Good morning, Ducks! Last Saturday I brought you Part One of my Super Accurate 2014 predictions for the upcoming football season. Part Two was available to subscribers only. If you want to subscribe, my PayPal information is available. Subscribers get inside information on my predictions as well as fun, behind the scenes looks at my life.
For subscribers only: What did I have for breakfast today?
A look inside the old crystal ball reveals that there will be turmoil across the land during the upcoming college football season. Not the least of these tumultuous situations will involve a prominent Pac-12 South team, and a perennial Top 10 team from the southwest. A school known as the Duke of the Midwest (but only by their own graduates) will be exposed, as well, and one of the truly prestigious academic powerhouses out of the State of Oregon will brace for a media onslaught. Let’s get to the predictions.
1. Northwestern Wildcats: In 2014, Northwestern will be exposed as the Liars that they have always been! They aren’t northwest of anything except the East Coast and a lot of the Eastern Seaboard is north of “Northwestern!” Haven’t they ever heard of New England? How can you expect small children to learn geography if you call a school from suburban Chicago “Northwestern?” It’s chaos, I tell ya! Look what “Northwestern” is making innocent, gullible schoolchildren call other parts of the country.
“Dixie”
2. Texas Christian University: The Horned Frogs of TCU can’t yet be numbered among the elite in terms of football success but they are certainly in the next tier. No one looks forward to playing TCU and the Little School That Could from Fort Worth is showing that it both can and does compete at the highest level.
Trouble brews, though, just as surely as the sand blows from the dusty plains of West Texas and into Carter Stadium on the campus of TCU. You see, TCU takes seriously all three of their letters. Texas Christian University. No problem with Texas (though the people who named Northwestern may want to put TCU in Puerto Rico) and no problem with University. But the purple clad Horned Frogs are on the horns of a dilemma when it comes to Christian. In 2014, TCU will have to come to grips with something rather important …
Recent discoveries of Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran tell us that purple makes God nauseous.
3. UCLA: I am a middle child, so I get it. My older brothers got the chicks and my baby brother got the goodies. The Bruins have always been the poster child for “Middle Child Syndrome.” No matter how many O.J. Simpsons, Reggie Bushes, and O.J. Mayos are produced by USC, the Trojans are always the top school in the Southland. No matter how many knifings occur right outside the gates of Troy, ‘SC is where some of the brightest minds want to matriculate. Things may be looking up for UCLA right now, but in the back of their minds, they know that in 2014 just as in every other year …
Deep down, their coach hates them.
4. Portland State University: Normally a sleepy little commuter school located in Portland’s Park Blocks, PSU should be ready for a media onslaught in the next few weeks. They are about to be the glad recipients of Oregon State’s annual gag job. A few years ago it was Sacramento State. Then it was Eastern Washington. One year it was Linn-Benton High School. This year the Vikings of PSU will get all the attention when they take down a Pac-12 school and do it on the floor of Reser Stadium. The sports information department at PSU has already doubled their staff to two and the mimeograph and lino-type machines are ready to spin into action.
Of course, its possible that it isn’t even a big deal anymore (brought to you by Beaver Floss & Dental).
Meanwhile, Duck fans await the arrival of the Coyotes of the University of South Dakota. Usually we like to take the opportunity to skewer the opposing team as the game approaches. But we will probably take a pass on picking on poor little USD …
Go Ducks!
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Kim Hastings is a 1984 graduate of Northwest Christian College. He cut his journalistic teeth as sports editor of a paper in his home town of Fortuna, CA, and, later as a columnist for the Longview Daily News in Longview, WA.
He saw his first Oregon game in 1977 and never missed a home game from 1981 until a bout with pneumonia cut his streak short in 1997. He was one of the proud 3200 on a bitterly cold night in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1989 for the Independence Bowl, and continues to be big supporter of Oregon sports. He is an active participant on the various Oregon Ducks messageboards as “TacomaDuck.”