Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports features Oregon football coach Mario Cristobal, going into his family background, circuitous route to coaching football, MMA and more. Good read as usual from Dodd.

Washington State quarterback Gardner Minshew II and kick returner Travell Harris were named Pac-12 Offensive and Special Teams Players of the Week, respectively. Minshew completed nearly 80 percent of his passes while throwing for 470 yards and two touchdowns in the Cougs’ 59-24 win over Eastern Washington, while Harris had a 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown in the triumph.

As a result of their helping Stanford women’s volleyball to a 2-0 weekend against No. 3 Texas, outside hitter Kathryn Plummer and libero Morgan Hentz were named Pac-12 Offensive and Defensive Players of the Week, respectively, for the second straight week. Conference play begins Tuesday night, y’all.

Former Oregon State men’s basketball forward Drew Eubanks signed a two-way contract with the San Antonio Spurs (first reported by Shams Charania of The Athletic, linked here by The Oregonian/OregonLive). Eubanks played on the Spurs’ Summer League team in July.

Washington football coach Chris Petersen thinks that “people don’t appreciate” how tough Jake Browning is. His quarterback certainly has taken his fair share of criticism for his fourth-quarter interception Saturday night at Utah.

After hearing Kyle Whittingham speak with the media on Monday, Kurt Kragthorpe is wondering if Utah will start to run the football more based on how well Whittingham thought the offensive line played against Washington.

J. Brady McCullough of the Los Angeles Times lets us know that USC football coach Clay Helton turned up the intensity at practice on Monday. A 1-2 start certainly isn’t what he and the Trojan family envisioned, but it really can’t be all that shocking considering the schedule and how young the Trojans are at key positions (namely quarterback).

There might be a new coaching regime, but UCLA football is still racking up penalties like it was in the previous regime, notes Thuc Nhi Nguyen. The Bruins are 95th in the country in penalties per game this year; during the Jim Mora era, the Bruins never finished better than 86th in this stat category.

Brian Howell features Colorado football “Buff back” Davion Taylor, a junior college transfer who had a fumble return for a touchdown in the win over New Hampshire. Taylor actually didn’t play high school football but picked up the game well enough at Coahoma (Miss.) Community College to land at a Pac-12 school.

Rusty Simmons writes about “Truth Monday” for a Cal football practice on, you guessed it, Monday. The Bears are 3-0, but Wilcox was quick to point out to the defensive backs how they can do their job better (the Cal defense has been fantastic in the first three quarters of games, not so much in the fourth).

Greg Hansen spends this article explaining why Arizona football plays a lot of late games. The Wildcats will have played in the latest timeslot for FBS games (not including Hawai’i home games in some cases) three times by the time the month of September is over.

Check out this snippet of “The Drive” featuring Arizona State football. The full episode will air Sunday, Oct. 7 at 7:30 p.m. PT/8:30 p.m. MT on Pac-12 Network.