FanHouse BrianPrice

If Mediocrity had a football team, its mascot would most likely wear a giant foam Mike Stoops head

Ahhh, mediocre college football. Three words that go together like turkey, gravy, and stuffing.

While the majority of space here at FanHouse and on every other college football publication will be focused on the Top 25, season after season a huge slice of the college football fan pie (mmmm...fan pie) find themselves supporting a team who would most aptly be described as thoroughly mediocre, at best. I'd venture to guess that for every legit contender, there are probably three teams with a couple of flaws so glaring that only those blinded by the partisanship of homerdom can pretend their team's downsides won't inevitably sabotage any hopes of playing in a bowl of even moderate respectability.

And therein lies one of the most cruel realities of the college football landscape: winning 6 or 7 games is no small feat, and yet every year coaches and players around the country will be abused for achieving that very milestone. Of course, when you play in a conference like the Pac 10 -- who rewards its third place finisher with a December 31 game in El Paso's Sun Bowl -- can you really be that surprised when fans and pundits are critical of barely topping out above .500?

Who from the Pac 10 will slide to the middle of the pack in 2008? Here's a quick rundown of the leading candidates for Pacific time zone mediocrity this season.

While looking at the Pac-10 impact freshmen category, it would have been simple enough to take the top 5 or so USC recruits and simply list them below. But, obviously that's the easy way out. While USC has the two best frosh to hit the field for '07, there actually are other programs with young talent that will be on display this fall. Without further delay, check out FanHouse's view of the top impact freshmen of the upcoming season:

1. Joe McKnight, RB, USC

For the uninitiated, the 'Best in the West' is an annual publication of the Long Beach Press-Telegram. It is a list of the west's top high school football players, as voted on by a panel of recruitniks. It used to be a lot more prestigious but still carries weight. To be eligible, players must be from Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah or Washington.

Atop the list is Arizona defensive end Everson Griffen. If you saw the US Army High School All America game you know what this kid can do. He's ridiculously fast and is headed to USC.

After Griffen are national names like Jimmy Clausen (quarterback headed to Notre Dame), Chris Galippo (LB-USC), Marc Tyler (RB/LB-USC), Donovan Warren (CB-Undecided), Kris O'Dowd (OL-USC), Ryan Miller (OT-Colorado), Brian Price (DT-UCLA) and Aaron Corp (QB-USC).

You can see the full list after the jump.

The BIW is notable because it's a reasonable assessment of elite talent coming out of western high schools. As they note in the release:

Out of all 746 BIW players, 52 have been drafted in the first round by an NFL franchise. When Cincinnati chose Carson Palmer in the 2003 draft, he joined John Elway as the only two Best in the West players selected with the first overall pick.