David Marsh

And all of this pressure may cause a breaking point for most schools. Which could bring on a change in the structure of college sports all over again. A change that reverts to the model of student athletes. The Eventual College Football Renaissance FISHDUCK.COM The Great College Football Schism is Coming, and it will leave College Football divided between the... But to reach this point we need to go through a great divide in college football. The Great College Football Schism is Coming FISHDUCK.COM The great college football schism is coming, and it will fracture college football in a way that will shake the... Where the haves play in one league and everyone else in another. The thing is ... It might be a whole lot more fun to watch those have nots play because it will look more like how college sports has always looked like.

Side note ... I picked some of the best photos from the FishDuck photo library of ACC players made to look silly by Oregon players. One of the things I didn't mention that could be a real wild card in all of this is Notre Dame. They are only a partial member of the ACC for football but have their own media deal. If Notre Dame were to become a full member that could change the media payout equation... But that basically requires Notre Dame to be willing to share the wealth which feels incredibly unlikely. Both from a financial perspective but also from pride perspective.

In short... Fox got their way and landed the death blow on the Pac-12. They took the two biggest remaining brands for their own conference, the B1G. And then followed up by taking the remaining good but not major brands and stuffing them into their tier two conference than they share with ESPN. Utah, ASU, Arizona and Colorado. Colorado has potential but they were also by far the weakest link in all of this to get the dominos to fall. Then Fox and ESPN discarded the properties not worth as much to them by leaving them behind, Cal, Oregon State, Washington State and Stanford. If they actually wanted any of those programs the Big 12 would have had room. It's not up the commissioners, but the media executives.

Quarterback aside... Every team will be breaking in new starters at some position. Oregon has been stacking some good recruiting classes and will continue to stack them. That's what matters. Need to have high quality players at every position. I feel the Ducks will be in a good place in that regard.

The reality is that modern football rosters can only support about 3 quarterbacks on scholarship. Beyond that it is difficult to relegate scholarship quarterbacks to scout team (which is really important) but it's a recipe for them to bolt to the portal. How Many Quarterbacks Can One Team Sustain? FISHDUCK.COM Just how many scholarship quarterbacks can a college football roster sustain? This is the big... So walk ons have a pretty important role to play. Which also means a team needs lots of them.

I completely forgot about Benson. He probably would have been unimpressive with the Cristobal scheme in truth.

Pac-12 News: USC to hire athletic director Jen Cohen from Washington DUCKSWIRE.USATODAY.COM Former Washington Huskies athletic director Jen Cohen will reportedly be taking over as the new AD for the... An interesting development...

I'm not sure Cristobal recruited what he needed for his own designs in honesty. He needed some big bruising backs for his old school power run game. I think Byron Cardwell may have looked like one on paper but he didn't really play like one. I mean they shoved CJ Verdell into this role and just got him repeatedly injured. I think the linebackers from this 2021 class were failures for what was needed on the field. Sewell was a big linebacker but he probably should have been converted to an edge where he was a pass rusher. Then Flowe was injured and when he did see he field he just didn't seem to understand the scheme. Even in his limited au during the Cristobal era he was just flying around the field but not with much direction. This failure at linebacker created a soft underbelly in Oregon's defense that may only now be fixed. Has Lanning Fixed the Duck Defense's Soft Underbelly? FISHDUCK.COM The Oregon Ducks' defense has maintained one major problem for the last three years. Simply put, it has a... It will also be interesting to see how Cristobal continues to do in Miami. Will he recruit with a mindset of putting together a cohesive team or will he look for good players who are highly rated and force them to fit his scheme.... Which will make them worse in the process.

Personally I'd prefer an out of conference game with Oregon State. It's traditional and potentially an easier game. But if I have to replace one tradition then replacing it with the fame against Washington will work. We've never seen to have a set week for this rivalry game. But there is true hatred between the two teams.

