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Eastern opens its 2007 football season tonight against Montana-Western, and I will post a game story as soon as possible.

You can read what Eagles' coach Paul Wulff said about tonights game here.

The EWU-Montana-Western game will be carried by Big Sky TV.

A pair of Big Sky Conference teams opened their season on Thursday, and it went much better for Northern Arizona, which posted a 47-0 win over Division II Western New Mexico than it did for Weber State, which suffered a 56-7 loss to 24th-ranked Boise State.

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Eastern opens its 2007 football season on Friday night against Montana-Western, an NAIA school that finished 1-9 last year.

I will have a game advance running in Saturday's S-R, but in the meantime you can check out the unedited season preview on the Eags that will run tommorrow morning by clicking on the "Extendy Entry" line below.

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Former Eastern Washington University standout quarterback Erik Meyer was one of 12 players cut by the Seattle Seahawks on Tuesday to reach the league-mandated 75-player limit.

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Donald Ross has been named director of athletic compliance for the Eastern Washington University.

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Another golf story beckons this morning and the grandkids arrive tonight, so I won't be making it back out to Cheney until early next week.

In the meantime, I thought I might pass along a few updates -- courtesy of EWU' sports information Dave Cook -- on what's happening in the lives of some former Eags.

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The Eagles went throught a tightly controlled 45-play scrimmage on Wednesday.

You can read the unedited story I wrote for Thursday's S-R by clicking on the Extended Entry level below.

Included is some information on injuries and position changes.

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Paul Wulff put his Eagles through their first full-contact workout of fall camp on Saturday.

I was there and filed this story.

As you can tell from Paul's comments, it wasn't the best of practices. Fortunately, there are still 13 days for the Eags to improve before they open their season on Friday, Aug. 31, at home against Montana-Western, an NAIA school.

Bill Chaves was officially introduced Friday morning as Eastern's new athletics director.

As promised, I've posted an unedited version of the story that will appear in Saturday's S-R in the entended entry section below.

Don't know if it means anything, but the press conference was hardly the smoothest on record. Chaves almost missed it because his rental car wouldn't start. He had to take the hotel courtesy van to Eastern.

In addition, Dr. Arevalo's opening remarks were drown out by the playful chattering of Chaves' youngest son, Kevin, 2, who had to be carried from the room by him mom.

And later in the conference, Chaves' 4-year-old son Derek, who was seated at the front of the room behind the podium, fell off his chair.

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Eastern has hired Bill Chaves as its new athletic director.

You can read more here.

I will be at the press conference tomorrow and will post a story from there as soon as possible.

In the meantime, down hestitate to comment here on what you think of the hire.

Sorry for the late post, but my email server has been down most the day and I missed an important send from Eagles sports information director Dave Cook about Kirk Earlywine's filling of his basketball roster.

You can read about the new recruits, along with more details on Eastern's late invitation to the Great Alaska Shootout here.

I've had a call into the home of the Eisinger brother recruits, who no longer seem to be a part of Earlywine's plans, but they did not answer the message I left.

As time permits, I will try to get with Kirk to get more details on the new recruits and see if the Eisingers might want to give their side of the story on why they are not part of Eastern's 200708 roster.

Eastern Washington's men's basketball team has accepted a late invitation to replace Liberty and join Gonzaga in the field for this year's Great Alaska Shootout.

You can read more here.

As promised, I have a story running in tomorrow's S-R on Monday's opening day of football practice at Eastern Washington University.

You can read the unedited version by clicking on the extended entry line below.

Among my personal observations:

*** Matt Nichols has a chance to an outstanding quarterback -- provided his receivers don't keep dropping as many passes as they did on Monday.

*** The strength of this year's team would seem to be in the offensive line and on defense, where Jody Sears has assembled an athletic group of go-getters who like to run to the football.

*** With the Aug. 31 season opener less than three weeks away, it's a good thing the Eagles' first test comes against an NAIA opponent like Montana-Western.

*** I think the Matt Nichols-to-Aaron Boyce passing combination has a chance to be as productive as any in the Big Sky Conference.

But I've been wrong before.

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Good morning, people.

I'm back, after taking a couple of weeks off to attend to family matters in the Midwest and scrambling to catch up on the Eastern scene while generating several stories for the special golf section we have coming out next weekend.

EWU officials concluded on-campus interviews with its four athletic director candidates on Tuesday and expect to have a new AD in place by the end of next week. You can read more details here.

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend any of the open forums that were part of the interview processes, but a couple of EWU officials I talked were both impressed with the candidates and suggested they could work with any of the four.

Also:

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Just talked to my colleague and new Eastern Washington beatwriter Steve Bergum and he wanted me to pass on that he had to tend to some family business in Iowa and will be gone for about a week.

He's asked me to return to the Eagle blog until his return - at least I think that's what he wanted. Apparently cell service in Iowa is a little hard to come by and he cut out quite a bit. I think he said something to the effect that nobody can do the Eagles as well as me. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

OK, the truth, I'm just trying to stay tuned until he returns and already I can believe how much I've learned, although I'm not sure too many Eagle fans or going to like that.

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Turns out Kirk Earlywine had quite a bit of interest in the vacant coaching position at Ball State.

Eastern's new men's basketball coach refused to discuss the matter, but interim AD Michael Westfall discussed the situation with me today.

You can read the story that will appear in tomorrow's S-R by clicking on "Read full entry" below.

In addition, you can check out the latest on EWU's next class of inductees in the school's hall of fame here.

Or get more details on Earlywine's latest assistant hire here.

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As some of you have already mentioned, the list of the final four candidates for EWU's vacant AD position has been made public.

But the university has also announced the interview schedules and when each candidate will be available to meet with the public at an on-campus open forum.

