Notice anything funny about the following excerpt from Athlon Sports' Boise State preview?
Kyle Wilson is named Third-Team All-America as a CB and First-Team All-WAC as both a CB and PR.
WR Austin Pettis, TE Kyle Efaw, DL Ryan Winterswyk, S Jeron Johnson and K Kyle Brotzman are named First-Team All-WAC.
QB Kellen Moore, RB Jeremy Avery, C Thomas Byrd and CB Brandyn Thompson are named Second-Team All-WAC.
First off, congrats to Kyle Wilson and the rest of the Broncos who are getting loads of preseason hype. Second, Kellen Moore on the WAC's second team? Didn't we go over this last season?
In 2008, Nevada's Colin Kaepernick beat out Moore for the honor of first team All-WAC quarterback (as well as offensive player of the year), despite evidence to the contrary of Kaepernick even being a quarterback. Do quarterbacks go 19-for-50 in big games? Do quarterbacks look to run first, pass second? Do quarterbacks look like the love child of Stretch Armstrong and an emu? I'm preaching to the choir, but you get my drift.
Yet here Moore is again, one year later, stuck in the same spot he was at the end of last season: looking up at Kaepernick.
Athlon Sports is far from the only preseason rag that will be making conference predictions, but it is one of the most accurate and noteworthy. As such, it's a little disappointing to see them make the same mistake that everyone else made last fall.
For the record, Kellen Moore is the best actual quarterback in the WAC, and Colin Kaepernick is the WAC's most enigmatic. And yes, this is what I wrote in my tasteful letter to the Athlon Sports editor.
Apart from Moore, Athlon's preseason All-WAC teams are kind of exciting to see. It's always a mystery which Boise State players will rise up to put their mark on the season (Ellis Powers, for instance), so seeing names like Kyle Efaw and Thomas Byrd is encouraging.
Austin Pettis as first-team All-WAC? Agreed.
Ryan Winterswyk and Jeron Johnson on the first team? Okay by me.
Jeremy Avery as a second-team All-WACer? Not the way I picture it in my dreams, but I can't complain.
No mention of Billy Winn, Titus Young, George Iloka, or Richie Brockel? (Awkward silence.)
But honestly, it's May. There's a lot of football to be played (like, all of it) and a lot of time to talk about the football that's going to be played. Athlon Sports naming nearly half of Boise State's starting 22 to an all conference team is great news.
And by the end of the season, when Kellen Moore is matting his WAC Offensive Player of the Year certificate and granting OBNUG interview requests to discuss his spot on the conference's first team, it'll be even better news.