I think there is certainly the talent available for them all to help each other. KT ran into problems after his first season because there wasn't another rushers on the team that demanded enough attention other than him. To truly have excellent it takes a team effort.

I think the ACC gets gutted next. And there are the big 2 with the B1G and SEC. And then the little 1-2 with the Big 12 and ACC with what remains. The little two will have some access to the playoff (which is the driving force in all of this) but they would certainly be a second rate group of teams. Especially if paying players directly comes to pass which of probably will. The little two won't have the money to compete with the big 2.

I could see some flips happen closer to December. Oregon's NIL doesn't get into a bidding war until December because it just raises the price needlessly early. I think Oregon could probably flip Rushing for two reasons... The Big 12 and the B1G are going to be two completely beasts next year and the B1G is going to be the better league with far more visibility. Guess who goes on Fox and who goes on FS1? It's a no brainer. Also for Rushing I think Oregon opens up the purse strings a little and might get closer to the Arizona offer. Those two things might encourage a flip. Baker has enjoyed the recruiting game and Nebraska is really feeling like TAMU of this cycle. They got themselves a coach they like and now their NIL is throwing as much money as possible at recruits to get him players. I do believe Oregon has one of the best handles on how to work NIL. But they are also working with a longer term plan than some of these other teams. Oregon's NIL will not over pay for high school recruits but will have the resources to pay for transfer portal players. Remember Oregon got some big offensive linemen that were highly coveted in the transfer portal last cycle and don't forget Burch who was also covered. Sure... Other teams "beat" Oregon in transfer portal rankings but I don't think anyone really beat Oregon in getting high quality trench players. And Oregon got the pieces needed on the roster. Whatever we can't fill via recruiting high schooler, I am confident in this staff's ability to fill via the transfer portal. Going to also need Lanning to prove himself for another year as a head coach to convince some parents and athletes.

Very easy to say when you're the team that is looking into the abyss. Oregon State and Washington State are victims in this whole mess... But it's not Oregon or Washington's fault. They are merely the first two victims of many. The ACC is on the chopping block next but their buyout is so large they are protected for now. Maybe... But the media companies are calling the shots and they have determined that Oregon State and Washington State aren't worth the money or they would be in the B1G or Big 12. In this year old article I did make a prediction that the new overlords of college football will start grooming their chosen schools. They've done that so far. 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 conferences through its reluctance to complete… Cal and Stanford are in limbo right now but they have maybe one or two more options than OSU and WSU.

The thing is that Oregon has the talent and hopefully the coaching takes a significant jump this year that undefeated is completely possible. Now will everything fall in place and it happens? Different story.

Washington is almost out of all that talent they built up during the Petersen era, especially on defense. They are going to have a good offense, unless they have some serious injuries, but are they going to have a good defense? Or at least an adequate defense. Oregon is in a similar boat in that Oregon is going to have a fantastic offense but their defense needs to improve. However, Oregon has the talent and the depth tos ee a major improvement and weather some injuries. The AP poll and polls in general have found it trendy to pick against the Ducks for the last ten years and usually the Ducks prove them wrong.

When I learned more details about it became more interesting. 25 mil as a base and then a proportion of a growing revenue. The sub was roughly $100 a year so that works out to be just slightly more than 8 dollars a month. I know I have things that cost me more per month that I don't fully use. I don't find that number too ridiculous in honesty. The problem was certainly exposure. If Apple would have a "featured" game or two every week to bring in the viewers I could see that helping to bring in subs. The Pac-12 network as it stands today is roughly 13 mil subs and that's it. That's pretty pathetic. If the Pac-12 on Apple had that many subs the payout per school would probably be fairly reasonable. The biggest difficulty would be to get non-Pac-12 fans to sign up, they probably wouldn't. Which goes back to the exposure problem. As this sub would probably just be Pac-12 sports that is a pretty hard sell to non-Pac fans. If it was part of a larger sports package then different story because we start getting people watching Pac games because they have the service. I think revenue probably would have been ok with the apple deal after a year. Exposure would have been a pretty big fail though with Apple only having one conference's worth of games. And 8 dollars a month is too steep for a non-conference fan to pay. I wouldn't pay that to watch SEC, B1G, Big-12, or ACC football because my main team wouldn't be on that platform. The whole Apple deal felt half baked to be honest. It had some interesting bits in it but the missing pieces were massive glaring wholes that needed to be addressed, namely non-conference exposure.

