Grandpa Duck

Kim, In some small way I hope my prayers for your recovery reach Him or Her who can make a difference. You are greatly missed by us. Michael

The insertion of collective bargaining and with it, NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) regulation is a game changer. That means every player that goes to work for a college football program has a contract that he must comply with before he signs a letter of intent. U of O football would be a "union shop." Every player on the team has the same contract. Individual NIL and wages would be negotiable for each player, but the obligation to stay with the team would be a term of the team's collective agreement, if I am reading the article correctly. Out in the business world that's called an "noncompetition clause". There's all manner of litigation about that issue. In my community, Eugene, a doctor with a noncompete clause can quit his job with the medical group, move more than 50 miles away for a year, and then return and work for a competitor. So what if the player decides to leave the school anyway, and another school agrees to accept him. Who's going to enforce that circumstance? My limited experience with NLRB cases is that they don't move real quickly.

If, as I expect, Jon's suggestion of an NFL sponsored 36 teams comes about, or 40 treams as I suggest, will NFL-Lite become greatly different from AAA baseball? Personally, I prefer to watch the college amateur, student-athlete, regular season football games over the NFL regular season games, Justin Herbert excepted. I can't even name a AAA baseball team, and, as far as I know, have never watched that league, or any of the other minor league baseball games on TV. I've been to several Eugene Emerald games, and a few of the Springfield Drifter wood-bat games, so it's not about whether I like baseball. As a high school player I was better at baseball than the other two major sports, but played, or played at all of them. At baseball, I could hit, field and I could run, but was left out of the other important part. No arm. Second base was taken by a team mate with a better glove than mine. So, I played right field. Still, I have watched, both in person and on TV, more than 10 times as much college football than any other major sport, unless golf is a major sport. To me, college football is greatly different from the pro game. I often think about the experience of Chip Kelly when he brought the Ducks his philosophy that the team with better conditioned players would win the game in the 4th quarter. He got the Duck players to buy in and bust their collective butt getting into shape. Sure enough, it worked. When he took that idea to the Eagles it worked there too, for about a year and a half. Then the pros quit working at it. My fear is that once what used to be college football goes fully professional it's connection to the university environment will wane. Student sections and great bands will drift away. When that happens, just watch the minor league football TV ratings go to wherever minor league baseball ratings are.

Ahead by a fairly constant 13 points from the middle of first half until there were eight minutes left in the game, OBD went into running clock, what I call the “prevent offense.” Predictably the beavers tightened their defense. Repeatedly starting the attempts to score with 10 or fewer seconds left on the shot clock, our team lost what momentum they had, and score was tied. Why a team that is comfortably winning the game totally alters it’s strategy with that much time left will puzzle me until I go into the crematorium.

Some fun belly laughs in that interview, if you have the time to watch it all.

Buy, “academic prowess” is appropriate.

The prevent offense almost did Dana in. I will never comprehend why a team that is 20 points ahead thinks it’s a good thing to change the pace of the game and quit trying to score points. The margin went from 20 points to one point with two minutes left. the Ducks went seven minutes without a field goal! Often turning the ball over, or bricking few throws.

In about 1972 my wife and I played Pebble got $40, each, including the cart.

Golf doesn't get a lot of play on Oregon message boards, but fans need to know that Clark is recognized by the announcers, Jim Nance in this event, as being a Duck. They repeatedly talk not only about that, but speak about his caddy being a former Duck golf assistant coach for three years. This was a great day for U of O athletic publicity. What Clark did was shoot the lowest score, 60, on a par 72, that has ever been recorded at Pebble Beach. This golf course in recognized world-wide as the course golfers most want to play. It opened in 1919, 125 years ago. The ATT tournament, formerly the Crosby, has been drawing golf's greatest players since in began in the 1940's. Clark's round of 60 is two strokes better than any professional golfer has every scored at Pebble. An amateur golfer did shoot 61 a few years ago, but what Clark did today will be talked about for decades.

The two biggest and most wealthy conferences manipulating college football to the exclusion of every other school? What could possibly go wrong? Certainly the “Haves” will bend over backward to be fair to the “Have Nots”. Or, not! Th NCAA needs to step up, but the conferences control the money source. Or just maybe it controls them.

Not a lot of imagination in that group. The main problem is “selection” of playoff teams by a committee. And, too much power by TV network contracts with only two of the conferences. Conferences that have far too many teams. Break up the conferences and allocate teams into eight ten-team leagues by geography. Every team plays every other team in their league on a nine-game conference schedule. Conference Champions playoff in an eight tam tournament. Settle the whole thing n the field. Much more on this later.

Bottle was I’ll.

If you are missing this game, turn on ESPN. Ducks leading USC 46-39. Shelstad shooting the lights out and Bill Walton spewing Duck love.

