LADuck

Ducks have a lot of talent but agree not at an elite level. They will easily win the North and be a 5 point dog to Utah for the P12 Championship. Like this year there will be way more Ute fans at the game which means drink lines will not be crowded which is a plus. Ducks get revenge and beat them by 13 points and just miss being a playoff team. The 17 point loss to Georgia in the first game just a little too much to overcome. Overall a great year with awesome things to follow.

Looking back at records my first two years in Eugene we were an overall 4 - 17 - 1 in 80 and 81. That was what made it such a bummer. We were 2 - 0 in conference play and thought man this is the year! Shattered dreams are tough to handle.

I was driving home from a meeting in Arizona today and stopped for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel. We don't have them in Southern Cal and they have unbeatable pancakes in my humble opinion. When I paid my bill I struck up a conversation with a lady who was a Washington native and a UW fan. She said she used to go to games in the 80's. The conversation brought me back to thinking about the 1983 epic showdown when UW and the Ducks were both 2-0. It was hyped up and if I remember correctly the Lady Quackers (or whatever they were called) sent Roses to the locker room before the game. Talk about getting carried away! There was a big crowd for the game and an overall feeling of confidence. It just felt so positive and the energy was surely going to help fire up the Ducks and lead them to victory. It was 12 to 0 UW at half and some were still optimistic. By nature I am a positive thinker so definitely was waiting for great things to come. I don't remember details of how it unfolded but the 2nd half went from Chocolate Cake to Urinal Cake in a hurry. The final was 32 to 3 and of all the games I have been to it went from a Flounder like "this is going to be great" to an overall feeling of "my brother is going to kill me" quickly. It was the biggest energy drop of fans I have ever witnessed. It really was a bummer. Sure I drowned my sorrows after the beatdown. Side note: Lew Barnes on that team and had classes with him. Nice guy.

Had moved from one high end neighborhood to another in a relatively short period of time. Guess it is hard to find a good job when you have been publicly disgraced for fraud.

Heard a comedian say that anybody driving faster than me on the freeway is an idiotic and unsafe driver. NIL is like that .... anything above what the Ducks are willing to do is stupid and bad for college football!

Old neighbor was caught up in that scandal at USC. She was doing well there and probably would have ultimately been an AD somewhere. Was taking around $20K a month under the table on top of her salary for doctoring up backgrounds and getting rich kids into SC. An acquaintance said she is now driving for Uber or one of those services. Short term greed sometimes works other times not so much.

I think the effort levels of some of the players vary too much from game to game. I am a fan of Coach Altman and normally he is supportive of his teams but in this case I believe he is just telling us the truth and that is that this team doesn't bring it 100% of the time.

Did not watch the game but friend texted and said at one point Altman had to yell at the bench players to get up and come around the circle?

Bill is funny and a good change of pace to other announcers.

Grew up in Southern California and was lucky enough to end up heading up to Eugene and attend the U of O. Was such a great experience and loved my time in the Northwest. It was such a great change for me going from suburban LA to a college town. Had great times going to football and basketball games plus the degree really helped land the job with the company I have been with for a long time! If I could sit thru the zero - zero Oregon State game I can weather anything and really like winning better than losing.

That is really a good post as to athletes feeling the pressure to go to certain camps or coaches to get the higher recruitment rating. It is like the baseball parents that FLY across the country to go to "elite" tournaments with 11 year olds! When my son was playing I asked a friend of mine who is a ex D1 player and local high school coach what he thought about these travel leagues. He said it was crazy and that if your son has top talent in high school people are going to find them ... especially when you live in Southern California! The head scratcher thing about travel sports is if the kids just played in their local areas like some of us used to there would be plenty of competition. Not sure if youth football has got like this but I know hockey has national rankings for 10 year old and under teams!!! The world has gone insane.

When I was younger I was overly optimistic in all Duck prognostications before and during the season. As I get wiser and have more life experience to draw on I have become much more realistic about how I view the world. So with logic being at the core of everything I do now my predictions are for UO to give up an average of 18.8 points a game while scoring an impressive and exactly double 37.6 points PPG. For the season we lose the opener but keep it close to within 10. Smooth sailing from that point on and we rip off 11 straight wins. We get USC in the P12 championship and easily defeat them by score of 42 to 24. On to the playoffs.

