Grandpa Duck

Our Beloved Ducks are ranked #3 by the CFP, #4 by the AP, and #5 by USA (coaches). Other pollsters have a substantially lower opinion of our favorite players' and coaches' efforts. Sports polling has been around for longer than most of us. It was in the Sports Pages of The Coos Bay Times when I first began reading that predecessor to The World, in about 1947, at age eight. There was one published poll in our newspaper, the AP that is still around. Somewhat later, about 1950, the UPI, at that time the coaches poll, came along. Then they dropped out because they did not want to be a part of sports betting. During my lifetime sports polling has changed a great deal, as has college football. For the purposes of participating with more than 200 others in my nephew Pete’s college football pool, one of the sources that I rely upon for my ten weekly picks is the Massey College Football Ranking Composite, available at masseyratings.com. Wikipedia states the following about Massey: “Kenneth Massey is an American sports statistician known for his development of a methodology for ranking and rating sports teams in a variety of sports. His ratings have been a part of the Bowl Championship Series since the 1999 season. He is an assistant professor of mathematics at Carson–Newman University in Tennessee.” The Massey composite is made up of sixty, yes (60), different computer ranking “authorities”, including those you may have heard of, like USA Today, Associated Press, and Jeff Sagarin, to a about 57 you could care less about, like Weighted Win Paths and PerformanZ. Our Ducks do not rank nearly so highly with the rest of the Massey Composite prognosticators as they place with the recognized polsters. The average Duck rank for all 60 contributors to Massey’s list is 14.68. The range of ranking is #3, by “Joby Nitty Gritty” and the CFP to #34 by “Boggo”. To compare, Georgia has an average ranking of 1.07, and a range of #1 to #3, with two ranking them second, one third, and all the rest of them at the top. The Massey top ten is: 1. Georgia 2. Ohio State 3. Michigan 4. Alabama 5. Notre Dame 6. Oklahoma State 7. Cincinnati 8. Michigan State 9. Wisconsin 10. Oklahoma The Ducks come in at #13, up from #15 last week. Jeff Sagarin has us at #12. I write to encourage comments about the great discrepancy between where the more commonly known rankings place Our Beloved Ducks, and this composite placement by many computer geeks’ efforts, some of whom just may skew their computer programs to favor their favorite conference, or even a particular team. My own belief is that for so long as the earth rotates from west to east, teams in the west will always be at a disadvantage because the other teams play earlier in the day before many of the east coast sports writers, talking heads and self-appointed experts have imbibed in their favorite beverages. Our western teams are viewed through their diminished senses, if at all.

There have been few opportunities tor backup QB time. Coaching staff jobs are dependent upon victory. Thinking they should risk their employment on a kid with recruiting stars in all the close games we have had makes no sense. we have been exposing our QB to injury since Kelly came as Bellotti’s OC.

When ESPN games run over the next game starts on ESPN News, as it did tonight.

A loss would not impact the Ducks as much as it would put the PAC-12 even further behind in future CFP rankings.

Darren Thomas, if the Auburn debacle qualifies as a CFP by your standards. I was there. Two calls by officials that could have gone our way really hurt. DAT was called OB on a first quarter reception, killing a drive at about the 25 yd line. Replays showed he got a foot down. Then the Auburn RB was ruled not down when he was tackled on top of a Duck player. He did not keep running when he regained his footing. Duck defenders who could have hit stopped. Whistle should have blown, but did not.