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If the B1G needs to expand to 20, bring in Stanford and California. Most of the men at Berkeley need a haircut, anyway.

Speaking of travel, on a separate basketball note, so far this season, games in Central/Eastern zone: 1-4 Oregon, with 2 to play 1-4 uW, with 2 to play 1-5 UCLA, with 1 to play 3-4 USC - final trip was Feb. 11 By the way, those 3 USC wins were by a combined 5 points total, and 1 loss was by 1 point. Cronin is a very unhappy guy at UCLA this season. Both UCLA and USC lost road games at UM & MSU "bigly." The B1G is a tough basketball conference. Most often, fans are fully invested in basketball especially if their football teams are semi-mediocre at the same school.

Two things, conference expansion and playoff scheduling. Maybe it makes sense for the B1G to announce that in 2030 the conference will expand to 20 teams and thereafter there will be no further consideration of expanding. They could even name teams they are considering and include Notre Dame along with five or six others. Then the Irish will be presented with a now or never decision. To me, allowing the playoff committee and the bowls to impact matters beyond their primary objective, like scheduling, is nonsense. The conferences could just tell them: "We are available to begin playoff games on January 1, 2025, a Friday and you, playoff committees and bowl committees, arrange your schedules accordingly with games on that day and the next. No games more than eight days apart." As it is now, the tail is wagging the dog.

Too much like trying to name your favorite child. Although I tell my kids two things . . . their mother and I are thinking of going childless / favorite isn't born yet!

So many to choose from. A few that I enjoyed are To Kill A Mockingbird, as Boo Radley. It's a cameo appearance from his first movie. I'm surprised nobody mentioned M*A*S*H* as Major Frank Burns. Also enjoyed Falling down and Open Range.

Well crap. Those two, I think, should be the only possibilities in the west. Maybe Colorado, but Utah? No way. OK, ND and UNC it is I guess.

I don't really care since I get my Que sera sera advice from Doris Day (whatever will be will be). However, the more teams you add, the more pressure you put on coaches to make the playoffs. In a 16 or 24 team field, what is the timeline for firing if you don't make it over a certain year span. The Romans may have nothing on us with this new spectator sport.

The game was moved up due to weather concerns, as is Friday's game to 2:00 PM. We have some really interesting pitching changes for both teams, as Youngstown State has two really-good pitchers, but they are being played on Friday and Saturday of this four game series. The first surprise is how they are playing a senior RHP in Aiden English, who had a 13.79 ERA in 15 innings last year. That was not a typo. Now we all know that pitchers can improve as we've seen with Our Beloved Ducks, but it appears the Penguin strategy, (yes, that is their mascot) is to put their weakest pitchers on the first and fourth games. The 'GUINS have three .300+ hitters, and another who hit .300 last weekend at Auburn. The stunner on our side? Oregon is NOT starting Will Sanford like last week, but Toby Twist instead! Apparently Ryan Featherston is back to relief duty again, but not due to his performance last week, as he was nails for us. I believe Coach Waz is trying to get Twist back into things, but he did not have a shining relief role last week. So we are pitting weak pitcher vs. weak pitcher for the Thursday game? Should be fun to watch... Toby Twist

Thanks, Gat. Petitti's PO format proposal no longer includes automatic qualifiers. The season would begin in Week Zero. There would be no conference champ games played. Petitti proposes a 16-team field in 2027-28 and 2028-29, with the field going to 24 teams in 2029-30, which just happens to be 😁 the first year of the Big Ten's new media deal. The B1G's current media deal will be the first P4 conference deal to expire and be renegotiated. The B12 deal runs through 2030-31. The SEC's deal runs through 2033-34. The ACC's deal runs through 2036. Petitti has the B1G perfectly positioned. (Not to be confused with Larry Scott having the Pac-12 perfectly positioned. 🤬) While it hasn't to date been given the antitrust green light, streaming service Venu, owned 50/50 by Fox and Disney/ESPN, signals an intent of the two to cooperate on the media front. Fox owns 60% of the Big Ten Network, so it will be the B1G's 'go-to' network. I'm hoping that, come 2030, ESPN will become a Big Ten broadcast partner. No entity supports CFB more than ESPN, and I think ESPN being a B1G and SEC broadcast partner will lead to agreement on an expanded playoff format. I like 24-teams, no AQs, top 8 ranked teams with a short 1st round bye, and at least the 1st and 2nd rounds played on campus, as part of Petitti's format. And the PO starts and finishes two weeks earlier than today. If the NCAA managed the FBS CFB playoff, we'd already be at 24 teams. CFB Needs the Dues! The money that will rain down from a 24-team field with the PO to start and finish two weeks sooner than today. 🤑

Lonesome Dove! As good as the book?📕

HIGH STAKES: Oregon Ducks’ College Football Playoff Path HINGES on Dan Lanning's Coaching Promotions

Here's hoping that Hilary will have a good Knight! AP NewsHilary Knight gets her dream matchup as US faces Canada f...Hilary Knight got her wish. The United States women's hockey captain and her teammates will be going for gold against archrival Canada on Thursday.

