The Kamikaze Kid

OU, ND and LSU are machines that should keep on humming along. The U won 5 of their last 6 games last year and should be heading in the right direction. USC was a 4-8 dumpster fire but why let reality ruin the media created narrative? UO lost their last three out of four while their coach was game planning a quick exit out of town. Even so, they were still in their third straight conference championship game and in the running for the playoffs until then. The Ducks could very well find themselves in the playoffs this year while SC struggles to go 6-6.

What if California decides that UCLA would need to compensate Cal for the loss in revenue that leaving the Pac would cause? What if that compensation comes out to costing UCLA more to leave that to stay. If UCLA then decides to stay because of that, would the BIG take Stanford instead? If that were to happen, would losing USC and Stanford but bringing in SD St and UNLV actually increase the TV footprint of the Pac? With a stable Pac, could they then reach out to the Big 12 and pull in a few teams? Adding four teams (Ok St, TTU, Baylor or Houston, Cincinnati (Ohio TV Market) they would be a solid third place conference. That would be a huge step up from being a distant fifth and fast approaching sixth place as the Mountain West could claim to be superior at this point.

The problem with moving towards something is that you also in the same motion, move away from something. At the moment, the major players in college football see themselves moving towards a super league of 30-40 teams. That sounds a lot cooler than simply creating a minor league for the NFL. Would Kentucky or Duke basketball consider joining the NBA G League a step up? Would ASU baseball see becoming a AAA minor league team a step up? Both scenarios would put them into higher levels of competition but at the expense of reducing the college experience. How much allure would there be for a a player to be nothing more than a backup on a semi pro team without the tradition and hoopla that goes with collegiate sports? At what point does the promise of making 50k a year to go 4-8 at semi pro Texas lose appeal to the full college experience and going 10-2 at Baylor? Stripping the college part out of collegiate sports may end up derailing this semi pro vision before it starts.

As long as the Pac and Big 12 still see themselves as complete conferences, I think all involved are doomed. Both conferences need to see the writing on the wall and that their time is up. Taking the best of the Pac and B12 plus the best TV markets in the Mountain West (SD St, UNLV) could make a viable conference. This new conference (BigPac) would still be third place to the BIG and SEC but it wouldn't be the far distant 4th and 5th that they both are heading towards.

Being declared to quick to compete in a world championship sprinting event deserves it's own medal.

Utah's rise to the top of the Pac to me is very similar to UO's rise under Rich Brooks. Slow but steady march up from the bottom based on tough nosed football. By finding the right 2-3 star guys and coaching them up, they finally surpassed USC and the fuskies. I look forward to some great games with Utah in the future with both teams looking at the playoffs with a win.

"We want to throw them in there early," Lanning said. "Let them get some experience and see how they take it. I'm not a big believer in having guys learn and watch from the sideline. You want to be able to get mental reps when you can, but you can do that by getting reps. We're gonna throw those guys out on the field, coach them as we go, and if there's things we can improve on, that's what we want to focus on."

Lanning put together a top notch coaching staff and held together a splintering recruiting class all while game planning a smothering defensive scheme for the mighty Bama in a championship game. Outside of Coach Smart himself, can anybody really claim to be in his league?

UCLA is the tag along "friend" in a horror film. We all know how this will end before it begins.

We're in their heads like Freddie Kruger.

If the BIG sees these comments, they might just invite UO for the rivalry aspect alone!

I still think the Pac, Big 12 and Mountain West should combine and create two conferences. One would be a rival of the BIG and SEC (UO, UU, OK st SD st etc). The other would be a life boat for the less sports driven universities (WSU, OSU, Cal, K st, CSU etc). If that new upper conference forms an alliance with the ACC playing games, that should keep the top teams in the playoff picture with strength of schedule and should be able to generate a decent TV deal.

Mariwho?

I think she understands that most pro teams have large yearly value growth regardless of how they are run. She seems fine with just holding on and letting the value rise regardless of how much ownership incompetence damages the competitiveness of the team. I'm afraid the Blazers are sailing towards worst case scenario.

Eugene is one hour east of some of the most beautiful coast line in the country and one hour west of 10,000 foot mountain peaks. Day hiking around Fall Creek or up the McKenzie Highway will not disappoint!

If you're into tradition, forget about Notre Dame. Nobody will ever be able to compare with the string of national championships in the 1890's by Yale!

I think Texas, Notre Dame, USC and fuskies all should be in the Delusions of Grandeur (DoG) Conference. There they can all declare themselves preseason #1s regardless of what reality says.

The more I think about OegonDucks plan of a neutral site game in LA, the more I like it. I could see Uncle Phil sponsoring some sort of yearly challenge to the best of the best against the Ducks at So Fi Field. Like the pre season NIT in NYC for basketball. Turn it into a monster LA recruiting event and USuCk and the bumbling bruins would really regret their BIG decision and the Ducks would own that town.

The Ducks are 3-0 vs USC, UCLA and tOSU in the last three games played on their own fields so you're probably right. Oh and might as well ad in Michigan and make it a perfect 4-0!

This one wins the internet!

OST8 Howdy. I think must folks here are just shell shocked by the sudden departure news and are just throwing out different options to get a sense of which direction the Ducks should go in. I don't think anyone is disrespecting the Big 12. The appeal of SDSU is more about having a footprint in the So Cal TV market which has been the UO's recruiting hotbed up to this point. Since most feel that USC and UCLA's prime motivation for leaving the Pac was to shut out the Ducks from dominating recruiting in LA, a top priority people are feeling is to figure out how to get back in there while staying nationally relevant. If we become conference mates in the near future, I'm sure the fan base will embrace it. Right now, I think most of us are kind of feeling like we just got dumped on prom night.

As we pour over every scrap of information we can find and every possible merger and realignment, scenario gets discussed, are we sure everything is even that bad? I think the worst aspect of all of this is more about viewership in the LA market and TV revenue dipping than anything else. If the UO just stays at the top of whatever conference they find themselves in, they will still command attention. How excited will recruits be to join up with 7-5 USC or 5-7 UCLA when 11-1 #5 UO is battling to get into the playoffs year after year. The LA schools locking themselves into super conference mediocrity may be the best thing that's ever happened to the Ducks. Even as the Pac 12 has been down the last few years, the UO has still been recruiting like mad all over the country. Maybe the best thing to do is keep on keeping on as we always have. If the Ducks keep hovering around the top 10 they will be added into some super conference at some point and we can still cheer on a top 20 team in the hunt for a playoff spot until then.

I don't think the Pac or Big 12 poaching a few teams from one or the other moves the needle that much. I think a full merger just creates a bloated conference with a lot of dead weight. It seems like the only way forward would be for the two conferences to realign and form two new conferences. If that happens poaching SD St from the Mountain West would also make sense. I have no idea if this kind of realignment is even possible but something major needs to happen or all involved will get left behind.

Now that you brought it up, Auburn scored a safety after a weak motion penalty on UO negating a near first down run when they were just trying to run out clock to protect a halftime lead. The Harris interception was on the ensuing drive which Auburn converts into a touchdown one or two plays later. Deyer's down, get up and run sets up the 0:00 game winning field goal. Twelve points gifted to one team in a championship game. Grrrrrr

And the Cliff Harris interception was good!