Grandpa Duck

The early September game was rebroadcast on ESPNU this morning. Herbstreit said that Sabin and the Alabama AD deserved to be complimented for scheduling a team like Texas in a non-conference game and jeopardizing their season. As it turns out, losing did not keep Alabama out of the playoff, and winning got Texas into the playoff. Watching the game I felt that Texas was better than their 10 point winning margin. I will not be surprised if they both win tomorrow. Then I would pick Sabin over Sark to be the NC.

Ducks 45-24 3 turnovers 2 sacks 342 passing yards

Shelstad is one of those rare players who plays taller than he measures. Great hops and timing. Very difficult to block his shot because his release is quick and high.

Charles getting his wish for a Georgia blow-out. FSU missing several starters on defense. 35-3 with three minutes left in the half.

Wonderful work, Charles! Appreciate the time you spent putting this together.

When we evaluate our AD and his staff we need to realize that they do a lot more than football. Personally I will never believe Mullins makes a scheduling decision without the approval of the head coach.

I try to keep positive. There are too many entities involved. But the catalyst of paying players may lead to a solution.

Jon, You might want to consider how this human choice system, imperfect because it is human, came about. It was a negotiated settlement. Negotiated after decades of disagreement. Academic institutions, you know, our alma mater, did not want to impede the progress of the student athletes with too many post season games. Bowl committees with long-term contracts signed by those same academic institutions’ conferences, insisted that their annual influx of dollars into their motels, restaurants and tourist attractions during the holidays not be jeopardized. Conference commissioners, not only the now “Power-4” that was six, but also all of the little schools’ conferences insisted they not be left out. Hence Liberty with a spot in the New Years Day bowl, this year the Fiesta Bowl, that was guaranteed before they would vote “yes” to any form of playoff. Those little schools had the majority of votes! And the commissioners of every conference were making sure that their big dollar jobs remained secure. in “choosing” a National Champion we have come from one man backcasting into 1868, two centuries ago at a time before he was born, to various polling entities picking as many as four “disputed” champions, to the BCS selection by computer of teams in an actual game. Nobody was happy with that system, except the winner. The CFP four-team playoff is a compromise. It was never intended to be perfect. I happen to believe it is less controversial than the 12-team fiasco we probably will experience next year. But it was a necessary stepping stone to get to what I believe will follow in a few years. I will have an article about that early next year.

Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year. May your days be full of good cheer!

I agree that giving teams 1-4 a first round bye will create controversy. And, teams 13 and 14 will feel as cheated as FSU feels this year. Any method of choosing playoff teams where humans do the selection will anger those left out. There is a solution that NCAA president Charlie Baker has written about that takes away selection by a committee and uses only wins on the field. I’m writing about that for Charles to consider for publication in January. But, even if that solution finds its way to adoption, fans of a losing team will cry that the officials were on the take.

I lived in the community where Mark grew up and played QB for Marshfield, Coos Bay. My wife was a teacher at that school and often says Mark was one of the two smartest students she had in a long career. We banked with Mark’s Dad, Mike, a wonderful man. Mark lives in a beautiful home outside of Eugene, has a nice family and a good gig on weekend TV in the fall doing football “color” and showing the play by play guy how much there is to football. It’s an education to listen to him. My uninformed guess is that Mark will reap his just reward in heaven with some of the money paid to him by Oregon still in the bank. I also believe he never regrets that he has avoided the stressful job of a major college football coach.

I tend to think Michigan will not beat Alabama. One of the TV pundits, I think it was Petersen, said about the Michigan vs. Penn State game that it was like watching 1950's football in black and white. Alabama has more speed and it has team momentum. With four weeks to prepare, Sabin will coach circles around Harbaugh. And, my opionin is every bit as good as the next guy's opinion.

