ChileDuck

Nice catch. It's always nice to know someone from 'home'.

Nice to be referred to as a gentleman ['cuse I'm old right?], but I will not be in Eugene on Saturday so please, if anyone who is going to the early morning show, feel free to copy all or parts of the sign. I was going to add the bowl records in there too, but decided to make it simple. Lot's of reasons this isn't a fair comparison, but exaggeration and humor is the point, right?

And while the women's team didn't have a great meet ... there was THIS! A new collegiate record and star for Oregon track and field

As Bruce writes, the form charts show the Oregon men with a fantastic chance of winning a national championship this weekend. I have a web app that lets you see the form charts based on seed positions which reflect the best marks this year, as well as the form chart from the prognosticators at FloTrack, the track and field streaming site. The app also allows users to create and share their own predictions by dragging athletes' finishing positions in each event, adjusting the team totals automatically. The real track enthusiast will want use the app during the championships because it will update the form charts as event results happen. Here is a link: formcharttracker.com . Here are a couple screenshots showing the projections based on seed positions and those from FloTrack. While the folk at FloTrack often down grade the Ducks, even they show a big margin in favor of Oregon. Here are the Oregon Athletes and the seed position projections:

Outdoor track times are typically better since there are longer straights and less turns. Certainly their outdoor season will be managed to peak performances for championship events although you don't usually see records in these because they turn into tactical races because points toward team standing (and thus championships) are determined by place, not time. Also, things are complicated by it being an Olympic year and these athletes will be working to peak for the Olympic trials. But first they have to get that Olympic standard along the way so look for some fast time trial type races like the one last week in Arkansas sometime early in the outdoor season. It seems that with the Covid layoff last year, these runners are peaking earlier than normal.

You may have heard about Oregon's Cooper Teare running a new collegiate record in the indoor mile last week in Arkansas. If not I've included an excellent video breaking down the race below. [EDIT... Yes I missed the earlier thread about the record... sorry] But a funny thing happened on the way to the collegiate indoor mile records set last week by Teare and Cole Hocker. They also set records for the collegiate indoor 1500 meters, running the two best times at that distance too. It turns out that the race organizers were asked to set up official times for the 1500m splits to see if the runners could qualify enroute for the Olympic standard at 3:35. The previous record for indoor 1500m was held by James West at 3:36.93. (West incidentally is an Oregon runner who has one more season of outdoor eligibility.) Cooper Teare's 1500m split time was 3:35.46 and Cole Hocker's time was 3:35.63, just off the Olympic standard but good enough for the best collegiate times ever indoor. Sadly for Cooper however, his 1500m record lasted only one day. The next day, a New Zealand runner, Sam Tanner, who runs for UDub, ran 3:34.72 coming in third in a rare indoor 1500m race filled with pros. (ex-Ducks Sam Prakel and Johnny Gregorek finished with PRs in the same race). So Tanner had the luxury of having faster runners pacing him and a finish line at 1500 meters. So just think about it, Cooper Teare and Cole Hocker, enroute to a Mile finish, ~100 meters away, were finishing a 1500 meter run faster than any college athlete had before. Just think what they may be able to do (along with James West) in this year's outdoor 1500 meter events, when they won't have another 100 meters to run! Impressive list of Oregon runners on these two indoor record lists: