We are at the halfway point of the 2024 season and this new era of college football. The B1G added four West Coast teams to the league this season, and there are some clear winners in this conference expansion. The Oregon Ducks are flying high after their win over Ohio State, and the media executives at Fox and NBC couldn’t be happier. However, there may be some regrets on the side of the losers. This is a hot subject with Mr. FishDuck, and he took some time from his fun at Kiwibets to express his thoughts to me.
L.A. Despair
The two schools with perhaps the biggest regrets reside in L.A., as both USC and UCLA have struggled in their first years in the B1G. UCLA is awful, and if they were still in the Pac-12, they would probably be towards the bottom of that conference. But they wouldn’t have to consistently travel across the country to get their butt kicked.
The Bruins got close to getting their first conference win last Saturday, but those pesky Minnesota Golden Gophers fought back and pulled off a massive second-half upset. The Gophers are fine with the addition of the two L.A. teams this year, as they have wins over both of them, and in a year that was seen as a bit of a make-or-break year for P.J. Fleck, these two wins have been a boon.
USC hasn’t fared much better, as they have dropped three games to B1G foes, all of which were one-score games. Perhaps their loss to Penn State this weekend was the most egregious, as they dominated the first half and couldn’t close the game out. They had more rushing yards and won the turnover battle but couldn’t put the game away, and Penn State won with a field goal in overtime.
UCLA looked overwhelmed when facing the Ducks, and their B1G track record hasn’t been much better.
(Photo By: Eric Becker)
These are the types of programs the B1G was expecting to gain from the West Coast. Yes, these teams that have great media markets, but in the end, they conference wanted West Coast programs that weren’t able to stack up against the B1G in the trenches. Neither USC nor UCLA were prepared for the B1G, and there are bound to be regrets among the L.A. fan bases.
Blue Blood Regrets
On the other side, the blue bloods in the B1G have been shocked by a couple of these former Pac-12 teams. Just not the ones that they would have thought.
Washington delivered a loss to Michigan in Husky stadium – the Wovlerines’ first conference loss of the season, but unlikely to be their last. Michigan isn’t a great team this year but they are good enough to beat up on much of the rest of the conference. This Washington team isn’t great either, clearly in a rebuild, and they were badly beaten by Iowa this last weekend.
But Oregon has shaken the conference to its core. Oregon (and Washington) were both brought in at half-price media shares for the first few years. The Ducks are a big enough brand to be worth it, but in the minds of the blue bloods, should never compete with the B1G royalty.
After all, Washington lost to Michigan last year in the National Championship Game, and Oregon lost to Ohio State in the 2015 National Championship Game. Strangely, in the lead up broadcast to this year’s game, no one mentioned Oregon’s win over Ohio State in 2021.
Terrance Ferguson runs for a big gain after the catch against Ohio State.
(Photo By: Eric Becker)
The Ducks and Huskies were supposed to be cannon fodder for the blue bloods. Sure, the Ducks were supposed to knock off some of the middle-of-the-pack B1G teams, and maybe be a pretender to challenge the great Ohio State, but we weren’t supposed to beat them.
But we did beat them.
Yes, it was only by one point, and there is some arguing that Ohio State should have had a field goal shot, which was denied because of the offensive pass interference penalty and Dan Lanning’s intentional penalty trickery.
The Duck’s aren’t done, and with Michigan left on the schedule, there is another opportunity for the Ducks to shake up the status quo of the B1G in year one.
Comeuppance for Killing the Pac-12
Fox and NBC were the big winners of killing the Pac-12 and prying the L.A. schools out of the West Coast conference and into the B1G. For them, this is paying off big time. The ratings couldn’t be better. But I can’t help but think right now that both L.A. schools may be regretting their choices to leave the conference and initiate its death rather than sticking with their old rivals.
Sure, the payout might not have been as good, but it would have been better than the Apple TV offer, as the Pac-12 without the L.A. media market wasn’t deemed worthy of survival. In the old Pac-12, USC would be far more relevant and probably the No. 2 team in the that conference with a chance to make the playoff. Instead, USC currently sits in the bottom half of the B1G rankings, and UCLA is the cellar.
Ohio State has a loss on their record to a team not named Michigan, and Michigan is looking at losing to another West Coast team before the year’s end.
Ultimately, Lanning was right: the B1G is going to have to adjust to Oregon. They let a wolf into the conference thinking it was sheep and now they’re paying for it.
David Marsh
Portland, Oregon
Top Photo By Eric Becker
Andrew Mueller, the FishDuck.com Volunteer Editor for this article, works in higher education in Chicago, Illinois.
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David Marsh is a high school social studies teacher in Portland, Oregon. As a teacher he is known for telling puns to his students who sometimes laugh out of sympathy, and being both eccentric about history and the Ducks.
David graduated from the University of Oregon in 2012 with Majors in: Medieval Studies, Religious Studies, and Geography. David began following Ducks Football after being in a car accident in 2012; finding football something new and exciting to learn about during this difficult time in his life. Now, he cannot see life without Oregon football.