Nevada Dawg

As someone who has been called out a couple of times in the past (once when I didn't agree at all with the point Charles was making) I do appreciate that he takes the time to keep this blog civil. There is nothing worse in my opinion to have a very interesting thread become intolerable by a couple of weak-ego commentators who get into it like a couple of 8-year-olds on the schoolyard. There are times when I have had wanted to post on this site when my opinion was so at variance with one or more other participants that I saw almost no way to state my views without starting a fight. Sometimes it is because I haven't the time to carefully compose a post so as to minimize the likelihood of conflict. Suffice to say that may be on me, but I do respect the rules by which I have agreed to abide. And political posts: Hurrah for the ban on that type of poison! We are fans, not partisans.

If the Ducks defensive line transfers are as good as folks have claimed, then they should be noticeably better than they looked in those Utah disasters last year. And they better be. Otherwise Georgia will pound the rock all night. I suspect that Lanning will load the box early and often in the game to try to force Georgia to throw the ball. Of course, that becomes easier to do if Bennett gets the ball out early to any of the three monster tight ends, all of whom have great ball skills and are, quite frankly, match-up problems for defenders. I think we see a lot of cat-and-mouse explorations (by both sides) in the first quarter of the game in the Benz.

As someone who lost his wife six and a half years ago to the horrors of uterine cancer, I shed a tear for Olivia's family and wish them all the best.

I think that Kirby will not be thinking too much about the Ducks during the first two weeks of fall camp because he has to devote a lot of attention to filling holes created by the departures of 15 dudes to the NFL. He is always lazar focused on his own during Fall Camp. Yet I can't totally disagree with the theme of your post as there are surely several GAs and a couple of paid analysts that are already focused on Oregon as we speak. One thing I can assure you is that Kirby and staff will be taking this game and the Ducks every bit as seriously as they did with Clemson last September and will be trying to give their best shot on September 3.

I acknowledge your point Drex and don't mean to be overly argumentative, but college football I think has changed drastically since Chip's early days at Oregon, and I'm not sure that the kind of roll he and the Ducks had then is even possible any more with a first-year coach. We'll see, I guess, but as a Dawgs fan, with the Ducks as my second favorite team, I hope the roll begins after the date in the Benz on September 3.

Great article! I think I anticipated the enthusiasm of CDL and the reactions of the Duck Nation when I said in one of my first posts that you were going to love this guy. I have said this before and will say again that he will field a good product and have his kids sky high--a characteristic I never really saw during the two years watched CMC's teams. Some of you may be too high on a first-year coach who will make mistakes (they all do). So don't saddle him with unrealistic expectations.

Hey David, I profess to be surprised on perusing this board that many Duck fans are as obsessed about recruiting rankings as SEC fans. Everyone is so stoked about landing a 5-star, yet it may interest some to know that a fair number of such recruits end up playing far below their high school recruiting rankings in college. I get much more satisfaction out of the 3-stars who come in, work heir tails off for 3-4 years and end up being taken in the first three rounds of the NFL draft. Some coaching staffs are great at identifying these hidden jewels on a regular basis. Kirby Smart tells his incoming recruits that they all have 0 stars as college entrants and how well they learn and practice is the primary factor determining how often they end up seeing the playing field for game action.

YESSSSS I am so ready!!!

I listened to the podcast in question today and do not remember hearing the podcaster say the Dawgs would shut the Ducks out. He is often prone to exaggerate and may have made that claim but I often tune out his pontifications. Case in point: Our podcaster dislikes Nick Saban and tries to convince us that Saban resents Kirby Smart big time. I have it from multiple sources that they are actually quite friendly and genuinely respect each other. I had each of these guys in class (25 years apart) and my assessment leads me believe that they are the kind of men who would get along. Podcasters, I have learned, often should be taken with a grain of salt.

I still remember as a grammar school student listening to Russell and his San Francisco Dons playing on AM radio. Those Dons teams got me following college basketball and interested in the NCAA tournament. Within only a few years however, while Russell was winning more NBA titles than any other player in history, John Wooden and his Bruins were taking over college basketball. Great memories for a young kid.

This is terrible news not only for Spencer's family and the Duck nation but for college football fans everywhere. Rest in Peace young man.

I think that Farrell, who is very controversial in the opinion of recruitniks that live recruiting, is vastly undervaluing Arch's understanding of the game and ability to read defenses at the line of scrimmage. These things are not really necessary for 7 on 7 drills at the camps. Arch is good but not great at the physical aspects of the game. I've heard that Georgia's OC Todd Monken values a QB's understanding of the game as much or more as the person's raw physical attributes and athleticism. That is why he was all in on Arch. There were probably at least five QBs in the 23 class with better physical attributes than Arch. Heck, you guys now have a commitment from one of them.

