Mike Merrell’s Three and Out It stands to reason that the top football recruits will inevitably make for the best teams. Three of the four teams playing in the 2014-15 National Championship Playoffs — Alabama, Ohio State and Florida State — habitually have top-five recruiting classes. But the fourth — yes, our Oregon Ducks — don’t even come close. In …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out Lost in the excitement of the returning stars and the hope of stars to come is the quiet backbone of any football team. For the most part, these are the guys who didn’t grab the headlines their freshman years. They’ve been in the program for a year or two or three, possibly redshirting, biding their time behind …
Every football program and every coach wants to win. Unfortunately, the way the game is structured, there are always going to be as many losers as winners. So, we fans should be happy if our team wins more than half the time, right? Well… no! This might work for some: Colorado, California and Wazzu would see it as at least …
Mike Merrell’s Three and Out Sport for sport, the University of Oregon is one of the most successful athletic schools in the country. Cross country and track & field national championships — or at worst, high top ten finishes — have become the norm. Championships in football, softball, baseball, women’s volleyball, men’s basketball and golf have been close enough to …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out It used to be that the teams that specialized in getting those three-and-outs were the ones that won championships: offense wins games – defense wins championships. No offense, but times have changed. Tonight’s national championship game will pit two of the country’s top offensive teams against each other, while the top defensive teams sit at home, watch …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out The 101st Rose Bowl was in the books. Most of the press had not yet made it to the room for the post-game conferences, so I greedily claimed a front-row seat, wanting to be as close as possible to those whom I viewed as the biggest villains in college football: Jimbo Fisher and Jameis Winston. I couldn’t …
(Reporting from the Rose Bowl for FishDuck.com is Football Correspondent Mike Merrell) After noting the privilege of playing in the Rose Bowl, tipping his hat to Oregon, paying homage to his own team and expressing hope for the future, Florida State eventually got around to the nitty-gritty. “Starting slow against an athletic team like Oregon and Mariota wasn’t really good for …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out Throughout history, entire populations have been duped into following charismatic leaders with no scruples whatsoever. The unwitting populace draws power from the promise of the spoils of war, and celebrates the exclamation that they are the chosen, that they are the master race, that they are better than everybody else. Under these leaders, hubris and disregard for …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out Florida State’s ability to win close games this year is an enigma. Is it a team strength that the Seminoles always seem to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? Or is it a weakness that they find themselves needing to often enough to give their fans ulcers? In 2012 and 2013, Stanford was that sort of …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby wishes someone would have told him ahead of time that his conference would be punished for not having a championship game. It’s a sad fact of life: Some things you just have to figure out for yourself, and that one shouldn’t have been too difficult. The truth is, the Big 12 tried …
Finally, the Heisman Award has won — and won big. If there was ever a time when the Heisman Award, college football and the sport in general needed a win, right now was pretty much that time. And after a string of losses, the Heisman Award won the big one when Marcus Mariota accepted the stiff-arm trophy. Had Mariota stiff-armed …
Mike Merrell’s Three and Out Despite a mid-season hiccup that had bandwagon fans clinging for their dear fan-lives, the Oregon Ducks are in the first College Football Playoff as the Rose Bowl home team facing the Florida State Seminoles. It’s a great matchup: East vs West, North vs South, this year’s probable Heisman winner vs last year’s Heisman winner; and, …