Following the big win against Michigan State last week, much of the ink spilled focused on Oregon’s suddenly clear path to the College Football Playoff. The Ducks had defeated their best opponent they would face in the regular season, and by the transitive property of college football, will win all games thereafter. Of course, Saturday showed why making such assumptions after the …
At some point during Michigan State’s 20-point run in the second and third quarters, I recalled a forgotten worry of many Oregon fans: “Wait, did the Ducks ever solve the ‘teams with great defenses shut Oregon down’ perception?” Turns out, they hadn’t. That had been the nightmare that had haunted Oregon for the past five seasons, that its offense looked …
With the Ducks revealing little in anticipation of next week’s non-conference pièce de résistance, it was two true freshmen left to dominate the storylines from Saturday’s game: The Unveiling of Royce Freeman Kickoff wasn’t until 7:30 Saturday night, but the texts came early in the morning: “Is Royce going to live up to the hype?” Of all the question marks that …
What will the 2014 season look like? After eight months of speculating, the first part of that question will be answered this Saturday. Those outside of the Oregon program seem certain everything will be just resemble the Ducks we’ve seen much of the past five seasons; the favorite in the Pac-12, and a contender for a playoff spot come January. …
As I was wrapping up my final breakdown of prospective power conference schools, this year’s release of one of the signature college selection guides was released. The Princeton Review’s guide to “The Best 379 Colleges” is an annual compilation of lists in a variety of categories to help prospective students make the best choice for their education. Of course, the list …
What if we ignored geography and tradition today and aligned the conferences solely based on football? That was a question posed by two sports researchers at Ohio State University, whose explanation was the subject of a Wall Street Journal article last week. The public response was typical: this could never happen, it ignores all rivalries, it’s unfair by loading all the …
All of the attention this fall is going to be on the outcome of the four teams “The Committee” picks to play in the first-ever college football playoff. Even if those four spots are distributed evenly across the power conferences, there will still be at least one conference that will miss out on the inaugural playoff. This, of course, did …
2013 was the first season in the recent wave of conference realignments that the five power conferences didn’t see any member change conferences. Tomorrow that hiatus ends as realignment returns with Louisville, Rutgers and Maryland all finding new homes amongst the five power conferences, the latter two joining the Big Ten. It only makes sense that the biggest increase in …
It’s graduation weekend, and that means people everywhere are gathering to celebrate the academic accomplishments of someone in their life. Along with graduations themselves, there are parties, dinners, etc. all around celebrating those accomplishments. These are the type of events were a lot of small talk is made about schools: reflecting on those schools they have been attending, talking about …
It has to be fun to be an SEC fan. Fans outside the conference may not like them, a sentiment many media outlets fuel, i.e., how much more “dominant” the SEC is than the rest of college football. What has people frustrated is that, while the conference may be producing more “NFL-ready”-types than any other conference, the disparity between the …
I’m not saying it is going to happen; just saying it is possible. Not likely, just possible. Like writing a will before travelling abroad: if there’s even a moderate chance of something bad happening, prudent people take precautions to mitigate the danger. Wills are written in case the unexpected happens, that remote possibility no one else saw coming, to let everyone know you …
A lot can be said about Larry Scott, but he certainly does one thing right. As someone who leads an organization founded around the activities of college students, he models perfectly what it takes for those students to be successful at a job: talk a big game early, reference wild innovations to the organization, deliver early returns, and it masks a …