spartan2785

I remember there was a lot of concern that Oregon was in a bad spot after last year with the student chants in the BYU game about Mormons. Good for him, good for the Ducks, but I won't really think about it until after his mission, happens a ton where a guy decides to go somewhere else after that amount of time away from the game.

I'll be concerned until I see it in a real game, I've seen this story before about how the defense will be super improved only to be disappointed. Not saying we won't be improved, but Oregon's defense tends to get hyped up only to see us fall a bit short of what everyone was saying. I still remember the hype around Sewell/Flowe, and that did not turn out nearly as well as everyone was predicting. Popo a good player, needs to prove he can stay healthy, other guys need to fulfill their potential (Burch). No shame in saying that, they have potential, now go out and prove it with results, not hype.

I was thinking about posting a topic on this, I just couldn't believe that a coach would say if one player fights we all fight, actively encouraging escalating brawls instead of diffusing the situation. I know he is trying to build camaraderie in the team, but all this does is excuse players getting throw out of games for "standing up for themselves and teammates". It's what leads to undisciplined teams that kill themselves with penalties. One of the things that really pisses me off about Deion, is that he acts like he was some tough guy. The reality is he was supreme athlete who had ungodly cover skills, but was scared of contact and was at best an average tackler who would rather avoid actually squaring up whenever he could.

That's a bit high I think, there is no way I would go that high considering the way we looked on defense last year, no.`8-10 I could see, I think we're more in that 12 range a bit higher than 15 but not that much of a leap. The USC love is just so disgusting, it's a team that had an insane turnover margin that will most likely be at least halved, and it's still the same coordinator that hasn't had a legit defense in years. This is all with the easiest schedule that there was for conference play last year.

I really hope we can improve, but I'm hesitant to start believing again considering the player types that have been brought in as transfers, they don't shore up the obvious need for shooters, we might have a rough awakening when we join the league, especially when you consider the amount of travel we're going to have now, I wouldn't be surprised to see our non-football sports take a step back as they adjust to the increased travel.

The permanent opponents question is interesting since you could end up with really unbalanced schedules for certain teams, for instance you could have a team like Wisconsin where their permanent opponents are Minnesota, Illinois, and let's say Iowa, meanwhile Michigan St. gets Penn St., Michigan, and Ohio St., not exactly balanced. The Boise St. games are 2 home games for Oregon for one game in Boise, it's not ideal, but out here it's not that uncommon to see some of those Mountain West teams get an away game from a P12 team, only teams that I can think of that basically never schedule those games are USC, mostly because they usually have Notre Dame and another power 5 team.

Our OOC schedule I'm guessing is pretty up in the air at this point, the B1G might allow us to get away with our FCS opponents for a couple years, but I'm pretty sure they have a policy that you can't schedule these anymore, and we still don't know exactly how many conference games we're going to have. I'm sure we will have to pay schools if we decide to cancel future games, we had multiple games against B1G opponents that now are going to be canceled as OOC games. It will be interesting to see what we do. I wouldn't be surprised to see us back out of games against Boise St. if that means we get to play OSU instead. I'm not even sure what sort of strategy we're going to employ since our conference schedule might be more difficult now.

I wouldn't like to see Autzen get too big, it's not like we've been selling out every game consistently for the past few years, maybe there might be more interest, or we could see about the same level. Nothing is worse than when you have a decent game where you can see a ton of seats unfilled. Students have to show up better as well, you see a lot of seats unfilled and then empty early.

To be fair to Oram, I don't think he is saying that Oregon killed the Pac-12, he's just saying it's a consequence of all the terrible decisions made over the past 20 years, and that greed is the number one driving force in college sports now. I think he's closer to how everyone feels about this, that it's not a fun thing that has happened but that Oregon and Washington had to do this in order not to be among those left behind like OSU and WSU. The whole situation just sucks that the university presidents, Pac12 officials/leadership, and the media corps encouraged this with their actions and hubris. In an ideal world, OSU and WSU go to the Big12 since those fan bases actually care about sports unlike the bay area schools who could care less for the most part and are a major reason for why we got to this point.

Yes and no, the way to a conference title is most likely harder, but we are also probably going to get more credit for the wins that we do have. We will have a bigger chance being a 10-2 non conference title team getting in than in the Pac-12, but the road to 10-2 might be harder. A bit of a chicken and the egg scenario I think.

Yeah, the gap between the B1G and the P12 was never really that big, the only difference really was a strong tOSU that was better than most of our best teams, when you begin to look at Wiscy, Iowa, Penn St., Michigan (most of the past 15 years), it was never really that far off the Utah, Oregon, Stanford, or UW teams of the past 15 years. The bigger difference was more perception from attendance numbers / TV numbers, that inflate the look of those teams, it's hard to feel like a big boy program when half the stadium is empty like in the case of the California teams or the Arizona teams. Line play is not going to be a problem for Oregon, we've had consistently some of the best lines in college football, and we will most likely continue to have good line play.

One thing that won't happen is games against FCS opponents since I believe the B1G has a no FCS games policy, I don't know how that affects the current games on the schedule against those teams.

Charles is doing yeoman's work right now with these updates! Thank you since it allows me to avoid X/twitter.

