Ed O

Ty Thompson, for those who don't want to click through to another site and then scroll way down.

I'm optimistic about this year, but I don't think we have the team to beat OSU just yet. We don't know who our starting QB is going to be, and the top two options are a mediocre veteran or a guy right out of high school. It possible we'll be just fine there, but it's the most important position in football and our biggest weakness at the moment. I also am not sure that our offensive line will be good enough just yet. I expect them to take a step up from last year, but the Buckeyes are probably going to be too much for them for our OL to push around very easily. On the other side of the ball... it's going to be a big challenge at every level. I like our chances against every team OTHER than OSU, and I don't like our chances there much at all.

I almost started a thread on this, too. I don't follow college basketball THAT closely this year, but it's weird that USC and Colorado are both ahead of them. I suppose it's because they haven't played many ranked teams, and it doesn't really matter, but it strikes me as just plain silly. Why have the polls at ALL if they don't matter?

Last year was a total throw-away, in my opinion. Moorhead is a good offensive mind, and he'll have had over a year with the program. We have increased our talent from last year (and, other than QB and OL, from two years ago) and have objectively (based on recruiting grades) good talent across the board. I'm quite confident that we'll have one of the top offenses in the Pac-12 this season.

As long as there's no bias towards one team or the other, it seems fine to me. It's easier for a team that's used to playing hard to deal with officials who call a tight game than for teams that are used to lots of calls when refs let the teams be more physical, so I don't think there's a disadvantage for Pac-12 teams if refs don't call games as tightly.

How women do in sports has nothing to do with college football recruiting. How well Oregon has done in cross country means nothing in college football recrutiing. I know you're taking shots at Washington (and it's fun to do!) but I've never seen any evidence that football recruits are choosing Oregon over UW or USC or wherever because of championships in other sports. Track and basketball might have some influence for a small number of guys, but that's barely a blip.

Him sliding to 13 would be ridiculous... too low for how good he is at a key position (arguably the second- or third-most important spot on the field). Chargers fans should be delighted if that happens. Also, I've seen Slater from Northwestern going ahead of him in at least one mock draft, so it's not a slam dunk he's the first OL selected.

A member of the media complaining that parents can't see their kids swim online is such a weird thing. A non-revenue sport in the middle of a pandemic where schools are struggling financially is supposed to spend MORE money on streaming the event? Things aren't free, and if almost no one cares, then it seems natural that the schools and network wouldn't prioritize it. I guess a similar argument could be made on softball... if ratings aren't there, but productions costs ARE, then... why lose the money? The Pac-12 Network isn't a charity.

Texas is unique in having its own sports network. If they want to outspend schools, they're going to be able to outspend schools, especially when you factor in no state sales tax.

Defensive scheme is so important for linemen, and I haven't watched enough film of his year to have a strong opinion on whether he was worse or better than before. It's entirely possible that he struggled but he'll still stick in the NFL. We'll see if any team believes in him enough to use a draft pick on him.

So how does that happen? A guy is ready for the NFL in spite of the lack of coaching in college? It makes no sense to me, especially at a position like QB. It's possible that the work the coaches did prepared him and held him back from the number one pick (since his production wasn't as good as it might have been), but (as stated above) that's a failure of scouting and the NFL, not his coaches.

Going to a bad major program that plays against less-bad programs... I guess it's a move. If he goes there, even assuming he wins the job he's going to do a lot of losing. I am not sure that players like him aren't better off being one injury away from a major role on a good team. I guess we'll see...

I have nothing to add about Yates, but as much as we'd all love to add a guy who is a great recruiter, I can't think for a second that Mario would sacrifice that aspect of being on the staff for other things. He knows recruiting is critical, and I trust that is a key component of every hire in aid of winning games and championships in the bigger picture.

Given that they're basically different sports, it's not really an oversight. Sabrina wouldn't get any points, assists, or rebounds with the men's team. Why would they bring her up when talking about men?

I wonder where he's going to go where he is going to be more likely to start. A lower level of football, I guess. And I HOPE it's just about the depth at the position, rather than a coaching thing or whatever. QB is such a nutty position to manage in college football.

I mean. It's mainly math. Hype might come out of the math, but it's not like it's an opinion on how many players are returning or the production they had last year. Recruiting classes are opinion, of course, and how the three things are weighed is opinion, but it's not a poll that is just opinion. That was my point

This is not a poll. It's an algorithm that takes in numbers and generates a ranking. It's something that they use throughout the year, and not just preseason. From the ESPN article, they give this explanation into what goes into the projections: 1. Returning production. As I wrote last week, I have updated rosters as much as possible to account for transfers, graduation and the announced return of many 2020 seniors. The combination of last year's SP+ ratings and adjustments based on returning production now make up more than two-thirds of the projections formula. 2. Recent recruiting. Returning production aims to tell us what kind of talent and experience a team is returning. Recruiting rankings inform us of the caliber of the team's potential replacements (and/or new stars) in the lineup. They make up about one-quarter of the projections formula. This piece is determined not only by the most recent recruiting class but also, in diminishing fashion, the last three classes as well. 3. Recent history. Last year's ratings are a huge piece of the puzzle, but using a sliver of information from previous seasons (two to four years ago) gives us a good measure of overall program health. It stands to reason that a team that has played well for one year is less likely to duplicate that effort than a team that has been good for years on end (and vice versa), right? This is a minor piece of the puzzle, but the projections are better with it than without. Clearly it's not perfect, but it makes sense. And within that framework, Oregon should be ranked highly. We return almost everyone of consequence from last year (other than Demo?) and we've had three straight very strong recruiting classes (and young players should improve more than those who have been in the program for a longer period). We weren't great last year, but we had our moments and given the other two factors should be on the upswing.

