David Marsh

Haunt me? No. Will I feel better about it once we have a national championship trophy in our trophy case? Yes. It does feel like the refs put their thumbs on the scale a little bit or a lot with that game though.

I'm in agreement that I like getting voting out of the picture for a national champion. But I feel 12 teams is a false hope generator for most teams thinking they belong in the conversation where they don't. The Big 12 is going to be grossly disappointed. The G5 team will have more moderated false hope because they'll get on the field and get beaten regularly in the first round and if they do manage an upset they aren't making it out of the second round. I think in the new environment there might be at most 6 teams that belong in the title hunt and they aren't guaranteed to be conference champions.

I think the biggest factor in it all is actually Saban retiring. In part he was driven to retirement by NIL and the portal but if he was five years younger I think he'd stick around longer. Saban's retirement has turned college football on its head more than anything else this past year. And it will make NIL and the transfer Portal have a greater impact as teams see an opening for success. Saban's Bama team lost to Michigan in a close game where Michigan had a roster full of 5th year vets. If Saban wins that game he gets a national championship as Bama would have beaten Washington without a doubt.

I find myself agreeing with him in many points. Because to be brutally honest in any given year there are really only two at most three teams that are good enough to compete for the championship. Last year was a bit more interesting... But Michigan was clearly better than Washington. I think end of season Bama was better than Texas, even though Texas won against Bama early in the year. If I were to rank those four teams I'd put them Michigan, Bama, Washington, Texas. I know Florida State being snubbed was a major point of contention. Though without their starting QB and then having won a very very weak ACC I completely understand the snub. Should Georgia and Oregon been involved in the playoff? The reality there is that they lost their conference championship games and isn't that basically a playoff game? Win and in or win and move forward. They lost and were eliminated. I think either could have made a good playoff run in reality. I think Oregon matched up better against everyone but Washington. Washington could just exploit Oregon's defensive weakenesses in a way no other team Oregon played last year could. I think Georgia just had a bad day against Bama. But in both cases that's sports and life. I see the B1G and SEC champs being the heavy favorites and the Big 13 and ACC champs looking like they don't deserve their first round byes.

It would make sense because we're probably losing 2-3 at the end of this season. Whittington and James are probably both gone. I'm not sure on how many years are left on Harris' eligibility but I don't think it's many. If he has a good season he might be gone as well.

I don't want to get too neigh-gative but it feels like a lot of horsing around.

They're not P4 and they don't fully belong to the Mountain West Conference. I'd say BYU was in a similar spot until they joined a conference. They were better than a good portion of G5 but they weren't P5. They were somewhere in the middle. Oregon State and Washington State both exist in that middle zone and without an opportunity to win a G5 conference title I think they'll be blocked from the playoff unless Oregon State goes 12-0 and dominates all their MWC goes. This will require them beating the Ducks and I think the talent gap is just far too large at this point to happen.

Anything 7 or less is a coin flip by the odds makers. I'll take Oregon on those odds right now. It will be interesting to see where they are a week out from the game that's for sure.

I'd love Oregon to do a yellow out. Highlighter yellow at night! You know that would be epic and we all know it. It would also give us a little B1G flare.

I thought they were convinced we'd be forced to ditch him because he can't win games?

USC hired the coach they deserve. Riley is a perfect fit for USC. They hired the flashy coach who won games in the Big 12 where defense is merely a suggestion.

Dabo is on his way out and probably by his own choice at some point soon. As I mentioned in the forum post from my article today there are really three models of recruiting right now. Prep focus - this is what Georgia is doing with lots of success because they pull in top 2 classes yearly. They give some to the portal but that's mostly to make room for new additions. Georgia does use the portal but very sparingly. Transfer Portal focus - this is Colorado as an extreme and Ole Miss as a bit less extreme. Get talent from the portal as the main source. So far it has been a complete mess for Colorado and we'll see how it pays off for Ole Miss this year. The middle way - almost every team is doing a bit of both. Oregon is doing it perhaps the best. Dabo and Clemson hate the portal and have opted to ignore it. Their problem is that they don't recruit top 3 classes. And it takes top 3 classes stacked to be able to ignore the portal. I don't see Dabo being around much longer with his contempt of what college football is today. Gotta play the game that's in front of you and the portal is part of the game like it or not.

Jonathan Smith is too low. What he did with Beavis was impressive and if the Pac-12 had survived I would have bet the Beavers make the playoff before USC with him in charge.

I didn't know their schedule. And I forgot how lame the SEC is about their scheduling and actually enabling all their teams to play each other. I do appreciate that in two years in the B1G everyone plays everyone. In four years every team gets at least one home game against the rest of the conference.

Kiffin needs to make the playoff this year. If he manages to do that then I think he'll find himself quite secure. In order for Ole Miss to rise he is going to need Bama to fall flat on its face under DeBoer. I think Kiffin v Sark will be amusing.