Since some have already hit a few of my favorites here is favorite game to be at where we lost...in OT! Cade McNown barfs on field and Rueben Droughns plays with broken ankle.

Not to be negative but not a big deal if they don't make the tourney. Would not have had much of a run as this just isn't one of their better teams. NIT is the right speed for this group.

You have to be creative to compete these days. Is there a girlfriend that would like to be a cheerleader?

Think most SC fans down here are feeling great and fired up about getting Caleb Williams. If you were to survey the alum guess is you would get some that are so delirious that they would pick 12 - 0 for next regular season. Reality is they are coming off of 4 - 8 season so truth is in the middle of that weak team versus projections of dreaming SC fans. So that leads to landing spot of 4 actual wins + 12 win dream for total of 16. Losses that really occurred were 8 + hallucination of 0 anticipated defeats divided by 2 equals 4 losses. Cut this in half and you have 8 wins and 4 losses for the Trojans next year. Sounds about right.

Recap: Great staff high energy Team will me more fun to watch Great things coming soon Much less phony coach speak USC going to get much better soon P12 Championship will have national ramifications Ducks will retain superiority over Trojans 2023 Oregon Team will be in playoffs National Championship win in Vegas 2025

You could analyze this to no end. Friend of mine bragging about SC having the number one ranked transfer portal in the country. Spun some numbers back at him saying you have to analyze who left SC thru the portal and develop a net transfer portal metric. Also pointed out that many of the top teams only have a few if any transfers because they don't need them. Of course a 4 - 8 team is going to need more help than others do so don't get too excited about transfer rankings. Would Georgia be happy if 12 players left with an overall average rating of 4.25 and they picked up the same number with an average rating of 3.5? Of course they wouldn't be but they would have a high transfer ranking using the current system.

Really like the way people on this site think! Lanning has not won a single game yet but we are predicting what will happen once he wins a national championship. I call that the power of positive thinking!

I like how our society works. One group creates work coming up with their rules. They are nebulous so people are not sure as to the guidelines and have another group (attorneys) create work by figuring out what was meant. Then the first group creates more billable hours by seeing if the impacted group has a correct interpretation of their originally poorly written rules. As they say ... clear as mud.

Here is my speed story ... played all sports but primarily baseball growing up. I was no track star but better than average speed. Long story short I run into an old friend from school. We were both 40 years old at the time. Anyway, he tells me he is playing in a hardball league down here in Long Beach and asked if I wanted to play. I was better than him back in the day so thought if he is playing no big deal count me in. First game I get lucky and hit a line drive in the gap. Remember how when you play baseball you know when you hit it in the gap hard it is an easy double. My brain thinks that very thought. Problem was I am now 40 and not quite as fast. I swear it felt like it took me five minutes to get to 2nd base. I kept thinking when am I going to get there...lol. The outfielder missed the cutoff man or I would have been out by a good ten feet. My friend had a good laugh. At least I didn't pull a hammy.

How come only an announcement of when the announcement will take place. Wouldn't there be more interest if he were to announce when he is going to announce his announcement?

Robert Cray playing guitar in the band ... used to see him across from our rental. Remember seeing him and Curtis Salgado hanging out. Great music. Remember another band at the time called Lox Xplorers that were excellent and of course the Party Kings. Damn fun ... didn't know how good it was ... actually maybe I did!

That is a great shot. Also nice to see that weather in Eugene is sunny and around 50 degrees. No rain is always good.

Talk is cheap and they are generally overrated in every preseason poll year after year. However, this one feels a lot different. Let's face it ... Helton to Riley is one of the biggest coaching upgrades in recent P12 history. He is building excitement and is killing it in the transfer portal. Three five stars committed already for 2023 is evidence that things are on the upswing and as much as I won't admit it to any USC fan they are going to get a lot better soon. The facilities at SC are nowhere near as close to Duck level but there is a lot to be said for perfect weather all year round. If he could get kids to go to Norman I am sure he will continue to attract big time talent to Los Angeles.