Roundup: Cougs and Cal kick off the weekend

We have more Friday night football for ya with No. 8 Washington State making its way down to Cal (7:30 p.m. PT, ESPN), and Theo Lawson explains why the Cougars will beat the Golden Bears – soundly. He predicts a 45-13 victory for Wazzu.

You should know that Cal has been monitoring the air quality in Berkeley in advance of the Cal-Washington State game Friday night (San Jose Mercury News). The game is still on, but air quality has been a concern in the Bay Area with the devastating fires in the North Bay.

Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Media Day is in the books, and Tyson Alger of The Oregonian/OregonLive writes about USC head coach Andy Enfield and Arizona head coach Sean Miller facing questions about the FBI investigation that led to the arrests of Tony Bland, a USC assistant, and Emanuel Richardson, an Arizona assistant. Some form of “no comment” was thrown around a good deal.

While he didn’t answer questions about Emanuel Richardson, Sean Miller did stand up for people involved in grassroots basketball, saying the whole AAU scene shouldn’t be judged poorly as a result of this FBI investigation.

Heading into his first game as an NCAA Division I head coach, Cory Hall wants to “pump life and breathe life” back into Oregon State as the Beavs get ready to host Colorado (1 p.m. PT,/2 p.m. MT, Pac-12 Networks), writes Danny Moran. Hall is the interim man for the Beavs after Gary Andersen surprisingly walked away on Monday.

Brian Howell hits us with a Colorado-Oregon State scouting report. One of these teams will walk away from Reser Stadium with its first conference win of 2017.

Control for the Pac-12 South will be up for grabs Saturday night in the Coliseum when Utah visits USC (5 p.m. PT/6 p.m. MT, ABC), and Kurt Kragthorpe notes that the Utes could grab the reins of the division by beating USC for the second consecutive year.

It will be a family affair in the UCLA-Arizona game with Darick and Darnay Holmes going up against each other Saturday night (6 p.m. PT, Pac-12 Networks), writes Thuc Nhi Nguyen. Darick is a redshirt sophomore receiver for the Wildcats, while Darnay is a freshman cornerback for the Bruins.

Another weekend, another late kickoff for the Dawgs as they travel to Tempe to take on Arizona State Saturday night (7:45 p.m. PT, ESPN), so Matt Brown of Sports on Earth believes that Washington should embrace #Pac12AfterDark. Chris Petersen has been vocal about his displeasure.

Doug Haller wonders if the quarterback sneak is dead at Arizona State in his most recent article as the Sun Devils ready for the Huskies.

The late, late game takes place on The Farm with Stanford hosting Oregon (8 p.m. PT, FOX Sports 1), and Vytas Mazeika of the Bay Area News Group gives us fast facts for the Stanford-Oregon game.

Andrew Greif looks at Jim Harbaugh’s fingerprints on Saturday’s Stanford-Oregon matchup, with Stanford’s David Shaw and Oregon’s Willie Taggart having both coached under Harbaugh on The Farm.