From the Other Side: OSU Coach Mike Riley

Mike Riley from the Pac-10 coach's conference call:

On quarterback Sean Canfield's improvement:
"There's no doubt about it. It's confidence and decisiveness. That's not only into the year, but through the year. Almost game to game. He's hung in there and made throws and hasn't blinked, which is a big. big part at quarterback."

On Jacquizz Rodgers being up for the Heisman:
"I don't know what to say about that, except he's one of the very best player in the country. He's the second leading all-purpose guy in the conference, second-leading rusher in the conference. In a ton of ways he's playing at the highest levels. I don't look at all that stuff. If you're looking at somebody for a deal like that, I do not see why he doesn't qualify."

On Rodgers' ability to find the endzone (14 touchdowns)
"Absolutely - I think that he has scored rushing touchdowns against outstanding defenses; blocked well, but with tremendous effort. Quizz has that great leverage down there. He'll almost always be below your pads. He's hard to stop in a goal-line situation or anywhere."

On running the ball more against a struggling UCLA rush defense:
"It's not going to be more of a focus. Our deal always is in order to be who we want to be, we have to run the football. When we start running the ball better in the second half last week, we were a better team because of it. It's always about attacking."

On the Pac-10 being rated above the SEC:
"Having a team like USC is obviously part of that. The fact they've been in tough games. But you take UCLA, they won at Tennessee and beat Kansas State. Cal goes back and crushes Minnesota. We've had some games that people have taken note of. We all don't have the record to prove it yet, but eventually it'll work out to be that."