Charles Fischer

The bottom line is....whatever you can sell. If you can sell no tradition, but something unique about the program...like Oregon did in the past, then that can work. Meanwhile Oregon Track can certainly sell "tradition," and it should.

Eric Musselman and Arkansas celebrates their win over No. 1 Gonzaga. I really like Arkansas’ coach Eric Musselman. He’s a good coach who gets a lot out of his teams. But what I like even more is a good quote. After the Razorbacks’ impressive upset of No. 1-seed Gonzaga on Thursday an excited Musselman told CBS reporter Tracy Wolfson on the court after the game, “We believed, nobody else did. Thank you to everybody who said we had no chance.” The coach added: “…we read it all.” Musselman’s team entered the tournament as a solid and dangerous No. 4 seed. I get why coaches like to paint an “us-against-the-world” picture but I’m struggling to find disrespectful things written about Arkansas in the run-up to the game against Gonzaga. More than 8 percent of the ESPN NCAA Tournament brackets had Arkansas advancing to the Elite Eight. Another 3.7 percent have the Razorbacks in the Final Four. Still, I don’t expect Musselman to drop the underdog role. His team plays No. 2-seed Duke on Saturday night. • Am I nuts for thinking Arkansas will beat Duke? • Gonzaga was the top seed of the entire tournament and was picked to win it all in 22.8 percent of brackets on ESPN. Maybe that’s what Musselman is talking about? Or maybe he’s just fired up and likes the feel of that chip on his shoulder? • 31,901 brackets correctly predicted the first four Elite 8 teams, per ESPN. Last year only five of the nearly 15 million brackets filled out correctly predicted all eight of the Elite 8 teams. How’s your bracket? • Arkansas was a big winner on Thursday. But so were NBA officials, who have the heat off them this month. Not sure what’s happening in this NCAA Tournament but there’s been more focus on poor officiating than I can remember from any previous tournament. There have been some glaring hiccups. • The Pac-12’s best team — Arizona — was one of the least-experienced teams in Division I men’s basketball this season, per KenPom.com. The Wildcats averaged 0.63 years of experience and ranked 355th out of 358 college teams. Notably, Arizona played young on some key second-half possessions in its Sweet 16 loss to Houston. • No. 5-seed Houston is 32-5 this season and will play No. 2 Villanova with a trip to the Final Four at stake on Saturday. Two of those Houston losses (to Wisconsin and Alabama) came by a total of three points. The Cougars are defensively masterful, have a good coach and are playing well. • With Arizona out it’s UCLA-or-bust for the Pac-12 Conference. Bruins’ athletic director Martin Jarmond served as a member of the NCAA Tournament selection committee. He had to leave the room whenever the Bruins or conference were discussed. Jarmond also wasn’t allowed to be present at No. 4-seed UCLA’s opening-round tournament games in Portland because the NCAA viewed it as a conflict of interest. I’m now told that Jarmond has recused himself from the selection committee for this round of games. The NCAA allowed it, adjusted the site administrators and Jarmond is with UCLA’s team in Philadelphia today for their East Regional game vs. No. 8-seed North Carolina. • The Pac-12 is the “host” of the West Regional at Chase Center this week in partnership with the Golden State Warriors. It’s the first NCAA Tournament event in San Francisco since 1939 when the first-ever tournament was held on Treasure Island. • The 1939 men’s NCAA Tournament included only eight teams. The Oregon Ducks won the national title. But did you know that Oregon nearly didn’t play in the event because there were concerns about too many games being played in a short span? • The anti-expansion folks still sing that same “too-many-games” hardship refrain when it comes to College Football Playoff expansion debates. We’re stuck at four teams until the end of the current television contract. The football postseason should be a 12-team playoff with automatic qualifiers for the major conferences. Division II’s football playoff includes 24 teams. The DII student-athletes navigate the format well. Soji on a walk on Friday with her two dogs. I went for a walk with my 5-year old yesterday. Soji is especially chatty when I have her 1-on-1 because there’s no competition from her older sisters. We took our two dogs and she was very proud mid-walk when I gave her command of both leashes. Soji asked me why I more frequently write in the morning vs. evening. I explained to her that unless it was a breaking-news sports event I felt that writing and distributing in the morning helped reach a wider swath of readers. She accepted this as a reasonable answer. Please know you’re free to read me whenever it works for you and also know that if news breaks, I’m on it. On that note… I’m having a lot of fun with this new journalistic endeavor. It’s great to be able to reach you directly and in a more conversational manner. I have big plans for the coming days and weeks. Thank you to all who have supported, subscribed and shared with friends and family. By all means, consider subscribing.

