Patton and Ferd Look to the Future

Kenny Patton remains optimistic after being waived by the Raiders, as he tells the Star-Bulletin:

"My agent's working on it, but it's hard at this point because teams are downsizing," Patton said last night. "Hopefully, I'll end up somewhere. I'll play anywhere, but after my experience with the Raiders, I know I can play at the NFL level. They told me it's just a numbers thing."

And the Advertiser:

But by signing a free-agent contract with the Raiders last week, he is eligible to play in NFL Europa.

"I'm going to train, train, train, and see what happens," Patton said. "There's no use getting down. 'Positivity' is the key."

Great attitude. Let's hope for the best for Kenny.

And Ferd Lewis speculates about the Warriors' opponent in this year's Hawaii Bowl.

With the schedule it is looking more and more like UH will end up with — Northern Colorado, Charleston Southern, etc. — the BCS is a decided long shot. More likely, even with a record along the lines of 11-1 or 12-0, the Warriors will stay home and play in the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl.

...

For, as it stands now, the Hawai'i Bowl would get no higher than the third pick of the bowl-eligible options in the 12-team C-USA and, possibly as low as fifth. The game has never had higher than a co-second-place finisher.

Should UH make a run for the ages this season, few things would be sadder than a Warrior team going 12-0 or 11-1 and, for their grand finale, being paired with a 7-5 team in the postseason.

Great column, bringing up all these possibilities, which is always fun... If UH goes undefeated, even with the crap schedule, I think a BCS game is very likely, especially if UH gets enough preseason votes and hype to build off of. And as long as the Warriors keep winning, they'll get more and more positive press from the national media, which will be looking for another Cinderella (Boise) story, leading up to three straight regular season games on ESPN and/or ESPN2. This season is built for momentum. Sure, all throughout the pundits will talk about the horrible strength of schedule, but they'll also talk about the team (MSU) that wussed out of their contract and the other teams that refused to play us this year. And that might make the underdog/Cinderella story even more dramatic, with Hawaii going to a BCS bowl needing to once and for all prove themselves against "the big boys." So maybe this whole AD schedule fiasco is a good thing! Haha..

But first thing's first, the schedule might actually be tougher than it looks right now -- SJSU will continue to improve, UNLV will be better, Fresno will be much better, NMSU will be scary, Nevada will be on the road, Boise is Boise, etc. Can't wait for the season to start. GO WARRIORS!!!!