Coach Mario might be difficult to work for in terms of wearing folks out... work/life balance is valued differently by different people, and young men are often more energetic in terms of being willing to work long hours. Woodiel is, what, 30-ish? Coach chance is a few years older, I think, but still early 30s. Someone in their 50s or 60s simply may not enjoy working as much as Mario wants his staff to. It'll be interesting to see where the Ducks end up using Woodiel.

The Pac-12 had a responsibility to follow the laws of the states they are in and to do their best to ensure the wellness of their student athletes and employees. I live in Seattle, and other than about five weeks in June-July, we've been pretty locked down... I know that Oregon and California have been careful, too (the wisdom of that is another topic ). It was never reasonable that the Pac-12 was going to be able to have the same flexibility as schools that were in Florida, for example, and blaming them for obeying the law is just stupid. Given the restrictions they had there this past year--and no different media contracts would have changed that--I don't know what the Pac-12 was supposed to do with its championship game. Wait for UW to get healthy? Not gonna work. Cancel the game? Maybe the best/smartest option, but it wasn't going to help USC make the playoffs. Put Colorado in there instead of Oregon? Another bad option, since it would be ignoring the divisions and putting a non-entity (with one fewer loss than Oregon, but still with a loss) against USC wasn't going to help the perception--beating Colorado wasn't going to get USC in there any more than beating Oregon (or even UW) was, and if Colorado BEAT USC... what then? The conference did things, IMO, as best they could there. As olcodgerduck said, 2020 was a weird, one-off year.

We have a backup kicker on scholarship already. Adding another one doesn't make any sense to me. There's always more kickers, and non-scholarship guys can be just as good as those who are getting a full ride, based on what we've seen at Oregon and generally the last decade or so.

Nice work, and thanks for sharing! A couple of things: 1. OL is arguably the best position to recruit year-in, year-out. While obviously QB is the most important position, if you get one good QB every three years or so, you're going to be about as well off as a team that gets a stud every year... but badass offensive lines require five starters and depth, so a single class that's good every few years is unlikely to be very effective. In other words: go, Coach Mario and staff! 2. "Athlete" sort of messes up things in terms of looking at how some individual positions were recruited. An athlete could emerge as a high-level safety, for example, but we won't know it.

Thriving at a place and that place being the most desirable are two different things. Houston and Cincinnati have been excellent spots for coaches to come in, do well, and then get better jobs. It doesn't mean that top-tier coaches want to go to Houston or Cinci. Oregon has been pretty good, but I don't know if it's been better than other high-level programs. Helf hasn't rebounded after flopping as the head coach. Long-term guys like Pellum saw their careers basically end by their mid-50s. Brady Hoke failed to rebound. David Yost just keeps floating along. Like any school, we've had smart, talented coaches and some of them are going to go up in their careers, some are going to go down, and some are going to stay about the same. I don't see a lot of evidence that Oregon is particularly good for a coach's career (although recently it sure has been with UNLV and BSU digging our coordinators )

Oh, yeah. I was on a slightly different wavelength. Haha. I'm less sure about individual players but I think they take into account rating AND ranking somehow... since players can keep the same rating but drop in the ranks on a service, I believe the composite individual rating takes that onto consideration (although I'm not 100% sure).

I'd rather have Oregon be the only dominant team in the conference (on the field, where it counts, but recruiting as a vehicle to get there) but if we NEED to have a second school that's very good, I'd prefer a rotating cast of characters... one year it's Utah, then Stanford, then even USC or UCLA occasionally (anyone but UW). I don't want USC to be consistently good on the field, though. They are uniquely positioned to really hurt our top-level recruiting given their history and location and the fast the current bubble of hope pops, the sooner we'll start getting kids like KT and Flowe out of SoCal again rather than seeing them (Foreman, Davis, Wright, this year) become Trojans. Don't get me wrong: out class kicked butt this year, but adding any of those three guys would have been huge.

The composite ratings at 247 are better than average ratings... they weigh the top players in a class more than those at the bottom. So if we compare two simple classes, where team A gets players ranked 100, 90, 90, 40, and team B gets 80, 80, 80, 80, team A"s score will be higher even though the averages are the same. And if they each add an 85, then team B's score will go up more than team A's. It's a pretty good system that rewards depth but also acknowledges that top-tier players generally define how well a class does on the field. Of course it's fair to question any of the inputs that go into that equation: 247, ESPN, or Rivals could be superior or inferior in grading guys out. The Composite at least waters that bias down by diversifying the sources of the ratings.