Most sites have him going to Miami.

Hmmm. How DOES he look?

I wanted him to get a new chance, but with a CONTENDER!

To our conference opponents...it is going to get worse for you!

The PRIDE of Hillsboro Oregon, Kolby Somers got the save! The Press Release will be posted later...

Pretty Important, now let's get the others back too! Oregon softball pitcher Makenna Kliethermes will be available for Cal series, catcher Terra McGowan (hand) remains out WWW.OREGONLIVE.COM Makenna Kliethermes (7-2, 2.01 ERA) will be available when No. 12 Oregon hosts Cal this weekend while it’s undetermined if infielder Paige Sinicki and backup catcher Karissa Ornelas will play and...

Perhaps those who are basketball-astute can explain why both Gonzaga and Arizona lost? Whew!

Great interview, and learned a ton. Watch: Mark Wasikowski discusses Ducks' recent success and "modern" bullpen model WWW.ON3.COM Oregon is currently one of the hottest baseball teams in the nation and is fresh off a midweek road win over No. 23 Gonzaga. The Ducks’ .340 team batting average is currently the fourth-best in... "Gonzaga was a "RPI" game" for the Ducks..."I'm not very patient with that kind of stuff." (Walks by our pitchers)

You are a great sport, and I thank you. You are always welcome here…

Yikes!

Whew! Talk about competing with your rivals!

Of course if we count Club National Championships...what about Oregon Bass Fishing 'Natty? Or...this special one by Oregon Women... The "Men of Washington" are simply NOT Championship caliber....in ANY sport?

Guess who won the 2015 Club Baseball National Championship?

Very, very cool and I'll bet he was in the gym working on that field goal percentage!

Shaw had to "dumb-it-down" for Stanford guys? Huh.