Thanks again for the great article to ponder. I don't believe in a conference with 16 or more teams that in-conference scheduling can be 'fair.' In 2023, I don't believe any human or any computer programmed to make in-conference scheduling equal could have predicted that the college football program with the most losses in the history of the sport would qualify for the playoff in 2024 and win the whole darn thing in 2025. The NFL does all it can to achieve parity among the 32 teams. Besides Bo being injured and a new head coach with a clue, the Pats were in the Super Bowl because New England stunk the prior four seasons, and accordingly, played the easiest NFL schedule in 2025. It just so happens that Ohio State plays the most difficult conference schedule in 2026, plus a game at Texas. But do you want your top brands and the two teams that played for a conference championship the year before to have the most difficult schedules the next season? Such scheduling would be putting multi-million dollar bullets in your gun and shooting your conference in the foot. There is a solution, and it's a solution that reflects the state of today's game, including the teams that have qualified for a 12-team playoff the last two years. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti's 16-team, 4-4-2-2-1-3 automatic qualifier format in 2025-26 would have had one fewer G5 team, but one more B1G, SEC, ACC, B12 team, and Notre Dame would also have been in the field. Playoff play-in games would help with scheduling symmetry. Wisconsin had a brutal schedule last season. A sixth-place Badgers team may well have been better than a third-place team that had a lightweight schedule; settle it on the field. 1st and 2nd place are in the playoff field, 3rd and fourth place teams are rewarded with flex scheduled home game in the final week of the regular season. The 5th and 6th-place teams have a shot at the playoffs, and more fans would be involved and invested in the entire season. The price of attendance for Oregon home games next season, and for home games coast-to-coast increase significantly in 2026. Flex-scheduled playoff play-in games would bring in more media dollars. And with an AQ playoff format, a B1G/SEC out-of-conference football challenge could be played every season for bigger B1G/$EC media money. Much of the PO Committee's subjectivity would be eliminated. More money for the ACC and the B12 helps stave off further consolidation and keeps millions of ACC and B12 football fans invested in the great game of college football. No need to further shuffle the CFB conference deck. Your Honor (if you are still awake), I rest my case.😁 [Oops - If and as I expect will happen in 2030, B1G teams keep the playoff money they earn, and media revenue is based at least in part on the number of folks watching the games, adding Cal and Stanford, with a floor for annual investment in athletics for all conference teams, might make sense.]

Open Range isn't just my favorite Duvall movie. It's one of my favorite movies hands down! He was pretty dang fun to watch in Deep Impact as well!

One of the best, if not the best. It would be a good comparison to the 2024 squad...

with our current history of roster retention and who will be Juniors along with the 2026 recruits.. it might be safe to say Raiola will be playing with the most talented roster in the history of Ducks football. No?

Jon Joseph explained it well to me why the two bay area schools will not be added to the Big Ten. They do not add to the revenue stream, and in fact, everybody would have to take a haircut in the conference, if they joined. I agree that scholastically they fit the Conference perfectly, but if everybody has to take less money? This goes back quite a ways, but it was announced by the B1G that they have passed on those two schools permanently.

I'll cheat and say his best supporting actor role is in Godfather. As lead actor, Lonesome Dove. BTW, Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall were the spot-on perfect casting for McMurtry's LD characters. I re-read the book a few years ago and it is impossible not to hear and visualize those two in your head while doing so. His best line though is in Apocalypse Now, and it isn't the one you think about napalm. It's: "Charlie don't surf!"

Go thoughts, Feather. I miss playing Cal and Stanford. I wonder whether the experience that schools in the B1G before bringing in OBD, fuskies, UCLA and USC are having with the expanded conference as is would cause them to object to two more from the west coast.

Another vote for Open Range.

If expansion and a new alignment means only 2 schools are to be taken (without ND being a possibility) I say Stanford and Cal. This seems like a no-brainer to me. They are among THE finest private and public, respectively, schools in this land. I believe that their fan support will skyrocket with membership in the Big-10 after their few years of purgatory traveling to Clemson, SC. Gross. If ND is in the mix? ND and Stanford.

It may be a tired question to some, but these are important questions about the Playoffs. In the end, what the B1G wants is less SEC bias by the committee, and we can't count on that. So the less input by the committee, and more that is already agreed upon up front...the better. Perhaps this is Pettiti's way of asking for the world, and getting compromises? SEC gives up committee power, and B1G agrees to 16 teams?

Predictably, Jon Joseph presents some enticing arguments that provoked my mind to consider different directions for reply. That’s a good thing. It is exactly what I hoped for while writing the article, and more. Jon does not really ATFQ of which two schools the B1G should consider for expansion because he gives us six! And not two divisions, but three. I struggle to understand how three divisions with four cross-over games can ever be symmetrical. Of necessity, there is no way the teams will be playing comparable opponents in the cross-over games. The Socratic question to you, Jon, is: “How is that symmetrical?” Hence, is it fair? I have considered the flex schedule at the end of the regular season before, but Jon gave me a new twist that I will address in the next article. Hint, maybe there is a way for the B1G to achieve symmetry with only 18 teams and not expand. Thanks for that. Notre Dame is an obvious candidate for expansion. Charles and I have discussed this possibility and he believes that the Irish broadcasting deal with CBS will keep them independent. More to discuss there.

I love what Mike Whitty is proposing, as sometimes you try things, (like removing divisions) and then realize things were better the way they used to be. His proposed movement of teams every two years is quite interesting as well. And WHO would be the final two teams added to the Big-10? Great stuff...

Seems like the B1G talking point this off-season is going to be centered on getting an expanded playoff for the 2027 season. Much consternation has been made of Petiti being dead set on getting 24 teams, and a fixed number going to each conference. The SEC wants 16, and thought going to 9 conference games was the key to getting there. I know how most SEC fans feel, they feel like Sankey is getting pushed around. But in all reality, the SEC has gotten the benefit of the doubt with multiple years in the BCS, four team, and now twelve team eras. There were two all SEC BCS Title games, and one in the four team. The SEC got almost half the field of a twelve team field, and failed to beat another P4 team outside of each other. I know this is a tired question, but I would like to hear from my Duck friends if 24 is too big, or if 16 is good enough with a proposed automatics for each conference. Also, what to do with the G6 and Notre Dame. It's going to be a long wait till we get our football fix, but there's a lot going on right now to keep some topics alive.