Part of me just wants to join the B10, just to spite USC. They get one season where they have the easiest schedule in the Pac10, have an insane TO margin that won't be sustain, and still can't close the deal, and now they think they can dictate who can join their new league. The amount of arrogance is incredible but believable considering who it is. I still maintain that our game against USC is going to be the most insane atmosphere that Autzen has ever seen, wouldn't be surprised if it's the best environment that college football has this upcoming season if both teams are undefeated.

I don't have any real hate for the Beavs, yes I know they hate us with the power of a thousand suns, but I have enough friends who are Beavers that I really feel horrible for them, they don't deserve this, same with Wazzu. It's especially frustrating when you think about how programs like Rutgers, Indiana or Purdue get to skate by with no real care in the world.

Kind of depends on if you're talking about simply productivity in college or are you talking about success in the NFL, if it's the latter than I would agree with the idea that Stanford probably eclipses Oregon. For as much success we have had churning out productive RBs in college, not many of our guys have had a world of success at the next level.

Miami has a lot of things that are go for it....and a lot of things that go against it. Their facilities have always been pretty crappy, they have no on-campus stadium, they have a ton of teams that they have to fight recruits for, Miami as a city can be a huge distraction for players, and in the end it has a history now of embarrassing losses and no real identity anymore in how it plays. They do have also have a lot of things that are plus, one of the best recruiting hotspots in the country, glitz of playing in Miami, it's still the U even those that are growing up today know it had a ton of glory years, facilities are improving. When I write this it really is obvious that everything around it is a two edged sword. They have a great recruiting base, but it makes them really reliant on South Florida. The glitz of Miami means it can attract recruits, but it also makes for a huge distraction. They can get coaches in, but the fan base has no patience since it's a professional sports fan base that has no real brand loyalty. It's not an easy place to win nowadays. You have to wonder the type of coach they'll be able to attract once they get rid of Cristobal.

I'll be interested to see who is available for us to schedule a game with if we go to this, it will be worth it if it allows us to play more games against power 5 opponents, but it will be worthless if we simply schedule more games against the Big Sky or Sun Belt caliber teams.

I like how they talked about how we go as Nix goes, as if they weren't completely reliant on Penix on offense, I mean COMPLETELY reliant on him. At least we have a ground game to keep us going, take away Penix and they're back to where they were the previous year.

It seems like a really crappy thing to do, you can easily have the same effect of showing that actions have consequences by telling the team that a player has been dismissed for violating team rules. You also do not leave a decision like this to the entire team, that just means you are passing off the decision to others when you are supposed to be the leader. What happens when a popular player does something that merits a dismissal but the team lets them back in just because he's well liked? It is a very slippery slope when you let so many people decide the outcome, you're the leader act like on. This is not to say that a coach shouldn't get the perspective of those around them, especially when it is not revolved around legal issues and instead around team rules. So talking to a leadership council is important, you might even let that group vote on it, but I just don't think an entire team should be voting on the future of a player. You're either headed towards a divide in the team, or you are going to end up really botching some decisions in the future.

When I look at USC's schedule I see three losses, they aren't beating the ducks in Autzen in the last game between those two teams for a long while, it's just not going to happen, that will be one of the loudest environments that we have seen for a while imo, Riley will have a Lloyd Carr experience I feel like being surprised at the sort of environment Oregon can produce in high profile matchup. I also see USC losing in South Bend, not to mention they still need to prove they can beat Utah. They're probably the most overhyped team in the nation right now. Last year they had the easiest schedule in the Pac-12 missing out on Washington and Oregon. Even with this they almost lost to Cal, Arizona, and UCLA. UCLA was decent, but there is no excuse for almost losing to Cal and Zona, especially Cal. They did this all the while having an insane turnover margin that is almost certainly not going to continue.

IMO the two worst ideas for venues are putting the 4A championships at Forest Grove HS, and the Volleyball championships at Liberty HS, both deserve better than being put in random high schools, they deserve to be at actual universities. They both have large gyms, but it doesn't feel very special. Not everything has to be catered to Portland, Eugene represents a nice balance for the teams down south instead of traveling 5 hours up north.

I actually think the coolest thing it could be used for is the OSAA championships, get it out of Portland at their horrible venues and put it back in Mac Court where you had actual crowds and actual passion.

I do wonder where the 3 point line would be if this was to happen, is it the 20'6" WNBA line or the 23'9" NBA line, does make a difference.

Heart says 11-1, head says 10-2, reality is probably actually one of the two for once! As always injuries could have huge effect on the outcome of the games, you look at all the QBs in the top 4 teams and they have all had injuries, none of the teams have a backup that they feel even good about I would argue. With Oregon I think we'll see an offense that will be around the same mark as last year, the o-line is revamped but the skill positions are probably a step up from last year. The defense will be very interesting, Lanning certainly has had a very good idea about the type of players he wants for his scheme, and he's found the body types that he wants for those spots, now we have to see if the round pegs into round holes will prove the difference between last year and this upcoming season. I would bet we will see improvement, but it will be another year before we see a dominant defense. In the end I think we win all the games that we should, we beat USC at home, OSU, Utah will be a toss up, and for UW...well this is where I think we see if the defense has taken a step forward.