MikeJ

Here is what I was looking at (after seeing these same numbers reported elsewhere): NIL Collectives – Power 5 Schools – NCAA Revenue Sharing & NIL Estimates 2025 NIL-NCAA.COM I can't vouch for their accuracy. If anyone has seen a different ranking or estimate I'd be interested in seeing it.

I know, it's frustrating, especially when in reality we only rank 19th in NIL spending at $10.5 million compared to over $20m for tOSU and others. If we want to spend even in the ballpark of those schools, we have loads of budget room to lure players like this.

Nice post. Another comparison point which looks bad for us right now is NIL spending. NIL gets spent on players who were not only blue chip recruits out of high school, but who have proven to be great players at the college level, so I would argue it makes an even bigger difference. I think we need to flat out spend more on NIL. I never used to think this way, we have 'done more with less' for many years. But if my understanding of where Oregon ranks is correct (someone correct me if I'm wrong), we rank #19 nationally in NIL spending, and while we spent about $11m this year, Texas, Ohio State and a few others spent north of $20m. That's a massive difference. We're way behind Michigan, and behind even Indiana and Mich. State in NIL spending. It's starting to look, at least to me, like we can't field a roster that is strong enough from top to bottom to bring ourselves into parity with teams like Ohio State unless we spend NIL money that is at least in the same ballpark as other top teams. Being ranked 19th in such spending (that is among public universities only, we're likely lower than that if private schools are included), and being outspent nearly 2-to-1, appears to be a serious handicap. I'm not saying it should be this way, and maybe some kind of NIL spending caps will be put into place, but for now I don't think this can be ignored. Everyone who doesn't do the research assumes Oregon is a big NIL spender due to the Nike connection, etc., and maybe we need to do a bit more along those lines.

Very interesting article. Evan Stewart being unavailable made the problem of Ohio State taking away our crossing patterns worse, weakening the deep threat that you would hope would open up. But the most interesting point looking forward is the one about Dante Moore and Lanning using only 5th-year-plus transfer QBs so far. It has been pretty glaring to me the last several years that Oregon has basically ignored giving their backup QBs any playing time, even in blowout wins. There is reason to believe, and hope, that Dante will come along fine next year (he's started previously at UCLA and has gotten rave reviews from Tez, etc.), but I'd feel better if he'd gotten in there a bit this year. Thinking back over the years, we definitely did more to get next-in-line QBs some game time vs. having them remain untested question marks.

It's a great, tough matchup. What concerns me more than the talent/coaching questions is the long layoff (3.5 weeks) and possibly coming out flat/slow in the first half. Not sure what Lanning can do about it, possibly some intense scrimmages, etc. to stay sharp. That's one disadvantage of the 1st round bye.

That 'S-E-C' chant from the Ohio St crowd is really loud.

Yeah, Ohio St and Oregon look like the top 2 teams in the country. Tennessee doesn't look like it belongs on the same field with Ohio St.

This is just complete domination.

GeoTechDuck and Solar, Josh Pate on his show today was making your same point about the interesting comparison between Oregon's likely opponents as the #1 seed vs #5.

They have a great defense. Take a look at points allowed vs our common opponents. But they haven't faced an opponent as complete as Oregon (except possibly in the game they lost).

Nice to see Moore put a TD drive together. He looked happy.

I've been surprised this year with how deep this team is overall that having a few people out injured just makes us massively worse. Everyone has injuries piling up by week 11. When we're near 100% healthy we're unstoppable, but a few players short of that and the wheels seem to just come off.

Agree we need to lean on the run before we potentially get behind here.

Boy does Gabriel look out of sorts today. Bad throws, bad decisions, kindof deer in the headlights looking right now.

Attended Oregon from '86 to '90 and saw lots of Frog and his joke book. RIP Frog.

Agree on the coaching blunder. At this point, I basically yell "fair catch" at the screen on every punt, no matter who we have in there. Especially if you're better than the other team, on the road, just take possession safely. Don't introduce any unpredictable X factors into things. But when we don't have the normal punt returner in? How do you not tell that person to just fair catch it? Really dumb. Just helps increase the odds of what Michigan needs--to hang around and keep the score close and not let Oregon jump out to the leads we have been in recent games.

Another bad decision by Smart. I don't know why you wouldn't just punt there. Don't make an impossible job for Texas a little easier. Anybody disagree?

They used a whole 36 seconds on that drive. Some bad coaching decisions by Georgia here in the 4th.

I'm surprised at that play call on 4th down but happy they made it. A FG puts you up by 11 and even with an unanswered TD and FG you still win. Gutsy.

I am also surprised there is as much questioning of the offensive PI call as there is. I've been watching college football a long time and struggle to remember seeing a receiver blast a DB so forcefully with two hands before. Klatt's 'extended arms' point seems off base. Is there really a rule that says the receiver's arms have to be fully elbow's-locked extended to be offensive PI? He shoved him hard enough to send him stumbling backwards in a way you don't see often.

I really think he was in on that first attempt, super athletic play. They should have taken another look.

Yes, we've let them have a number of 3rd down conversions through horrible tackling, with the 3rd or 4th guy having to finish the job. I know time of possession doesn't always tell the tale, but they had the ball 21 minutes to our 9, because we just can't stop them when we should because the defense is playing so soft. We needed to put a stop to the story line that we can't put a complete game together, but this week it seems to be the defense taking a game off tackling.

2 automatic bids for the ACC and B12 is actually too generous. And I say that as a long-time fan of a Duck team that has gotten the short end of the stick due to favoritism towards other conferences for years. But when you consider the present composition of the B1G and SEC, the disparity between those conferences (especially the top several teams in any given year) and the ACC and B12 is vast. It's bigger than 3 automatic berths vs. 2 adequately accounts for. The article that Jon Joseph linked is correct, The ACC would be the big winner here, and as the article points out, over the last 10 years, the SEC and B1G (as they are now) would have each had 3 teams in every year anyway.

Fans, especially those that go to the effort of participating in forums like this, are passionate, and passionate people who go through ups and downs like Oregon fans have are going to have a wide range of emotions and reactions. I personally allow for that and don't mind seeing people react in different ways (within the bounds of reasonableness and decorum per rules such as those Charles has created). Regarding the recent saga re Lanning and Alabama, that was a rough one for Duck fans because we've clearly lived through more than our share of that sort of drama in recent years. It's hard to blame anyone for their reactions. In the end Lanning doubling down on his commitment is not only a dodged bullet in terms of the potential loss of yet another coach, but a huge positive to be excited about. I've lived in Salt Lake for decades since graduating from Oregon, and I believe that the continuity of the coaching staff the Utes have enjoyed has been a huge factor in their success. Lanning is a great coach and having him around for the foreseeable future give us a chance to build something for a sustained stretch in a way we haven't been able to do for quite a while.

Fisch is actually the guy I'm most worried that they will hire. Arizona is looking really good and is on the rise. I don't like seeing his name on the list of potential replacements.