Pac-10 Media Day capsules with teams listed in their order of finish as predicated by the annual media poll:

1. USC
Coach Pete Carroll says that Mark Sanchez has all that it takes to become a great quarterback … if he can just win the starting job. It’s that way across the roster, where the names may be new but the talents remains high enough to contend for a BCS title.

2. Arizona
The schedule becomes tougher in coach Dennis Erickson’s second season. However, he has plenty of horses, including what may be the league’s top quarterback: senior Rudy Carpenter. Chief concern is the offensive line, which Erickson calls young and athletic.

3. Oregon
Coach Mike Bellotti said replacing quarterback Dennis Dixon is an area of “interest,” but not “a concern” due to his faith in Nate Costa and Justin Roper. Meanwhile, a solid defense appears able to buy the new guys on offense time to find their rhythm.

4. California
Jeff Tedford said he is excited about the young players and new leadership that has surfaced. He said the QB competition between Nate Longshore and Kevin Riley is “a great situation.” He sees potential for his “most explosive backfield” ever.

5. UCLA
Coach Rick Neuheisel said the Bruins’ catching up to USC is a matter of when, not if. He said he will allow coordinator Norm Chow to run the offense and call the plays. QB Ben Olson (foot) is expected to be ready for the start of fall camp.

6. Oregon State
The Beavers lost their front seven starters on defense, but coach Mike Riley said there are experienced reserves to step up. He lamented the loss of TB Yvenson Bernard, but said receiver Sammie Stroughter appears poised for a big bounce-back season.

7. Arizona
Starting his fifth season, coach Mike Stoops said he has his best offensive team yet, led by senior QB Willie Tuitama. He acknowledged that there are plenty of defensive questions, but concluded “we have better players than people think.”

8. Washington
Tyrone Willingham said the Huskies will be a blend of youth and experience, but added that he thinks “we can hit this thing just right.” He cited off-season emphasis on training so the team can turn close losses into wins with strong fourth quarters.

9. Stanford
The Cardinal returns a league-high 16 starters, and coach Jim Harbaugh said he is especially excited about both of his lines. He said there will be true quarterback competition in camp, including last year’s starter, Tavita Pritchard of Tacoma.

10.Washington State
In his Pac-10 media day debut, coach Paul Wulff said QB Gary Rogers is the clear No. 1 but must compete to stay there. Noting the predicted 10th-place finish, Wulff said WSU has “the opportunity to surprise some people and have a very successful year.”

I started covering the Huskies in Keith Gilbertson's second season. Which means, I never got to cover Rick Neuheisel.

I got my first real time with him at media day; and he certainly seemed to say all the right things. I'll have some of that in the Friday paper. But here is some of what we heard from Neuheisel.

ON GETTING THE UCLA JOB
Where I was in 2003 and 2003 to getting this opportunity has been kind of like a climb. I’ve been trying to climb back. And when you get that call, and you’re waiting for the fax to come across that machine, it’s pretty special. You have a lot of flashbacks about stuff that went on, but now you’re excited about all that lies ahead. Maybe that’s what is the most fun: Now there is a future. We’re never guaranteed anything, but at least there is the thought that you’re going to get to do this after wondering if it’s ever going to happen.

ON IF HE FEARED HE'D NEVER COACH AGAIN
I was always confident. But there were days when there was less confidence than others. Saturdays were hard days. I couldn’t stand not watching it. I had to watch every game. … I’d watch literally from the time we left the office until it was dark. And I’d coach every game. I’d manage every game and every decision and scream at TV and so forth.

ON WHETHER THERE WAS A LOW POINT
The dealing with the dismissal and the lawsuit in such a public forum, and having things said about your publicly… As a coach you get to coach next week – win a game and stop all the talk, right? When you’re not able to do that, you don’t have that. You have to kind of weather it. And what makes it even more difficult is it’s your family and your wife and all these people who have to deal with it, and they did nothing: guilt by association. And you have to deal with that. Those things you wouldn’t wish on anybody.

ON THE CHANGES IN THE LEAGUE
In my last year, Pete Carroll was a good coach. Now he’s an icon. Mike Bellotti has now reached the status he deserves, given his longevity and his status and the things that he’s accomplished. Jeff Tedford is now a bona fide big-time coach. Dennis Erickson was already, but now has come back and rekindled the magic that everybody knew he had at Arizona State, and he’s on everybody’s who’s who list. The Pac-10 now is a legitimate hotbed for big-time coaches. I would say on par with the SEC, definitely on par with the SEC. … You can go on down the list. I think Harbaugh hit one out of the park last year when he made the big statements early and then beats SC – you’ve got to admire that. This is a great conference and I’m happy to be part of it.