Championship Rings and Non-Conference Flings... Oregon State and San Jose State announced a home-and-home football series that will be played in 2029 (Corvallis) and 2030 (San Jose) this week. It got me thinking about the Pac-12’s non-conference games in 2022. Oregon’s “neutral site” matchup in the season opener will be played at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Sept. 3. That’s a big test for the conference and Ducks’ first-year coach Dan Lanning, who will make a poetic debut against his former employer. BYU feasted on the Pac-12 last season, going 5-0. The Cougars will play at Oregon and at Stanford in 2022. There’s some interesting non-conference scheduling strategy going on in the conference. Here are the 2022 non-conference games for each Pac-12 program: Arizona: at San Diego State, Mississippi State, North Dakota State ASU: Northern Arizona, at Oklahoma State, Eastern Michigan Cal: UC Davis, UNLV, at Notre Dame Colorado: TCU, at Air Force, at Minnesota Oregon: at Georgia, Eastern Washington, BYU Oregon State: Boise State, at Fresno State, Montana State Stanford: Colgate, at Notre Dame, BYU UCLA: Bowling Green, Alabama State, South Alabama USC: Rice, Fresno State, Notre Dame Washington: Kent State, Portland State, Michigan State WSU: Idaho, at Wisconsin, Colorado A RING TO IT: Utah honored the memory of running back Ty Jordan last season and Kyle Whittingham’s team won the conference title and went to its first Rose Bowl. The Utes’ conference championship rings are in and the program again paid homage to Jordan, who died of an accidental gunshot wound late in 2020. Whittingham was widely celebrated last season. He’s done a terrific job. But I don’t think it can be overstated — this was a program that endured the tragic deaths of two players in a nine-month span. First Jordan, then teammate Aaron Lowe was shot and killed at a house party two miles from campus. The team held a meeting after Lowe’s death in Week 2 of the season and discussed whether it should take time off or continue to play. The players decided to unite and rallied all season around their late teammates. Both players were honored with championship rings this week. Major college football feels like a big deal sometimes. But what Utah pulled off last season felt even bigger. CARDINAL RULE: Stanford is coming off a disappointing (3-9) season. David Shaw is now just 11-19 in his last three seasons. In 2021, I started to hear more and more from frustrated Cardinal fans who watched Shaw win 9, 9, 10 and 12 games in the prior four seasons. I am especially curious about Stanford’s spring, which Shaw said has been simplified to help some of the younger players catch up. “We made it simple,” he said. “Guys are playing faster. We still have a little bit of funk in there to keep it interesting but are playing faster.” Shaw knows he had some bad recruiting classes that haunted him. The incoming talent and his underclassmen are just plain better than his upperclassmen. Shaw’s 2021 recruiting class was exceptional. Stanford finished December’s signing day with a class ranked No. 12 by ESPN, No. 14 by Rivals and No. 15 by 247Sports. Additionally, last spring Shaw did something Stanford hadn’t ever done before — welcoming two early enrollees. He’s opened the door for early enrollees again this spring. Stanford will be improved. Also, I like their schedule better in 2022 vs. 2021. They’ll get at least one easy one (Colgate) and there weren’t any easy ones on last season’s schedule. Petros Papadakis works for FOX, among others. GREAT CALL: Petros Papadakis is one of my favorite football broadcasters — maybe THE favorite. He’s knowledgeable, passionate, informative and most of all — genuine. Papadakis doesn’t get enough run nationally but Pac-12 Conference fans know him well. I rarely watch a college football game just because of a broadcaster, but if I’m flipping past and Papadakis is on the broadcast I’ll not only tune in but stick with it. He’s often rough around the edges and I like that because it’s a very different experience from the herd of broadcasters there to mechanically promote network properties and manipulate the audience. His authenticity comes through on FOX broadcasts and during the '“Petros and Money” sports-radio show he hosts in Southern California. He’s also an occasional guest on my statewide radio show in Oregon. Papadakis attended high school in Southern California and accepted a scholarship to play running back at Cal. Papadakis told me once that he quit during double-day practices and took a taxi home from Berkeley. His parents must have flipped. He eventually ended up at USC, where he followed in his father’s footsteps and became team captain. I smiled this week when I saw a story announcing that Papadakis had been elected to the Palos Verdes Peninsula High School Hall of Fame. I know why they want to claim him. He’s made them proud. Papadakis told the local newspaper: “I was somebody who struggled in high school, like a lot of young people do. I was not a good student. I struggled getting along with my parents. I had a lot of issues with self-image and wanting to be accepted.” It’s exactly the kind of message that makes him great at his job.

Reasonable and correct about the Ducks.

Washington is not on the list? It goes to show that what some Huskies believe is true… Deep down God is a Duck.

This is SO AWESOME! Talk about bringing the former players back in and making them an important part of the program...helps recruiting, builds bridges with other boosters. This is great planning and I'm grateful to the players for taking part.

In the long term? This could be massive for the Chiefs as they build a future around Mahomes. Tough for conference foes, but not for a while!

This guy is a TRUE Duck fan!

This is one man's opinion, and as we've learned with Herbert going to the Chargers...dropping to a better team is not so bad... ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr.: Oregon Ducks edge rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux ‘not going to go out of the top 10′ WWW.OREGONLIVE.COM ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. projects Thibodeaux going No. 7 to the New York Giants in his latest mock draft and offered his assessment of the All-American.