David Marsh

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.

Specialists have their own recruiting standards. Typically a five star long snapper counts as a two or three star by the usual rankings. Specialists really don't get a good deal through it all... Kickers Deserve Scholarships, Too FISHDUCK.COM Most of the focus in football is placed on the star power positions like quarterbacks, running backs... But specialists do play a critical role on every team.

So what happens when Riley has to take on Lanning? Especially if the Ducks have a solid offense to go with that defense.

I did pose this question a couple weeks ago in my article. I think it is inevitable because the bigger revenue drivers will want a bigger slice of the pie and would happily ditch non revenue building schools. In the B1G think of how much money Ohio State brings in and by comparison how little Indiana or Rutgers brings in? How long do you think Ohio State or even FOX is going to want that to work? FOX would definitely see ditching Indiana for like Oregon would be a revenue increase because Oregon is a bigger and better brand. The New Overlords of College Football FISHDUCK.COM This will come as no surprise to any of you, but the NCAA is dead. It ceded away its power to the major...

If we get UCLA back then the PAC is in a way better place even with the loss of USC. At that point USC is replaced with someone else but thise options aren't going to be as good overall.

I mean... We all saw this coming years ago. So good of the NCAA to finally get around to it.

Sounds like someone just wants to stir up some chaos. .this conference stuff will take quite a long time to be resolved. Nothing moves fast except fan reactions to announcements... And the news being announced is typically months in the making.

Leadership has to come from Sewell this year. Not saying he hasn't led but he is the defacto vet on the defense and he always leads by example.

The Dye brothers have been the heart and soul of the program for around six years, even as a freshman in that aweful 2016 season Troy Dye was making plays and becoming a leader. Then I think the two big defining Dye games were the last two against Washington, both at Washington. Where Troy played through a broken thumb and Travis willed the Ducks to victory. It will be a loss. However, I do feel the coaches have brought in some nice prices at runningback and a better scheme will help our run game. Probably have a bit of a leadership void in the runningback room right now but whoever emerges as the top back(s) I'm sure will take hold of the leadership element. We have some fantastic sophomores.

I'm happy to see the low blocks going away. Those can be dangerous. I am also tired of seeing a shirt yardage play from an offense that has most of their offensive line just torpedo the defense by diving forward with low blocks helmet first. That never struck me as fair and always came with a high chance of injury. It's also one of those things I never felt added anything to the game.

It is a popular feature for the season. There are usually a few surprising games during that time slot. However, the PAC cannot be relegated to all late start times.

This was the era where Oregon was down and Washington was up and USC was less bad. It would be interesting to see numbers going back the last ten years. I know last year Oregon beat everyone in the pac-12 on a regular basis.

Paying 75mil for one team is a steep price for nbc considering they don't have any other college football. Fox and ESPN have whole conferences and as a result they can pay out larger suns potentially because they bring in more eyeballs. How many times have you turned the TV on to watch a Ducks game on an hour or so and ended up watching the previous game or at least part of it? Or after the Ducks have won, how many games have you stuck around to watch? Those are eyeballs that they capture by the nature of having bulk programming. For nbc and ND you go to NBC for the ND game and you leave as soon as it's over. They don't get any eyesballs on an ND game by chance. This feels like ND making a demand that NBC can't cash or won't cash and they know it. It is something that could be used to bow out of independence and save face along the way.

First ... I don't think Oregon loses three. Two maybe but not three. I have a feeling the Ducks won't come out flat on game day like they did under MC. Also I think Oregon State is going to be surprising again this year. I think they beat the Trojans at home. The beavers are hometown warriors, they struggle more on the road.

Recruiting sucks. It takes a lot of time and effort and the investment per athlete does not always deliver players who actually join the team. It's a lot of work and for every commit there are many more who commit elsewhere. I know it doesn't compare to football coaches but I ran a guild in World of Warcraft, yes an online video game, for years and the thing that drove me away from the game faster than anything else was the constant recruitment element. And that was recruiting in a video game ... I can't imagine how grueling recruiting high school athletes is. I'm a high school teacher now and I'm thankful I don't have to recruit for my classes they are just there. Well... I do have an extra curricular that requires some recruiting but that is only for about a month and that month sucks in that regard.