David Marsh

USC is also on the west coast.... The PAC is usually the target for punishment where other conferences can get away with it. Tenn is finally getting investigated over their McDonald's money bags under the table and I'll be shocked if they are in trouble for any more than a hefty fine and a few scholarship reductions. The west coast is consistently made examples of where a good chunk of the rest of the college football world gets away with misbehavior. Part of that results in the west coast following the rules and falling at times behind. Oregon and the Willie Lyles incident resulted in what looked like a slap on the wrist but it handicapped Oregon's recruiting for the entire Helfrich era. The big thing being a reduction of official visits down to 35 from. That's nothing, especially for a school that is outside of driving distance for most top talent. There was also a scholarship reduction but that isn't as big as the official visits. If that penalty was put on an SEC school it would have been a minor blip if anything.

I hope he has a good year and sees the field. He is the last of the Helfrich recruits. He had so much potential as a recruit and it's been a rough journey through college sports for him. It is a testament to his grit that he has stuck through it all. I think anyone else would have medically retired by now.

As others have said... Boise is not a match academicly while at the same time not a big media market. Colorado has not been good at football since they joined but they do bring a decently large market with them. BYU is a religious school and everything I've heard is that they have always liked to dictate certain terms about scheduling. In short they are not a team player which is something you have historically wanted in conferences. The Big-12 was desperate enough after Oklahoma and Texas announced their departure that they were happy to work with BYU to bring them into a conference. Also the Big-12 has a heavier influence of religious schools already than most conferences with TCU and Baylor. By contrast the PAC has only had one school with any religious affiliation in USC. Even with all that the PAC minus LA is still a larger media footprint than the new Big-12. I think San Diego is probably one of the very few options for expansion right now.

Kind of crazy to think that this year marks Chip's 5th at UCLA by the end of the year he will have been at UCLA as a head coach longer than he was at Oregon. I love what Chip did for Oregon but those days are long, long gone now.

And this just hit me... He had TAMU on his list of final schools. If he wanted to go play against the best of the best right away he should have gone there. USC will be in the PAC for the next few season. He will spend at least one year playing in the PAC before they even make the move to the B1G. I'm just not buying this realignment inflicting recruiting stuff right now. I'm sure some kids are believing it but it feels like a whole of smoke and mirrors because no one knows what any of it is going to look like.

I don't buy the argument that realignment is going to work as a recruiting tool. Sure, it may work right now... But again the ACC has been weak and Clemson has been successful. Right now everyone is freaking out about realignment. But what happens when the dust settles. Getting to the playoff will always ensure you're playing against the best, period. I think Oregon just needs to show they can make the playoff again. Next year or two would be huge.

Anyone new to any conference usually starts as a doormat. Utah started as a doormat for the first four-ish years. Colorado is still a doormat. In the SEC Missouri has been up and down but mostly a doormat and Arkansas was only barely a rung above Vanderbilt until really... last year. Nebraska has struggled to find itself in the B1G though they might be looking at a significant jump this upcoming year. All their losses were super close losses last year and with a bit better quarterbacking and a bit of luck they could have had a fantastic year. USC and UCLA will be B1G doormats. Texas and Oklahoma might be the exception to the rule... but they are NOT going to be top tier programs in the SEC, I just don't think they will be basement dwellers right away either. But they will not be happy. I don't think if the Pac-12 adds anyone they are going to be anything other than a mid tier to doormat program. Anyone else just isn't coming to the Pac-12 at this point.

If you asked me if San Diego was an option from r expansion a month ago or so.... Basically when I wrote my article on the PAC-12 being geographicly isolated... The Pac-12 is Geographically Isolated From the Rest of the College... FISHDUCK.COM Recently in a John Canzano Mailbag article, he was asked whether or not the Pac-12 should consider... I would have said no. Now ... Their value has increased drastically. As others have said I think it would be problematic to bring them in as full members out the gate. They simply aren't worth full members at this point. But here's the thing... Utah was brought into the PAC and was uncompetitive for their first several years but then they had a chance to build themselves up and get their legs under them. Same could be true for San Diego.

I think I read somewhere that the start was August 5ty this year.

Texas A&M were able to get out of their home and home agreement due to a conference realignment clause in the contract. So they joined the SEC to avoid Oregon. Well not entirely but they didn't have to cancel the series but they did.

I would imagine at the moment ESPN with their exclusive bidding rights (with fox but fox is sitting out from the sound of it) would take the opportunity to low ball just a bit at the moment. The bigger question comes after the first thirty days and if GK can leverage in streaming companies to push ESPN to a better deal. Negotiations are funny things ... They take a lot of time and posturing but when you get right on down it they don't really take shape until the clock almost reaches zero. Right now ESPN has loads of clock and no pressure. What we need to wait for is when does the pressure mount because there isn't as much clock yet. Basically it's a tie game right now and everyone is happy to punt. Just wait until there are two minutes left and someone needs to drive the field.

I'm ok with a cloud of dust.... As long as the runningback isn't caught up in it and as a result is sprinting for the end zone with defenders trying to catch him.

Interesting thing I found was that Hoke changed the base defense from a 3-4 to a 4-3 and I do recall Aliotti saying that that was a risky move because Oregon didn't have the number of defensive linemen in the the roster to provide the needed depth. Then Leavitt came in and took the Oregon personnel and flipped them back to an 3-4 which is what that roster was designed to do. That and a better coached scheme were only two parts of the quick turnaround.

Would have beaten the Huskies twice as well if he didn't have to sit due to dehydration coupled with his cycle cell. EWU didn't lose by much when he played against Washington... And he sat out for a good chunk of the second quarter to get iv fluids.

