized, but the play everyone was referring to — the vicious hit by Fresno State’s Marcus Riley on Hawaii quarterback Colt Brennan last year — came when Brennan was scrambling. Not sure how much quarterback protection we can do when the QB is 10 yards downfield.

• Wanted to pass this along. ESPN.com has a new blogging network, which is a fancy way of saying they have bloggers for all eight NFL divisions, the six BCS conferences and for non-BCS conference/independents.

Not that ESPN.com needs me plugging it, but the blog is pretty informative and a good place for information about the WAC and Mountain West Conference.

Here's the link.

• Will be back with more.

Brian Murphy: 377-6444