David Marsh

Well what we can take away from recruiting battles over the past few years that yeah... Oregon won't get into a bidding war, at least not until the very end of the signing period. Oregon has shown signs of getting more aggressive with nil right before signing. Josh Connerly became a bit of a bidding war between Oregon and USC. Oregon won, by the sound of it, because they had a stronger relationship with Connerly and they were able to effectively match USC's bid which was previously above Oregon's. This was all done right before Connerly signed so the time frame was restricted.

These losses sting... But there are still quite a few in play. There are a couple of things to keep in mind right now. 1) Oregon needs a good showing this season. Making the playoff would be huge and could swing some momentum out way. The CFP invitees are announced before early signing day. Oregon doesn't really stop recruiting even when someone commits. 2) If NIL was an issue then Oregon's division Street will probably make some plays on some recruits down the stretch. No point getting into a bidding war in July. We'll have to see where things shake out in the end. But Georgia is a machine right now.

I know when I published this article I had a lot of disagreement. But I'll just put it out there again. This First-Year Coaching Rule Should Be Made Permanent FISHDUCK.COM There is a strange rule in College Football where a first-year head coach with a program has the ability to... I do feel that scholarships.should be honored. Though the nature of football these days is as such that coaches want and need to open up roster spots for players. Obviously if a player wants to hit the portal they lose their scholarship but if they don't want to portal and they want to stay they should have the opportunity to stay at their institution. To be it's all about choice. Choice for players to leave on their own free will. Choice for coaches to remove players from the team. And if removed (no choice in the matter) players can choose to stay and get their education.

I think so much of the shock if what Sanders did was that the bulk of this roster turned over before Spring. So the new coaching staff just decided to do a minimum evaluation of their roster talent before just gutting it. Granted... The transfer portal window for the window would have closed and they would have missed out on the bulk of this year's portal. Let's be real, the spring portal is a lot smaller than the winter portal. I think it's one ofany of the problems of the transfer portal. How can new coaches evalutate the talent they have and engage with the transfer portal and recruiting.

If I'm George K I think I'd have some very real conversations about this. I think for the upcoming B1G contract both LA schools probably have their OCC slates already filled. So it probably won't be an issue. Which means the question comes up as to whether to schedule them if they opt to remain in the B1G for a prolonged period of time.

Strange how Oregon's offensive line played the better last year than they did during the Cristobal era. You know when our HC was all about the offensive line and was an Offensive line coach. Problems innboth scheme and coaching. This year is posed to be a monster year for the Oregon offensive line.

Academics is a huge sticking point with Boise State. I know I'm beating a dead horse... Or Bronco? At this point but Boise State doesn't meet the academic standards the PAC has and is looking for. From a business standpoint BSU might notmmake a ton of sense due to market size right now but it is growing but it will take quite a while to grow to a big enough size to be considered worth it. The quality of their football is good enough. Granted it has dipped since Petersen left and they aren't the same level of giant killer they used to be.

I do feel like the Holiday Bowl had at lot of moments that showed growth. Sure the win was only by 1 points and it looked pretty darn bad for the Ducks for the majority of the game but they made it work. I feel like Bassa really had a chance to shine. Brown did as well but he transfered out. Looking forward to seeing where this team can go this season.

I find Pate is reasonably knowledgeable but his knowledge takes a sharp dip for anything west of Texas. He generally has a lot of good things to say about Oregon, he generally doesn't comment much on any other schools besides Oregon, Washington, and the LA schools. Lately Colorado has gotten mentioned more... Well not really Colorado so much as Deone Sanders. Pate is big on the SEC and he tends not to hide the fact. He was born and raised in SEC country. He was all over SEC media days with interviews and all sorts of stuff but hasn't done any other conferences. I think he has some good points but again... West of Texas he doesn't comment much on. As for Justin Hopkins he runs the Scoopduck (on3 duck site) and I would say he knows the Duck program quite well. He isn't a pac-12 guy per se but he gets Oregon. I would agree with him though that the PAC was wearing an ACC of B1G badge the media coverage would be very different.

The ACC won't be... But at least the B1G, the PAC and the Big-12 will be around that time. Probably the SEC as well but not sure on their deal. Though I do think if the PAC were to take on SDSU and SMU their brands can grow a bit by then.

Leave it to Camden Lewis to make an extra point suspenseful. Yes, he has massively improved over his freshman season but still. One of my favorite Oregon sounds is the fog horn for scored points. Its powerful but it's low pitched so it's not in your face but at the same time it's in your head! Much better than that obnoxious siren the Huskies have.

Oregon doesn't need the PAC the same way the PAC needs Oregon at this point. Oregon is interested in access to the CFP and they can have that in a slightly smaller conference. Oregon also has some of the deepest doners in the country and can easily make up the revenue difference. That is in part also why the ducks aren't pushing for the B1G (it also doesn't pencil). Another thing for Oregon is that they were the school in the PAC (at least public school) that brought in the most athletic revenue and MADE money for the year. Oregon doesn't need conference expansion to get what they want. Now as a greater fan of the PAC, I would like to see a little expansion and keep this conference healthy. But Oregon's needs aren't the same as the rest of the conference. They may be opposed but it probably won't matter for conference expansion because there will be enough to push expansion forward.