On UCLA'S VISIT TO WASHINGTON
I’m still not allowing myself to be depressed about it. Just because in college football, every game’s hard. Going to Seattle will be an interesting game from a media perspective – there will be lots of storylines. But I kind of have already been through it with the Colorado-Washington game. So I’m not as leery as I might have been. … There will be a lot of emotion in the building. It should be a good football game.

ON THE RECEPTION HE EXPECTSI imagine it will be a lot of boos. Maybe that will be the nice way to put it.

For me, I had a great experience at the University of Washington. The ending was messy. I feel badly about it because there were no winners in the end. I didn’t win. They didn’t win. A lot of good people were hurt by the chain of events and it was too bad. It didn’t need to go down that way. But that’s in the past, and hopefully everybody’s learned from it. I certainly have and we move on.

Pac-10 media day is over for another year. The Huskies are zipping home on a 2:30 flight out of LAX.

I'm about to get off-line for a while and start writing, writing, writing for tomorrow's paper. But before that, I wanted to pass along three little notes that I found interesting from the one-on-one lunch session.

1.) UW quarterback Jake Locker says that he's done with baseball. He said that he enjoyed his summer with the Bellingham Bells baseball team, but that fitting in the baseball and football duties was more difficult than he expected and he doesn't plan on rejoining the Bells next season.

2.)Washington State coach Paul Wulff -- formerly coach at Eastern Washington -- says that he would like to add EWU to the Cougars' schedule within the next two or three seasons.

3.) UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel said that there were times when he wondered if he would be hired back into coaching. He said UCLA is his dream job, but that he noticed pretty quickly that this year's schedule sends the Bruins to Seattle. Neuheisel said that he has many good feelings about his time at UW, but that his expectation is that he will be booed.

The Pac-10 coaches speak at Media Day in reverse order of the previous sseason standings. That means things led off this morning with Washington coach Tyrone Willingham, who brought along quarterback Jake Locker.

Willingham broke no real news. He said his fourth UW team will be a blend of youth and experince and “we think we can hit this thing just right.”

He also said:

* his team again has what he considered maybe the Pac-10's toughest schedule.

* the timing issues (see post below) could be the most significant rules changes for the coming season.

* the key to turning close losses into wins is conditioning that will allow the team to be physically able to finish along with coaches making right decisions, and players handling those situations.

* he hopes center Juan Garcia will be "back at some point during the year." Without a setback he said it would be early season, but a setback at this point would likely cost him the season. He said with Garcia, the offensive line projects as an area of strentgh.

* game situations will dictate if Jake Locker runs as much this season as last. He added that his preference is that Locker doesn't run at all, which drew a laugh.

* the team is young at running back and wide receiver, but that he beleives "we have some talent and hope to bridge experience gap to make it strength not weakness."

Media day typically ends with the league coaches being briefed on officiating rules changes for the coming season.

This season brings several significant ones.

One of the most notable will bring the NCAA game into line with the NFL, as there will be 40 seconds between plays in most cases.

College football also is altering several rules to emphasize player safety.

A particular area of emphasis is player safety. New rules will penalize tacklers for hitting with the crown of their helmet or targeting defenseless players with hits above the shoulders. There also are new rules regarding horse-collar tackles and simplifying the rulings on chop blocks. This season all facemask penalties will be 15 yards, however, incidental contact won’t be called.

Also this year there will be no warning for sideline infractions – players or coaches wandering too close to the field. This season it will be a straight 5-yard delay-of-game penalty for the first and second calls, and a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty thereafter. (However, three sideline calls in the same game is rare to the point of unheard of in the Pac-10.)

The illegal-forward-pass rule was tweaked so that now the thrower’s entire body must be across the line of scrimmage for the infraction to be called.

And this season the game officials have the general power to use replay to overturn “egregious” officiating errors. This won’t allow they to overturn foul calls such as pass interference, etc., but can be used for cases where a fair catch signal is missed, the clock runs when it isn’t supposed to, or if there is question of whether a field goal attempt did or didn’t go over the crossbar or between the uprights.

Finally, there has been a tweak to that frustrating call that disallows fumble recoveries simply because the official blows his whistle. Now, if the replay shows that the fumble lost control of the ball before being officially down, the recovering team will take possession as long as the whistle doesn’t obviously cause players to pull up.

Here's the way the media that covers Pac-10 football sees the league race going this season:

1. USC (38 first-place votes)
2. Arizona State
3. Oregon
4. California (one first-place vote)
5. UCLA
6. Oregon State
7. Arizona
8. Washington
9. Stanford
10. Washington State

(This poll agrees with the ballot I sent in for places 1-4 and 9-10. However, I had Arizona at five, UW at six, UCLA at seven and OSU at eight.)

The media poll has picked the correct conference champion eight seasons in a row, but only 25 of 47 times since the poll began.