Charles Fischer

John Canzano interviewed Rob Mullens, and I was surprised to hear that expanding Autzen by 10-12,000 is probably NOT in our future? JC: Saturday’s football game against Indiana will be sold out. It feels like you could use 5,000 more seats or maybe some upgraded club or suites that you could upsell. It feels like there’s some money out there for the University of Oregon to recoup. Where do you stand on the expansion of Autzen Stadium or some upgrades? RM: "We love Autzen Stadium. It is a tremendous home-field advantage and tremendous experience, and it’ll be sold out on Saturday. And trending very close to being sold-out for the rest of the year. We’ll have standing-room-only tickets on Saturday. So it’ll be packed, it’ll be loud. That’s something we are always studying. We’re in the middle of a significant facility project right now. I can see out my window in our new indoor football practice facility. And then once we get through that, obviously, we’ll start (looking at it). We’re always thinking about Autzen, and now we have this new $20.5 million line item (revenue sharing) and the financial pressures of ‘What can we do?’ to increase our base and fund third-party NIL to our student athletes. The formula has changed a little bit. Football generates 80 percent of the revenue here. Autzen is our economic engine. And obviously, we want to make sure that we’re staying at the forefront with our fan experience in Autzen, particularly as we’re having success." JC: Could you ever imagine building a new stadium? Or would it always be, what could you do to Autzen? RM: "It would always be, what can you do to Autzen? It’s a special place, and we want to make sure that we continue to have that huge home-field advantage that it presents to itself. There are some limitations because of the number of parking spaces and traffic, just the road infrastructure. That’s one of the things that I thought you captured well (in your reporting from Penn State). When you look out at Penn State and you just see tailgating forever, the amount of parking in proximity to the stadium is pretty impressive. JC: If you had unlimited seats, how many could you sell for Saturday’s game against Indiana? RM: Yeah. The thing that’s always complicated with that is, obviously, we’re a top five football program in a top-10 matchup. But you always want to make sure that you have the number that’s right. That you’re packed and you keep the atmosphere. But I don’t think you ever want to overbuild. When it’s rolling, yeah, sure. There probably is some left on the table. But I think for us, with the road infrastructure, the parking, as we look at it and deliver the experience that we want to deliver, there may be a few more thousand (seats) there, but I don’t think it’s significant." I could not bring you the whole interview, but Mullens expressed concern with making the budget these days considering the new additional cost of NIL, and the cost of providing the resources to create outside NIL to athletes. I sense things are tighter and tougher than being discussed, and I am surprised about Autzen, since I thought we could sell another 10,000 seats for Big-10 games for most of the season.

Good one! How did he know what I look like?

Awwwww...

I salute him....pretty good trolling!

OK...this could be funny...

The Top-Ten newbie is full-of-himself!

Things are getting pretty chippy with new conference buddies?

Yikes! This did not age well...

I gave a prediction score that was higher scoring, (38-23) but both teams have the ability with running the ball and being skilled at short passes....thus both teams can hold the ball a long time. This means there could be far fewer possessions, and it could end up being a tight, defensive battle, a 20-17 kind of game. Hard to predict!

30Duck predicts Oregon to win 35-24. TOs: 1 Sacks: 0 Passing Yards: 264

Hello My OBD FishDuck Forum Friends! What is your prediction of Oregon versus Indiana? Take your shot and let's have fun with it... Let's get these predictions started, and remember I look for the differential between your predicted points with both teams from the actual points. I will use the tiebreaker information when needed, so provide all the data below! Entries without ALL the information are invalid, and predictions on other threads don't count. We Have Two New Rules: If two winning scores are the same? The first one who posted wins, automatically. TerryM9 gets 42-6 locked in every time as his. (I love this guy!) Please follow directions, as I need all that is below for tiebreakers: --the winner --the score --the amount of turnovers Oregon creates --the number of sacks Oregon records on the opposing team --the number of passing yards by the Ducks. My prediction is: Oregon 38-23 1 3 251 An extra prediction? Oregon will do a number of Simulated Pressures that overload Indiana's right side of their offensive line, and blows up their third down conversion rate. It will stop drives and help Our Beloved Ducks to victory!

This guy is a tremendous analyst, and brings up some points that I noted, and a lot more....

He has changed his tune on the Oregon-Indiana game, and do check out the superb analysis video in the next post as well.

Great topic, and thanks to all who begin threads. I agree with HappytoBeADuck in that once we win two 'Nattys, and are consistently in the top ten...then we are "currently" Blue-Blood. Stop winning and that definition changes; Clemson won a couple, but are they Blue-Blood now?

Wrong response. Oregon was after Phil Knight for YEARS, and he refused. Not until Oregon went by themselves to the Rose Bowl and Cotton Bowl did Phil agree to help. Tell the Beavers...."Winners want to work with winners." Oregon deserved the support. What has Oregon State done? Tell them to blame THEIR administrators. Oregon State was overpaid for decades from the conference, and they cruised on it. They need to take responsibility for their own bad management...

"Oregon left the conference for money" they claim...then they steal 30 million from us. "Oregon destroyed the conference" they assert....then they go and destroy the Mountain West.

Wow. Great zinger,--a B1G one! He is the "KING" of the one-liners ...

Precisely. The only yellow clothing anyone has is a T-Shirt...