If they want to make this move by 2024 they need to act fast because scheduling an additional OCC game is going to be tough and no one is going to schedule anything too interesting because of it being so late in the cycle. Well unlikely to schedule anything interesting. And it wouldn't just be fire 2024 but probably through 2026 the PAC additional OCC games would also be pretty underwhelming. And that's not even getting into the potential chaos of looking at rescheduling a bunch of Ooc games with SDSU if they become a member of the pac-12. Yes, I'm aware that those games could still just be non-conference games of neither party could schedule a true OOC opponent but still. I also think the SEC is slowly being nudged towards a 9 game conference schedule. But the SEC has been able to really get away with their 8 game conference schedule and then add an extra FCS opponent at the end of the season thing because they have done a great job saying they are the toughest conference and that makes things "fair" for them. I'm not sure the PAC can get away with reducing their number of conference games. Especially if they replace those conference games with lesser completion.

Defense needed a bit of an overhaul for Oregon after last year's problems. It looks like that has and is being addressed. But I'm going out on a rather strong limb here and say if Nix was healthy Oregon wins both those games against Washington and Oregon State. This person makes it sound like Oregon got smashed both of those games but both of those games were lost by less than a touchdown. A healthy Nix puts Oregon over the top. It's also why I HATE the empty set! Never ever ever ever ever ever run the quarterback from the empty set! It's too easy to diagnose and stop!

If there wasn't anit-pac bias... Yes.

It will be interesting to see if Oregon's narrative changes when the LA teams are out of the conference. I feel it's USC bias and hate for Oregon that is leaning through.

I think he handled the questions about it well enough. Nothing spectacular... But also nothing that is going to draw any controversy. It was pretty bland though informative.

Really for a coast to coast conference to work would be to have really two 8-10 team conferences (or divisions I suppose) on both coasts. That way they can play the majority of their games on their coast. That would keep travel expenses reasonable. Then you could reasonably have 2 cross over games a year... One home and one away and the travel expenses would still be good. Winner of each division plays for the championship... Or you go real crazy and turn it into a mini playoff. Atlantic Division Championship game and a Pacific Division Championship game. Then you get the Coastal Championship Game. One of the things I kinda linked for the mess that was the 2020 season was how at the end of the year there were cross division games between teams that had similar records but didn't play each other in the shortened season. I would like this to be built into a coastal conference to get another interesting cross division game in place as well. But to make a coastal conference work it would really need to be two conferences that meet up for some regular events but it can't be too frequent because of the cost.

And UCLA has one of the biggest fan bases??? Then why can't they fill the rose bowl every Saturday? Or even just some Saturdays. The cameras work very hard to not show how many empty seats but you can still tell the thing is maybe only half full. No idea how they did that study ...

Both have to take out Utah and UW. Oregon has to take out USC and OSU UCLA. Then Oregon will beat OSU in the rivalry game. So... Oregon goes undefeated and OSU has 1 loss to Oregon. I can get behind that. That's the cleanest way it can go down.

I think I called it in another forum thread... So I'm all for it. Granted for that to happen it will require some craziness to happen.

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... I feel that the defense will take a major leep. It already looks like some of the major improvements already took hold during the spring game.

I feel confident we will probably have a top 30 defense this year. The way they played in the spring game with mixed squads showed some massive potential. They did better in their assignments... That is one thing that will carry over into actual play.

SILENTLY SURGING! Let them put Oregon back there... all the better when Oregon kicks all their butts and takes the conference! USC is a hype machine and always has been. They are almost always picked to win the conference and since the conference went to 12 teams they have only manged to do it ONCE. Oregon is coming for them but let those USC fans relish the idea of being conference champions because it isn't going to happen. Washington is certainly not going to be the No. 2 team. Can't wait for the season to start so we can see these Ducks prove just how good they are. It's also a pretty trendy pick to not pick Oregon as well based off a lot of these media polls.

I'd say this isn't something that should be done in front of the team. It actually makes it super awkward for everyone even whitnessing it. There could be a brief team meeting after the player is removed from the team where the coach goes over why this had to happen and explains why the rules are important so it turns into a learning opportunity rather than something dramatic and scandalous. I would also like to know what rules this kid broke and how did Sanders address those incidents? Did he call him out and punish him in front of the team or sit him down and talk about it? Also was there a team meeting going over team rules at the start of the season? Did Sanders explain the rational behind the team rules? My teacher side just crindges at this sort of thing. I leady schools Constitutional Law Team (there is a whole competition and complex questions and it's a cool thing) and every year I seem to have one student who never participates in team meetings (it's a class but also an after school program). So I have to have conversations with students about being present and basically team rules or expectations. I've had to kick a few kids off the team, I'd never do it in public. It's always a private conversation after a series of conversations.