There are more details here, along with brief bios on each of the candidates.

Nathan Lozeau, the big kid out of Marysville, who originally signed a basketball letter of intent with EWU will play, instead at San Diego under former Gonzaga assistant Bill Grier.

Details are here.

I have yet to introduce myself to Kirk Earlywine, but hope to do so after getting back from vacation on Aug. 6.

Don't know how forthcoming he will be with recruiting discussions, but I'll let you in on what he has to say.

The field of candidates for a new athletics director at Eastern Washington University has been narrowed to four and candidates will visit the school in Cheney in the next two weeks.

The finalists include Robert Chichester, the athletics director at the University of California Irvine for the past five years. The other three, including former Lewis and Clark High graduate Robert Minnix, are currently associate athletics directors.

Check this EWU site for complete story and bios on the candidates.

Not much in the way of hard news out of the Eastern campus over the weekend, but Eagles sports information director Dave Cook did post an interesting story here on the EWU jerseys that have been showing up on "Big Brother 8."

Also, while we all have some spare time on our hands wating for the football season to start, let's have some fun with our own pre-season predictions.

Mine will come out in the the special football section we will publish this fall. But why don't the rest of you regular readers give us your predictions.

We can laugh about them at the end of the season.

I know Dave linked to the stories I wrote during my stay in Park City, but there were some other comments from Paul Wulff that I wanted to pass along.

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Greetings to all of you loyal Eagles fans – and those of you who just like to check in and stir things up, as well.

Elhue Smails, are you out there?

As Dave mentioned in a previous post, he has handed the Eastern Washington University blog baton off to me.

For those of you not familiar with my background, I have been at the S-R for 27 years and have covered virtually every sport imaginable – including a rodeo, where I asked the barrel-racing champion if she had ever drawn the horse she was riding in a previous rodeo.

Her reply?

“Huh? I own it.”

Upon checking back with my rodeo mentor, John Blanchette, I learned I was suppose to use the question he had suggested as a post-event icebreaker on only the bull- and bronc-riding contestants.

Fortunately, I’m much better versed in football and basketball, which have been the main emphasis of this blog in the past.

This will be my second stint on the Eastern beat, having covered the Eagles back in the mid-1990’s when the football team made its run to the semifinals of I-AA – oops, I mean the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision – playoffs.

It’s nice to be back.
I just wish Mike Kramer were still in the league to help entertain us.

I was going to include some links to stories and comments from the Big Sky Conference Football Kickoff in Park City, Utah, where I spent the previous three days, later today.

But Dave beat me too it, so you can check them out in the post he made this morning.

Steve Bergum and I have not played handoff yet for the Eastern beat, so here are some links I've missed while golfing.

Eagles picked fifth.

Big Sky notebook

EWU football team increases off-season tempo

Eagles name new volleyball coach.

I've got some calls into the school to check into the progress of other hirings, plus a few other questions, but I'm also trying to get in a few more rounds of golf and some bike riding before the first football practices.

Steve and I will keep you up to date. If you want more football information from around the league, especially with the recent coaches' media day, hit the links provided on this page.

After a wonderful weekend it's back to the grind and it seems like it's a good day for some Eastern Washington related news.

Rodney Stuckey was a summer league first-team all-star. The Pistons are certainly happy with their rookie.

Former Eagle teammate Paul Butorac is headed for France soon. Hopefully, we'll make contact with him.

Football news starts in earnest today and more will be posted later. As a teaser, EWU is picked fifth by the coaches and media, all of whom expect Montana to dominate this fall. Offensive guard Matt Alfred has been selected to one preseason All-American first team as well as the BSC preseason team, the only Eagle honored.

And with that note, it's time to tell you the story you'll read in tomorrow's paper will be written by colleague Steve Bergum. We're doing a little reshuffling at The Spokesman-Review and Steve is now our Eastern beat writer.

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Not a lot of big news on the Eastern Washington front, other than the really fun and really important fund raising Ron Raver Memorial Golf Classic coming up.

Of course Eagle fans are keeping up on the impressive performance of Rodney Stuckey with the Detroit Pistons' summer league team.

A fun aside is Swoop getting swooped upon in Seattle over the weekend. This is what we ran this morning:

Seattle Chief of Police Gil Kerlikowske came to the rescue of Swoop, the Eastern Washington University mascot, when the eagle found itself in a sidewalk fracas with a bar patron in Pioneer Square early Sunday morning.

According to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer story, the chief was being given a closing-time tour of the club district when officers witnessed the man vs. eagle confrontation.

Police said a man shoved the eagle to the curb and then stomped on the mascot's back as another person dressed as a beaver watched.

Four officers broke up the disturbance. No one was injured all were later released without citations.

Many mascots from the Northwest were in Seattle over the weekend for a competition.

Police couldn't confirm the identity of those involved.

An EWU spokesman confirmed to the The Spokesman-Review that the eagle was Swoop but added: "Eastern Washington University does not reveal the identity of Swoop, just like any other superhero."

Joked Police Department spokeswoman Debra Brown to the P-I: "It's a typical downtown Seattle, after-the-bars-close story."

From basketball, new coach Kirk Earlywine is on the road recruiting. No word on if all the signed players are going to show up on campus. As far as the hiring of another assistant, this is what was reported to me: "(Earlywine is) still doing phone interviews and working with Human Resources to follow protocal."

Remember how long it took to get the offensive coordinator for football.

Rumor has it but it isn't confirmed the AD search may be winding down. No one wants to talk.

EWU is still in the process of hiring a strength coach, plus an assistant, compliance director and, I'm guessing, naming assistant Myles Kidd as interim head coach.