At this point of the season I’m always starved for any activity remotely resembling football. I break into cold sweats every night anxiously awaiting the release date of Madden. But honestly, college football media days never really did much for me. Nothing really eye opening ever comes out of them. I really think they were designed just so a bunch of coaches and a few players can get in a good 30 minutes of coachspeak and media members can announce that it’s time to start talking about football again. Awesome.

But to be fair, there usually are a few nuggets of interesting information that comes from them. And I actually think a couple emerged from the Mizzou camp.

This isn’t really shocking but Gary Pinkel says the Tigers will absolutely run the ball more this season. That should be expected when you’ve got a rookie QB, a strong offensive line and your biggest offensive star is your running back. But it was reassuring to hear nonetheless.

There’s been a lot of people questioning how good Derrick Washington really is. Is he a star or is he mainly a product of the Chase Daniel/Dave Christensen spread offense? Only time will tell. But I’m going to go on record as saying that if any current Tiger is going to receive any Heisman attention over the next few seasons it’s going to be D-Wash.

 

People forget how good this guy looked the first few games of last season. Yes, I know they were against mostly subpar opponents. But people also forget he was hurt for the majority of the year and still managed what most people would call decent numbers.

This didn’t come from media days but David Yost says the Tigers WILL TAKE SNAPS UNDER CENTER THIS SEASON. This calls for a celebration! This calls for….Jessica Biel’s ass!

But seriously, not real surprising considering the Tigers now have a QB who’s actually consistently taken snaps under center before. But again, nice to hear. With a big QB like Gabbert, a stacked O-line and D-Wash the Tigers should be able to put together some very solid formations in the red zone. Particulary 10-yards and in.

And finally, Sean Weatherspoon has put on a few Mark Manginos since last season. He’s up to 250 lbs., which is up from his 238 he was listed at last September. This is the kind of things football fans fret about when they have no football to actually watch. I’m OK with that but we don’t need to make a big deal about it. Spoon says he was actually at 245 when he had his career-best performance in the Alamo Bowl. I would guess he made a concerted effort in the offseason to put on a few pounds to help boost his draft stock. Elite athletes are able to play at that weight.

Look at some of the best linebackers in the NFL. I’ll take three random names off the top of my head: Ray Lewis, Joey Porter and Lance Briggs. Their weights: 250, 255 and 242. We’ve seen enough of Spoon to know that he’s one of the true leaders of this program. He’s not the type of athlete who would pay no attention to his body in the offseason. You know the kind. And in case you were wondering what kind of questions I would ask if I were a report at media days, check out this blog post by the guys over at Bring On The Cats.