From: Grampa Duck, aka Mike Whitty While it's fairly simply for me to write the article of this thread focused on player injury and Workers Compensation that I was imersed in over 20 years ago, I don't know sickum about NIL, and am too old now to learn. But I can copy and paste from what others say about it. In that same John Canzano article I cited in the above article is this quote from an unnamed B1G AD: From a Big Ten AD: The schools have started talking more with each other to fact-check the NIL offers. If we come in second or third, we call the other schools that came in second or third and compare notes. Maybe we offered a kid $70,000 and the agent told us that some other school offered $100,000. We might call each other to make sure that is accurate. Too often, it proves not to be true. The admission here is that the AD is involved in negotiating the amount of NIL with the players' agents, and at least some of those agents cannot always be trusted. Maybe that negotiation is within the rules, I don't know. But how could it be otherwise than to have the AD in the loop? Can there be a workable program where the coaching staff identifies the player they want, communicates that to the AD, and the AD communites to the NIL proivider to go get us edge rusher "Ican Sackem". The NIL provider litstens to Ican's agent and finds out how much he wants, probably with added perks. The NIL provider communicates that info back to the AD who talks to the coach and says: "Is Ican worth $XXX,XXX to you guys?" The coach answers, "No, but he's worth . . .". I think you get the idea. A system where the information cruial to the negotiation for the player is being passed through three steps on the team side before getting to the player's agent, who then passes it on to the player's parents who talk to their son abouf it is fraught with potential miscommunication. And, the NCAA, in its defense, is dependent upon the schools for adequate enforcement funding. With the schools totally in control of the primary source of college football funding, TV money, the NCAA is in a no win position. Something major has to change in order for a fair system of NIL to work, assuming that's possible. The idea that the NIL provider can be distanced from the school is unworkable.

We used to have season tickets to FB, MBB, WBB and softball. Now only WBBand softball. I go with my wife sometimes,but I’ve become extremely uncomfortable being in crowds. Always watch most every sport on TV, but only football draws me to this board.

bbmichaels I don’t like the NIL trend, either. I like the alternative, being loyal to the players who are here, and getting beat by portal players who were picked up by our opponents even less. In college football today, teams have to be playing about 43 players, not including special teams. If a young man is not good enough to get playing time, he needs to look at transferring to a lesser school, as 12 former Ducks have done, or are trying to do, this portal season.

Too good a read to be buried down the list, so I bumped it.

Your problem with picture is not PAC-12 Network. I had a perfect picture in Eugene on Comcast.

We need to take advantage of being deep and rest players whenever possible, just as DL’s staff has been doing.

There are a few exceptions to the comment that the mutts had a lock on the state of Washington. Off the top of my head, Jonathan Stewart and Peter Sirmon come to mind.

As typical of offensive linemen, Ryan is very bright. He was a solid player and will make an outstanding coach. Lanning makes a wise addition to the Duck staff.

I had tickets on the south side from when the stadium opened, first through my Dad, a substantial donor, then on my own starting in about 1985. Prices kept increasing until we paid about $2,000 a ticket base fee plus the per game price. We had pleasant older people for several rows in front of us who remained seated unless there was a major third or fourth down play. Then alcohol sales began and within three or four years, probably about 2010, the environment in our section, south side, 35 yard line, two rows below the entry level, changed to where going to the game was not fun. People standing up in lower rows making it necessary for us to do the up and down exercise most every play. Dealing with drunks that security ignored, night games. For me, it was all too much. Granted, I am an old wind breaker with a low tolerance level for misbehavior. Now I watch from the comfort of my recliner. A friend gave me two tickets a couple of years ago on the northeast 5 yard line, on the aisle. Three rows ahead a complete drunk insisted on standing on his bench seat, totally blocking our view. Even though he was spilling beer on the people in front of him, his also drunk companions thought he was comic relief and kept supplying him more beer. We left before halftime and since I live in northern Eugene a mile from Costco, we we able to get home for the start of the third quarter. I looked forward to attending games at Autzen from the time it opened all year long for 45 years. I will never go back.

Happy, your comment above: “The CFP doesnt even consider fair schedules.” Deserves some scrutiny. The implication you make is that the CFP did less than a thorough job in choosing the playoff participants. The 13 CFP committee members get undeservedly ragged upon all the time from lots of folks who do not understand the written protocol they follow in choosing the teams that participate in the playoff. That protocol has guidelines that the committee must apply in making their decision. Those “guidelines” are: Championships won Strength of schedule Head‐to‐head competition (if it occurred) Comparative outcomes of common opponents (without incenting margin of victory) Other relevant factors such as unavailability of key players and coaches that may have affected a team’s performance during the season or likely will affect its postseason performance.* As you can see, your comment that the committee does not consider “fair schedules” is contradicted by the second guideline above. In fact, FSU had the weakest SOS of the teams considered for the playoff. Put that with the finial guideline that includes the unavailablilty of FSU’s Quarterback and there is no question that the committee did their job properly.

I am in Eugene with Comcast, Xfinity. I get B1G Network on channel 726. Right now they are broadcasting Maryland at Northwestern basketball.

Actually, because Seattle is on Puget Sound, it is substantially warmer in the winter than the Willamette Valley. As far as getting around on icy streets in Eugene, AWD helps a lot. I go slow and stay where it’s flat.