Hey David, all is good here. My post was not intended as a shot at you but only as a piece of information. I do agree with you that the Benz in Atlanta is hardly a neutral site. I don't set gambling spreads but I would bet that the site more favorable to the Dawgs is worth about 6 points of of the 17-point spread set for that game.

Kirby Smart has already said that he'd love to play a game in Autzen. And although some of these series may not be played given conference realignments, Smart had scheduled a half dozen or more home and homes with college football bluebloods over the next 8-10 years. Georgia fans want these games and have demanded them. Now Alabama...that is a different story unless home and homes that I don't know about have recently been scheduled be the Tide

Definitely a big get! Congrats Ducks.

I haven't followed very closely, but saw something suggesting that Phil Knight's preference is that the Ducks end up in the SEC. Anybody know what gives here? I have subsequently seen on SEC blogs that Oregon to the SEC is real possibility. I would love to welcome the Ducks but have trouble seeing that as the best course for the team solely due to travel logistics. I do believe that were the Ducks suddenly immersed into the SEC they could hold their own in most major sports. But that seems like a radical move to me. Anyone else hearing any smoke of this kind? Just curious.

There is an element of truth to the quest for the all mighty dollar being a stain on the game. But... I am a big fan of settling who is number 1 competitively. It is an imperfect metric but one that beats the h--l out of poll determined championships and will spark intense interest when playoffs are expanded. I'll just say that the competition-based championships work just fine in NCAA basketball and baseball and has for decades. These tournaments have only become more popular as they have become larger. I am a fan of preserving as many traditions as feasible however.

Were I a Duck fan first and foremost I would prefer playing in a merge with the Big-12 to the B1G (which I think is overrated in both football and basketball. Whomever wins the championship of such a conference is definitely going to the playoffs and, in a 12 team playoff, the runner-up likely goes as well.

Hey, I have to agree with this entire post except for one point about the Nevada desert: bury their stinking corpses anywhere but Nevada. We don't care to have them.

This was my first choice as well. No doubt that a 14-16 team league with highly attractive options in all major sports could be formed and the money aspects of the aggregation could be substantial with inclusion of some east coast teams. This would prevent having to play in what is, in my opinion, the most boring league with respect to football in the country. Ohio State looks like a modern team but the rest largely do not. Feel free to disagree, but I believe that the B1G is the most overrated conference in both football and basketball. Clark Kellogg, whom I generally like a BB analyst, tried to justify inclusion of 9 B1G teams to the NCAA tournament on the basis of excellent competitive balance in the conference. How many of those teams were left after the first day of the sweet 16 round? If memory serves me it was none. So competitive mediocracy. And you may be surprised when the last time was that a B1G team raised the trophy in the men's basketball tournament. Look it up; I'll bet you'll be surprised. So I may be wrong, but I believe that a "best of" the ACC, Pac-12, and Big-12 options could be a real winner.

The illusion of the PAC-12 remainders joining with the ACC made me laugh. Imagine Stanford, Cal, Oregon, and Washington, all of whom are within an hour or two of the Pacific Ocean, playing in the ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE. A geographer's nightmare.

Oregon football and basketball are too good to be excluded from a superconference and, much as you hate me to say it, the same is true (well maybe not for basketball) of the Washington Huskies. The question is how to configure such a conference (i.e, who constitutes it)? How's that for a thought question?

I am still trying to get my head around the news from LA today. Like SoGaDawg, I do not like this turn of events for many reasons, most of them already mentioned by others on this forum and the Talkn Dawgs site. Like FishDuck, I love this game but fear that it could become unrecognizable. On the Dawgs site, the speculators have already reconfigured the old power 5 conferences in ways I would never have imagined. Maybe something good will come out of it --my best guess is that it will hasten the development of expanded playoffs. One thing seems certain to me: we will be feeling our way along and hoping for the best over the next several seasons.

A lot of SEC fans were against expanding the SEC by taking Texas and Oklahoma. Many of us would rather have added Florida State and Clemson if expansion were to happen. At least that ensures that the added teams were truly Southeastern. I absolutely hate the cannibalization of conferences. Maybe I am simply too traditional, but with this trend and an out-of-control NIL scene my interest in my favorite game is flagging a bit.

I don't know. The roughly 75% blue chip ratio and "AB" type of QB worked pretty well for Georgia last year! Of course that QB is vastly underrated just showing one of the flaws in the star ratings system, I suspect this QB will do just fine running the show this year.