Pac-10 football media day starts bright and early at 7:30 a.m. Thursday with all of the league’s football coaches being briefed on rules changes and rules interpretations by the conference director of officials.

On its merits, that is more interesting some years than others. A couple of seasons ago -- when the NCAA made its big changes in the timing of games -- was especially interesting. But even in the seasons with little in the way of rules changes, it’s an interesting and relatively candid look at the Pac-10 coaches. It’s the only media day function when the coaches actually outnumber the media, and they treat the event almost as if we’re not around. Which is rare.

Then, after a brief break --coffee!! -- the first official media day event is the unveiling of the football prediction poll. That usually happens around 9:15 or so, and I’ll try to blog as soon as I receive it.

Then, we get the 10 Pac-10 coaches and one player per school (UW brought Jake Locker) in a Q&A press conference format until around noon. Then we head to a ballroom for lunch, which is our opportunity for one-on-one time with the coaches and players.

It’s all very compressed and busy (the Pac-10 is the only conference I know that handles this as a one-day event … and as a practical matter, it’s really only half a day), so I don’t know how much blogging I’ll be able to do until the whole thing adjourns around 2 p.m. Then I’ll try to catch you up on the highlights of the day, fitting that in around all the stories I’ll be filing for the Friday paper.

The day is very full and very informative and very fun… and an annual indication that football is back.

Dawgman.com is reporting that the Huskies have secured their first oral commitment for its next football recruiting class.

And apparently it's a good one: Keith Price, a 6-2, 180-pound runner-passer type quarterback from St. John Bosco of Bellflower, Calif.

Price received an offer from Washington last month, and others from Nevada and Utah, but decided to become a Husky.

Until he made the announcement, Washington had been the only Pacific-10 Conference school without any oral commitments. In fact, every other school has at least four.