CalBear95

Well, Cal is a yes. Obvs. 😃

For those questioning the value of the Alliance, it’s what you didn’t see that is what you should use as a measuring stick. Sankey is a crafty bully who is totally in the tank for ESPN. His goal is to renew their stranglehold on the CFP because doing so denies his competitors outside the B1G revenue (smaller pie of which the SEC disproportionately owns) Hence the attempt to land a CFP expansion by fiat which in turn likely allows ESPN to exercise their ROFR. The Alliance put the brakes on all of that. Kliavkoff strikes me as an insanely savvy operator and more than a match for the likes of Sankey. The SEC is not in a position of power so long as the Alliance holds. It’s all bluster and Sankey knows this as does Kliavkoff I suspect. The SEC isn’t going to do their own thing because that is suicide. Sankey is posturing to look as big as possible because he knows that, given current course and speed, he is dancing to the tempo of the Alliance I know this reads as counterintuitive given the SEC’s brand but they are in a weak position at the moment

In-state talent can cut both ways. Some love the idea of playing close to home and others love the idea of getting away from the known and familiar. I grew up in LA and the idea of going to school anywhere in SoCal was beyond unappealing.

I wasn’t as turned off by this take. Notice what was conspicuously absent throughout that monologue: coaching skills. “Tearing it up” perhaps implies a positive view of MC’s skills (and perhaps the ‘not Nick Saban’ comment as well) but he missed a ton of opportunities to explicitly say that. Example, wouldn’t ‘good coach’ be on that list of check boxes? IDK, I saw that video as a total hedge rather than an anointing of a soon to be dominant coaching reign

Actually, merging w/the B12 doesn’t sound so crazy. You would own ½ of the US geographic footprint from a media perspective.

No, 80 plays is utterly unrealistic. At the same time, I don’t really believe anyone on the staff thinks otherwise. It is an aspirational metric. I suspect the true KPI is in the 60s

Focus less on star ratings, which aren’t exactly objective, and more on fit. Not all 4 and 5 star recruits are equal in both actual ability and drive. The recruit ranking systems are no different than the US News college rankings: not mapped to true quality in many cases.

Probably. But we won’t really know until we see some data points. I suspect as much as most here he is going old school Tide football. Problem is that even Saban chucked that overboard in favor of high octane offense. My gut, as with most, if not all, of yours is that Mario is stuck in another era and seems unable to change. But I am open to the possibility he learned something from his time in Eugene.

At this point, I am viewing all attrition via portal as good. The new staff is implementing their scheme and on D that’s Georgia’s system. As Dawg fans have noted, it isn’t for everyone. Based on Georgia’s on the field product, better to free up spots for fits than for those who likely won’t succeed for lack of fit.

I hate pre-season rankings for the very reason it creates a relatively arbitrary list that teams that are undervalued need to climb to even get into January contention. And because teams in that same conference may be OVERvalued, when they are shown to be so, the rest of the conference takes a perception hit rather than the prognosticators admitting they misread the actual situation. Utah will be good because they are consistent and experienced. But Oregon and USC were down last year creating what I believe is, to some extent, an artificial view of Utah’s true ‘value.’ If Utah doesn’t look like a top 6 program, the conference will take the hit right along with the program. I get why there are rankings and they will always exist. I just wish they were tempered by a media willing to acknowledge their own valuation errors rather than project that into a “well, the entire conference is probably down because I can’t be too wrong” framework

Maybe he will. Maybe he won’t. I think the first few games will give a read on what, if anything, he learned from his time at Oregon. Until then, why speculate (other than because it’s a Duck forum, the off-season, and fun)?

Anyone but Duke. Everything about that school is fake, all the way down to the worn down stone steps leading into their buildings (seriously, look up the story of Duke’s architecture history).

Say something so that I know I should never take you seriously

What’s crazy here is that with this open market for paying players (and even if there we some ‘salary cap’ which I doubt would be legal but that’s another topic), schools are going to seriously need to think about hiring the equivalent of a GM. There are going to be misses and a $20MM miss is going to anger boosters funding the talent fund. Or at least there will be pressure to have more ‘hits’/ROI. And if you accept this premise, how does this impact a coach’s ability to offer and pick players. Totally wild and I kinda hate it and love it all the same time

I would think the Buffalo Bills are a good example of what this might look like

Joke or no, the huskies have been pretty highly ranked over the past few years. As I noted earlier, like it or not, you want them to be going forward as well. A strong UW is good for the P12 (obvs a strong USC and UO go without saying).

For sure. You will get no argument from me on that. I take an SEC view of these things which is conference brand perception and on field performance trump any non-conference game hatred/rooting interest. With this filter in mind, Stanford is the all time worst P12 school we have. They beat a conference heavy weight and then get rolled by ND or Shaw manages to coach his way into a loss. They are an utter embarrassment and they *really* need to clean up their act because they do tend to recruit well. Rankings this year are super super skewed. If you look at what UA and furd have high rankings, a lot of it has to do with their total points vs avg value/recruit. USC and OBD are way behind them in total recruits. But despite being ~10 short of furd and UA's haul the Ducks are pretty close from a total points POV. Given the coaching upheaval this year, I caution anyone from running with 2022 as a proxy for predicting the future rankings and quality of the top tier programs' classes.

We'll see if this is a trend or an aberration. My guess is the latter. The chaos around the program this year probably really hurt them in terms of having a deep pool of recruits to try and save. Further still, given their school of origin, I imagine the staff lacked existing relationships w/highly rated recruits they could bring over. So, a bit of a perfect storm. For reference, Utah has historically run between 5th and 7th in conference rankings (usually low 30's nationally) and they just beat the living daylights of a much higher ranked talent pool on OBD. IOW, coaching and development are indeed the keys. Potential is useless if unrealized and poorly leveraged in that process. I really doubt the dawgs will stay in the bottom quartile of the conference and even if they are in the bottom of the upper half, Utah is a great example of how that isn't a sentence to purgatory/irrelevance.

I don't think people are denying credit for the personnel side of what MC did for the program (or maybe some are but I would not share that view). But his offense also served to churn out some of those good players he brought in. He had hit peak, IOW. It makes me wonder if AB was the #1 QB because he had no idea how to develop Ty or any other prospect. And it makes me wonder how much AB underperformed due to that (see Shough, Tyler). The QB play was so bad that the run game almost had to dominate. A self fulfilling prophecy of MC's own creation. And so, yes, thanks for the personnel. Now please move aside a let us put them under the tutelage of a staff that knows how to use them to their maximum capabilities.

So cruel... 🙂

Yeah, Cristobal reverse mortgaged that history and I'm glad to see we are buying back the deed to that IP.

100 on all of the above. When I heard the 80 play aspirational target for the offense, my immediate question was how the D would hold up. Chip pretty much sacrificed that side of the ball. There is simply no scenario I can imagine a coach coming from the defensive side of the ball doing the same. So really curious how you get big and nasty on D and yet run tempo. My initial take/guess is this is what he meant by 'efficient.' Long drives with tempo yet always happy to take the big play.

Das Gleiche!

Totally dating myself here but I was a newly minted Cal grad living on $21K/year in the City (if you have to ask, you don't know) when I saw this at the Embaradero as a sleeper film. I then went to LA for a year and hit every single one of these bars. Yep. I'm old.

My wife is watching Murderville on Netflix, I live in Seattle, and am a Cal grad. So this should surprise nobody. In my corner, I go with my alltime favorite player and person: Marshawn Lynch!!! Who is better on the Ducks side? [Hint: nobody though I do love me some Justin Herbert and the 'he's too introverted' craziness when he was coming out] Taste the Rainbow!