FanHouse Dan Fouts

Getty Images isn't in the habit of snapping announcers, so here's a version of Fouts 20 years younger.

Buried in a long piece about ESPN thinking maybe probably they should cut through clutter on the five- (sometimes six-, with a bonus celebrity) man Monday Night Football team is this nugget that should be of considerable relief to Pac-10 fans:

Sunday, Soltys also said the contracts of ABC/ESPN college football announcers Dan Fouts and Tim Brant, who worked together on West Coast games, have expired and won't be renewed.

Fouts was adequate as a color guy -- though he's an odd choice to give the honor of being Keith Jackson's last sidekick -- but amateur at best at play-by-play. There were few with a better knack for draining the excitement from a big play.

I remember precisely nothing about Brant, so he was probably better than most.

USC at Oregon | 1st Half | 2nd Half

It's a Fox Sports Weekend, if you are a Pac Ten fan, as four of the five conference games are being broadcast on the NewsCorp-owned cable networks, bookended by the USC Trojans' visit to Autzen Stadium and the traditional 10:15 PM Eastern Pac Ten Game of the Week between undefeated Arizona State and former contender Cal Berkeley.

Today's matchup pits the nation's second-best offense against the third best defense in the country and features two one-loss, top-ten teams. The winner controls their destiny. The loser starts to think about how many more ganes they'd have to lose to go to the Hawaii Bowl instead of the Sun Bowl.

Vitals, TV Info and Pregame Notes after the jump . . .