“He can’t mean me!” I know that many of you were thinking that when you saw the title … but this applies to everyone, including Mr. FishDuck, as the events of the last year and a half got me thinking about this. How loyal would we be if one decision made 42 years ago, which was completely out of the …
Boy we have had some fun on this site over the years, and I kind of forgot until I recently had time to go through a bunch of prior articles for some new sections of the site I’m working on. I found four of my all-time favorite “Opponent Spoof” pictures and wanted to share them here. My purpose is twofold: 1) to see if …
Admit it, you’ve been thinking about this too. You even know what I’m about to write, but like me, you have not wanted to address it because you are still annoyed at the despicable way he dumped the Ducks. But this is Lent, a Christian time of sacrifice; of cleansing and making amends. Before we put the Willie Taggart era completely …
Well, here we are, Duck Fans. We’ve made it to the quiet time. The games have been played, the recruits have been signed and there are only a few more loose ends to tie up before we can close the books on the first term of the Cristobal Era and stash them away to gather dust. It has been a …
The things I overhear while chewing on a new toy from Mr. FishDuck! I shared with you the blustering in our household in another article, and recently I had to pause from licking to consider that someone was called the Godfather of Oregon football. I had to listen closer, as football “tall tales” are legendary at the Fischer residence, and …
After signing day I heard a lot of squawking about this recruiting class and couldn’t help but shake my head. For years Oregon fans have bemoaned the lack of elite line talent on our teams. This showed especially during bowl games against physical opponents from the Big 10 or SEC (I can still see OSU running counter trey over and …
I am delighted with the hire of Mario Cristobal as head coach at Oregon, and have been since his introductory press conference where he impressed the audience with his presence and his answers to me afterward concerning the Oregon offense. Any questions we had about his ability to recruit has been set aside considering how he achieved one of the …
In the aftermath of signing day, as we try to make sense of it all, I compiled a chart (see below) covering the past twelve years of Oregon recruiting to help put things in perspective—from the end of the Mike Bellotti era to the beginning of the Mario Cristobal regime. At first glance, it’s clear that things took a dip …
Just as Jake Locker got schooled on a blitz in the picture above, I learned about some new aspects of football recruiting this year, none of which I particularly care for. I am developing some ways to mentally prepare for them, some FishDuck Philosophies if you will, which will help overcome the roller-coaster ride that has become the modern day norm in college football recruiting. Consider …
Lately I’ve heard and read reactions from fellow fans about the 2018 recruiting class such as, “this was an unmitigated disaster” and “pretty good considering all that happened!” In the end–both opinions are correct, as it just depends upon your perspective in addressing the results. I have a usual positive spin from the predicable context angle, but I also want …
“Recruiting is the lifeblood of any program, so you can’t put anything above that … But it wouldn’t matter who you had here if you didn’t have the right mental attitude and work ethic. You need all those elements to come together to do something like we are doing.” – Pete Carroll (while head coach at USC). Of course, USC is …
Are you fretting like I am about how Oregon’s football recruiting class will turn out? I should be more mature than to put so much thought into the whims of 18 year olds–yet a ton of men are paid a hefty amount of money to turn those whims into signed letters of intent (LOIs), so maybe it isn’t so silly …