Colorado certainly.... They are signing over 30 players in the portal and they have lost slightly more to the portal. Ole Miss has done fantastic in the portal but their prep recruiting tends not to break into the top 10. I think part of that has to do with being overshadowed by Bama and Georgia in the SEC foot print and if a recruit doesn't want to be in the SEC then they're going somewhere else entirely.

Bama and TAMU will never admit it but Dan was their top choice or certainly top 3. From what I have read from a few sources is that Lanning as a clause in his contract that in order to just talk to him the program wanting to talk to Lanning would need to pay UO a hefty sum. I heard it's around 20 million which would be insane. So Bama will say that they weren't interested or he wasn't offered the job. Which would be true because I don't think Lanning was ever an option because just getting Lanning would cost upwards of 40 mil potentially and then paying him more to get him away from Oregon. Lanning was never an option for either which is delightful as Duck fans.

The Alabama rankings this year are difficult to actually put together. The prep class is Saban's so it's fantastic and the tender portal is mostly DeBoer and it's good in terms of its ranking but it's almost all Washington players! That's not recruiting as much as roster retention in this case. Also Bama got credit for landing Proctor from the portal but he left Bama in the winter and came back in the spring. He didn't really leave. I wanted to throw in stuff about Georgia and Colorado because the two are polar opposites in how they function. Colorado is a revolving door with transfers and is looking to win games exclusively through the portal. Georgia loses some talent to the portal and usually gets a little bit but they are pretty exclusively prep recruits I think if you asked Lanning he'd like to me more like Georgia and use the portal less but I'm not sure Oregon is ever going to be that because of our geography. Oregon is isolated from all the biggest hot beds of recruitment, the closest being southern California which is close but not Oregon's backyard. Certainly not within reasonable driving distance. So I do believe Oregon will need to use the portal to substitute for this geographic disadvantage.

This is some big time recruiting. And I have a doozy of an article coming out tomorrow just about Lanning's recruiting ability so far. So take a look on the main site for that to drop tomorrow morning. Yes... I am shamelessly self promoting here.

Jordan Burch I'd argue made a major leap towards the end of the year. He was absolutely dominant against teams down the stretch and havoc plays don't always get stats. Burch went down in the first quarter of the Pac-12 championship game and never returned. He was playing so well at this point in the season I feel he was worth at least 3 points if he stayed in the field of not 6. I like the article Alex. Though I'd say the great position of need is depth and having back ups. Where Oregon was really lacking last year was the secondary. He got a bunch of banged up corners and safeties and we didn't have enough experienced players back there for the two games we needed it, against Washington. In the first game against Washington we lost both Jahlil Florence and Khyree Jackson and were forced to play back ups. That's probably the difference down the stretch of that game. And in the Pac-12 championship game Florence was already out for the season and the Ducks clearly needed some help there. When it comes to edges... I think there are some great prospects the Ducks have in the roster and now we need them to step up in a big way.

And just because a HC hires coordinators well doesn't mean the on field product changes. Cristobal hired some great coaches on paper but they never seemed to live up to their pedigrees. Moorehead's offense should have been high flying and high scoring and it was neither. DeRuyter has a track record to fielding solid defenses and with the Ducks his defense was average. So we'll have to wait and see on if Riley actually follows through. Hopefully he doesn't.... It's more fun that way.

I saw you reposted.

And I'll just drop this article here. Lincoln Riley is a Perfect Fit for USC and That’s Their Problem |... FISHDUCK.COM It has been absolutely delightful as Duck fans to watch USC’s problems, not only this year but over more than a decade at this point. For the record… I'm starting to realize just how many articles I've written evaluating USC's short comings. I think I may be enjoying their failure too much.

I'm not sure many are doing the math on the tax rates. But the three keys of recruitment right now are relationships, NFL development and NIL. Lanning and company are amazing at relationship building. You hear every single recruit who visits Oregon say it feels like family and they feel they belong, whether or not they choose the Ducks. This also encompasses things like the culture and play time. NFL preparation is is growing with every year and got a big boost with this last draft. Getting more into the draft and earlier rounds will only make this better. Then there is the NIL component of throwing money at players. These NIL prices vary depending on the previous two. A great example is looking at Saban at Alabama where Bama's NIL payouts were considered to be lower because the development to the NFL was so high that just getting to Bama increased a players chances of reaching the next level. Division Street is giving competitive NIL rates frim everything I've heard but they aren't just throwing money at players that USC fans think is happening. It is funny to watch them implode though.

Additionally they opened the gates for Oregon to get stronger by their decision to leave the PAC and kill it at that point. In the end Oregon was too valuable to not grab before the West Coast conference fell apart. Oregon is benefitting more from being in the B1G than SC. Oregon's recruiting foot print and influence has expanded but USC's has not.