And disciplined teams don't fight. They support each other and keep their hot headed teammates in line and stop a fight from developing. Discipline will win fat more games than a bunch of talented individuals.

Oh boy... Yeah that's not a lesson to teach. Not trying and stop it... Or get out of the way to help it get broken up. But yelling at players for not joining in? That feels like some penalties waiting to happen. Especially this year when the whole league is going to be in edge.

Great point about defense needing to feed the ball to the offense. I wrote an article about number of offensive plays per game that Dillingham wanted to run last year and that does translate to a degree in number of points on the board... But the key is the defense getting off the field. 80 Plays Per Game is More Than an Offensive Goal FISHDUCK.COM Back on National Signing Day in early February, Offensive Coordinator Kenny Dillingham said that his Oregon...

Pretty sure last seasons D ranked lower. We do need our defense to be able to win one or two games on their shoulders.

ESPN games have been awful the past few years. The production quality has been low and the announcers garbage. Oddly enough I thought the Pac-12 network did a better job with production and commentary for those late night games. Just no one could watch them. I would hope those late night games at least make it onto Fox or FS1. The B1G network has better distribution by far that the PAC but it'd be nice not to be relegated to a conference network.

If they have fixed the defense like I think they have them it shouldn't be bad. What destroyed us regularly last year we're those easy underneath throws. I think Lanning has that fixed with new athletic linebackers, and a better front pass rush. The secondary actually did fairly well last year considering those underneath throws were often linebacker coverage failures and a lack of pass rush meant the secondary had to hold up longer which is always difficult. With that said... I do feel the secondary has improved and solved some of their own problems as well.

As it's four teams in the B1G on the west coast the books won't be as bad as I feel they would have been. However... When Washington asked for more money for travel I think we got a hint at the cost. Washington wanted their layout to be closer to 40 mil to start. Oregon has enough support to weather the storm... But we'll have to track the revenue numbers I think.

Key quote here. "And this was something that the board and our key stakeholders encouraged." Those stakeholders... Was one of them Fox???

I find myself that so much of my daily life is wrapped up in Ducks football (for good or ill) and if I was to stop following it I don't know what I would do instead. I would say read more... but I do a whole lot of reading via Ducks news... I guess I could read more other stuff... but I read a lot of non-fiction and do a lot of research for my job so I don't feel like I need to do more of that either. I am hoping that things may snap back to some semblance of what we all love but I doubt that is going to be quick. I actually think it could take a decade or two for people to fully realize what they have lost. I don't have an NFL team or any interest in the NFL (I root for my pro Ducks but I don't follow their teams all that closely). I don't have a NBA team... though I was once a Blazer's fan (when I was in middle school) but now I don't care, their season is too long and the playoff is way to drawn out. I have a connection to Oregon as an alum and that gives this more meaning to me, but so much of that is also steeped in the Civil War and that relationship with Oregon State. I recently drove though Corvallis and had a strange urge to want to paint everything green and yellow. So losing those sort of things will hurt. The Rose Bowl's importance is all but gone and replaced with the playoff which I will probably rant about in a future article. So much is gone... but sadly I don't know what we replace it with besides nothing. Well, maybe FCS football, that is looking more and more like what college football used to be... or at least it looks a whole lot more to the product it has always been. But yet again... I don't have a connection to Portland State (my local FCS team)... so it's the same problem I have with the NFL.