Absolutely the NCAA is to blame. They decided to become hands off. Now there is plenty they have done that has been exploitive to college athletes but after several of those issues were risen they decided not to control anything. The big one I can think of is a few years back when it came to light that athletes were struggling to get enough food and the NCAA then just lifted their rules on food basically at that point. Seems crazy to think they had rules on how much food a school could provide for its student athletes. That is a level of control the NCAA used to have. Then with the NIL stuff instead of trying to figure out a way to get players paid, as that was where everything was headed as it was, they decided to let it be a free for all. Just think... The NCAA could have potentially headed off this whole pay issue by forcing profit sharing in a manner that athletes at division one (or what ever level) would all get the same pay or something like that. None of these bidding wars for NIL. Ughhh so much the NCAA has done wrong.

Funny you should say something like that.... A couple years ago I wrote an article about Mariota should potentially look at coaching when he is done with the NFL as a player, still hoping for a successful second act from him. Is Marcus Mariota Destined for Coaching? FISHDUCK.COM Marcus Mariota is the greatest Oregon football player of all time. He won Oregon its first Heisman Trophy...

Even a diminished pac-12 is better than the mountain west, let alone the big sky. And as for competing... The beavers are on a very good trajectory. I would think this is a hoax.

Shameless self promotion... I too agree that Adams would have gotten a NY Heisman invite if he stayed healthy ... And possibly more. What If Vernon Adams Didn't Break His Finger in 2015? FISHDUCK.COM The 2015 season saw Oregon turn to a one-year graduate transfer in Vernon Adams, and that move could have led to so much more than the 9-4 record shows.

There were some pretty good results under Helfrich... 1 Alamo Bowl win (the last two have been awful by the way), 1 Rose Bowl win, a National Championship appearance, and Oregon's first and only Heisman winner in Marcus Mariota. Yes, you could say that he did it with "Kelly's recruits" which is somewhat true, but Helfrich was also on that staff and he worked to do a lot of that recruiting as well and if you dig right now into it, Kelly relied heavily on the recruiting skills of Oregon's long tenured staff and Heflrich's recruiting wasn't that bad or at least not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. A Defense of Helfrich's Recruiting Legacy FISHDUCK.COM Mark Helfrich is generally considered the worst recruiter in modern Oregon football history. He is a coach who oversaw some of... Additionally... if you want to take the "Helf won with Kelly's recruits" argument... then Kelly won with Bellotti's recruits. There is a lot to unpack in the end of the Helfrich era and I do find it absolutely fascinating. We tend to like to shove coaches into a good or bad column and call it good at that but the reality is coaches are human and they all have some good and bad qualities. Let's just look briefly at Cristobal... the guy can recruit and brought in some of the best talent in Oregon's history but the sad truth of it all is... he won his biggest games (the 2019 season) with a whole lot of Helfrich's recruits. (Herbert, 4/5 of the offensive line, Verdell (recruited by Helfrich and then signed by Taggart), Troy Dye, Brady Breeze and more) Anyways... I'll probably need to write an article now to dissect the Helfrich era because now I'm thinking on it too much.

I love this current Oregon staff but when Dillingham moves on I wouldn't mind seeing Helfrich come back as the OC. I've been saying this for years. His offense was an improvement over the Kelly offense, it wasn't crazy in how it changed but a few tweaks, some deeper shots, and it was deadly.

I always thought Frost was a good upper level quarterback coach. Think of him as the coach who teaches QBing 301, he did a great job with Mariota and Adams but both were already incredible products that needed to continue to be polished. However, Frost as the qb coach at Oregon never developed a QB from scratch that was reliable on the field. Oregon went through a ton of four star recruits that were beaten out by.... Jeff Lockie??? Then before 2015 all those players who couldn't beaten out Lockie, and Lockie himself, we're then beaten out by Adams who arrived late to fall camp as he scrambled to complete a math credit. I do firmly believe Helfrich saw this problem and brought in Yost who did get Herbert ready and Prukop gets a bad rap but he honestly wasn't that bad ... Oregon just didn't have a defense. Then I won't even start on Taggart... He's an article onto himself at this point.

But at least it's not IMG. At least Oregon has been able to pull kids from Mater Dei. So hopefully this turns out to be a good thing for the Ducks and we continue to grow that pipeline.

Helfrich was the one credited for finding both Mariota and Herbert. Both are statistically the top two qbs in program history. Helfrich made a huge mistake when he did not continue coaching quarterbacks. The problem sort quarterbacks is that it can be really tough to find one that can make the leap to the college system. Most don't, as we forget how few actually see the field. Now the bigger blemish for Oregon's track record in recent years is how many quarterbacks have left Oregon and ended up actually playing somewhere else. Getting a quarterback that was recruited and developed by Oregon would be huge for the program. However, in this day and age it is possible just to go transfer portal shopping every year but that has its own drawbacks.

Exactly... Unless the formula changes for the playoff invitational there is no incentive to add tougher teams to thr B1G. In some ways I think Oregon shocking Ohio State has given them pause. USC and UCLA are both meh at best. They will probably make bowl games regularly but not threaten the status quo.

Sort of... Schools still cannot pay players. What is allowed now, opposed to 2018, is other people, organizations, or companies can pay players for use of their NIL. Schools still cannot directly pay players which is why such ideas like schools creating an "NIL fund" for players is not allowed. I saw someone throw out an idea of charging five dollars additional per ticket per game to go into an NIL fund. This would be blantabtly illegal as the school would collect the money and then pay players with it. However, if there is a guy with a bucket not affiliated with the school who collects money for NIL and that money is used to pay players that is a different story. What Tennessee did was have those affiliated with the school paying recruits money. Which is still a no-no but who knows for how much longer.