The Duck women defeated Purdue 3-0 in a best of five match at Madison, WI. The Ducks easily won the first two sets, but the third went to five match points, 29-27. Ducks move on to the Elite Eight in this NCAA tournament championship. Ducks next face the host Wisconsin Badgers. Ducks Elite in Consecutive Seasons (From Oregon Athletic Department) MADISON, Wis. — For the first time in program history, the Oregon volleyball team has advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament in consecutive seasons. A year after coming within a point of the Final Four, the Ducks will have another chance at reaching collegiate volleyball's final weekend after sweeping Purdue on Thursday in a Sweet Sixteen match hosted by Wisconsin. The UO women (29-5) will take on their region's top seed, the host Badgers, in an Elite Eight matchup on Saturday (5 p.m. PT, ESPNU). Oregon enters Saturday having swept all three of its NCAA Tournament matches, and four straight overall. The Ducks hit .364 against the strong defense of the Boilermakers on Thursday, winning 25-14, 25-19, 29-27. After dominating the first set, the Ducks trailed 18-15 in the second and 18-16 in the third. But they finished off each of the final two and advanced to play Saturday night. "I just thought we never really let anything fluster us," UO coach Matt Ulmer said. "We made a handful more errors in the third set; credit to them, they upped their service game and put more pressure on us. … They pushed us there, but we just kept going." Morgan Lewis continued her hot streak for the Ducks, notching 14 kills. Mimi Colyer was lethal attacking out of the back row and also finished with 14 kills, Gabby Gonzales added 10 kills with six digs and three aces, while middles Karson Bacon and Kara McGhee combined for 13 kills with 10 blocks. Georgia Murphy was incredibly dynamic at libero, finishing with 13 digs, and Hannah Pukis had 42 assists with 10 digs, her 23rd double-double this season. Colyer had 11 digs, finished with her 12th double-double. Gonzales played through a lower leg injury that required enough treatment in the days leading up to the match that Ulmer referred to the team's athletic trainer, Mary-Grace Testa, as "the MVP of the week." "It's always tough," Gonzales said of battling through, "but my teammates around me, they make it so much easier. I know I can always lean on them. If I'm struggling, I've got so many people — on the court, off the court, staff — that I can look to and they can help me in any sort of way. I'm surrounded by such a great group of people here." How It Happened: The Ducks grabbed momentum from the outset of the match, and seemed determined not to let it go most of the first set. They jumped out to a 4-0 lead with three early kills from Lewis, and their sideout percentage remained a perfect 100 until Purdue scored consecutive points for the first time in the match to close within 21-11. Bacon had a kill and McGhee had a solo block to make it 23-11, and though Purdue answered with three straight, an error and then a kill from McGhee gave Oregon the opening set. Lewis had four kills in the set, Bacon had three kills with three blocks and Colyer also had three kills. "I thought they came out a little tentative in the first set," Ulmer said of the Boilermakers. "But then they settled down and, everything we thought we were gonna get from them, we got after that." The Boilermakers put together their longest run of the first two sets early in the second, scoring five straight to lead 13-9. The Ducks answered with three in a row, getting an incredible pancake dig from Murphy during that run to keep the match close. "She's a little fireball," Gonzales said. "I love when she gets those crazy digs. I mean, she's always solid, she's always great. And when she does that it fires us all up. It's just so great to see." Purdue maintained a slight edge, and opened up some cushion at 18-15. But the Ducks then scored five in a row, a run that included another highlight-reel dig from Murphy and two points out of the back row by Colyer. After Purdue scored to end that run, Oregon scored another five in a row to finish off the set on a 10-1 run. The last 5-0 run included two more blocks by McGhee, and yet another point from Colyer out of the back row. "We were doing really well and firing on all cylinders in the front row; having me in the back row was just something that gets everyone else open," Colyer said. "And I think Hannah was doing a really good job finding me … And it just made our offense a lot harder to stop." The third set was back and forth early, until a 6-1 run by the Ducks that included three kills from Lewis and gave them a 13-10 run. Purdue scored five straight to go up 16-14, and later a three-point run by Oregon capped by a kill from Colyer put the Ducks up 23-21. A kill by Bacon broke a 23-23 tie and set up match point, but Purdue stayed alive and the Ducks finally clinched the set on their fifth attempt at match point. Up Next: The regional No. 2 seed Ducks face top-seeded and host Wisconsin on Saturday (5 p.m. PT, ESPNU).

I agree. This game will make the CFP committee look good for leaving FSU out.

What are his height and weight?

For players who are supposed to be injured, Penix and Johnson look pretty good. Turf monster is a Duck.

Sounds like big Duck crowd. Anybody know the fan breakdown?

What makes sense is eight geographic conferences of 10 teams. Every team plays every other team, that is nine conference games. The eight conference champions play off for the NC. Call those the “Major Conferences”. Then have 40 teams in four minor conferences. Every year the eight Major conference losers drop to the minors and the two top teams in the four minors move up. Every game is important, particularly if you’re on the bubble to drop down or move up. Lots of options for pre conference games and post season playoffs. All TV revenue divided equally, 120 ways.

As David Marsh clearly explained above, according the the judge in the Palouse, OS and WSU controll the Pac-12 Board of Directors, as the only two members. I expect that decision to be upheld by the Washington court that handles the appeal. But that's not the end of the story. Like all members of a Board of Directors that represents others, the OS and WSU presidents have a "duty of good faith" to the other members of the conference, which the other 10 Pac-12 schools still are and continue to be until sometime in the middle of next year, July I as I recall. Most certainly those other 10 schools will demand a distribution of the TV money before their membership expires. When that does not happen in a timely manner, there will be another law suit, one that will be filed in San Francisco, not the Palouse.

If you did not read the Greg Byrne email interview on the demise of the PAC 12, above, I suggest that you click on it. Extremely informative on the interaction of the AD’s with the conference office, or lack thereof.

There are many others who are mostly unbiased who think the CFP has Oregon’s ranking spot on. For the purposes of participating with more than 175 others in my nephew Pete’s weekly 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 seventy-nine, yes (79), different ranking “authorities”, including those you may have heard of, like USA Today, Associated Press, and Jeff Sagarin. There are about 76 sports guessers, probably using self-designed computer programs, whom you could care less about, like Joby Nitty Gritty and PerformanZ. Our Beloved Ducks are ranked #5 by the College Football Playoffs (CFP), #5 by the AP, and #5 by USA (coaches). The average Duck rank for all 79 contributors to Massey’s list is 5.33. The range of ranking is #1, by Born and Moore, to #10 by Phelan Power and Power Up Rankings. CFP is not part of the Massey compilation. To compare, Michigan has an average ranking of 1.39, and a range of #1 to #3, and Georgia has an average of 3.35 with a range of #1 through #9. The Massey top ten is: 1. Michigan 2. Georgia 3. Ohio State 4. Washington 5. Oregon 6. Texas 7. Florida State 8. Alabama 9. Penn State 10. Oklahoma

Steven A's photo shopped picture of Nix and Penix gave me my second belly-laugh of the day. Thanks for that. My worst experience with spending money and watching the Ducks lose was in Glendale, AZ, vs Auburn. I was offered $2,000 each, cash, for two tickets while outside the stadium by an Auburn fan. Our tickets were next to friends we travelled with, so even if I had wanted to sell them, I would not have taken the offer. Then we sat virtually surrounded by Auburn fans, too damned far from the playing field and had to endure watching the officials make wrong calls costing us the game and Chip's worst play calling of his career.

The "tipping point" happens when the teams trying to play-in to the playoff have no realistic chance of being the champion. NCAA basketball has gone beyond the tipping point by expanding from 64 to 68, making the play-in games of interest only to their own fan bases. Probably went beyond the tipping point when it expanded from 16 to 32. I have lost all interest in men's basketball so I really don't know the answer to this question: "Has any NCAA basketball team seeded lower than 16 ever won the championship?" Anyway, expansion to 12 just moves the end of season focal point of fan interest from the teams that are ranked at 1-7 to the teams that are ranked 9-16. I'm thinking a team ranked #8 going into their last game is unlikely to drop all the way to 13 with a loss. My belief is that the change will increase fan interest. If you're curious about why my interest in men's basketball has waned, it's because the players are too big and too good for the size of the court and the height of the basket. Raise the basket to at least 11 feet. As to court size, too complicated to increase it, but I would reduce the team size to four. I still follow women's basketball because they play on the floor, rather than three feet off the ground. I can relate to the way women play becuase it's the game I played in the 50's, when even 7' plus Sweede Holbrook didn't dunk. For a while the dunk was illegal, just like blocking within the cone of the hoop is now. Then they widened the key and put in the 3-second rule. If they had just raised the basket, as should have happened, the game would be more fun to watch. How's that for modulating away from the topic of the thread?

I am in the Ducks beat the spread camp. We have done an outstanding job hanging on to the ball. Sometimes turnovers just happen, tipped pass, bad snap, RB gets hit really hard in a bad place or a receiver slips and falls while the ball is in the air. We have avoided those misfortunes, for the most part. That needs to continue, and maybe even Ducks benefit from causing the mutts to have some misfortunes. Regardless, we have a much better team, and our young staff is maturing. I'm hoping we receive the first kickoff and march down the field as occurred last Friday. That would set the tone. I also believe Penix has an injury. While I would rather we played them at their best health, if our pass rush gets to Penix early, we could be watching a near shut out of the mutts.

Thank you for that, Thom. I'll sleep better knowing what you found.