The Oregon Ducks have scored another prodigy for their track and field program, this time with Jackson Mestler of Sheldon High School. Anyone who payed attention to the high school races during the recent Oregon Relays at Historic Hayward Field has seen the name before. Mestler is no stranger to the greatness of Oregon running, after all, he grew up in …
The 2012 recruiting class for college football was full of stellar defensive line prospects that had big dreams and huge hopes of becoming the next legend for the school that each prospect signed to play for. DeForest Buckner (DeFo) was not an exception when the 6-foot-7 inch Hawaiian declared to play at the University of Oregon. He had many options …
The 2016 preseason Top 25 college football (CFB) polls, including ESPN’s FPI rankings that we reviewed last week, are pounding down the Pac-12. In the four ‘big time’ polls, the putative 2016 champion Stanford Cardinal is ranked as follows: ESPN 8; FOX Sports 11; Sports Illustrated 11 and CBS 14. The Oregon Ducks are not ranked higher than 20 in any of these polls. …
The Ducks have pitching weapons in reserve. The heavy and light arms will have to continue to move Oregon forward until the punchless offense decides whether they are committed to the “small ball” approach of years past or if George Horton has decided to blaze a new trail for the second half of the year. Optimism about surging bats and …
It didn’t start with Moneyball, but the book, and movie starring Brad Pitt, about Major League Baseball’s Oakland A’s certainly shined a deserving spotlight on the relationship between statistics, math and winning. Now is a great time of year to find some interesting college football pieces; for example, a recent article listed the college football programs with the most wins …
Any college football (CFB) fan with anything more than a passing interest in the game knows that it is next to impossible to escape CFB’s ESPN media supremacy including The Worldwide Leader’s ubiquitous prediction machine, the Football Power Index (FPI). In the near future I will be offering up my preseason 2016 CFB Dandy Dozen; the 12 teams that I believe …
Nearly a month and a half into the season the Ducks have not flown as high as I had hoped this winter. But their performance has been more in line with what we had expected. The pitching staff has performed well and the offense is still finding their groove. After the 10-1 shellacking of Portland on Wednesday evening, there is …
Head trauma, including Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) damage and player safety, in general, are major areas of concern today in both the NFL and in college football (CFB). With parents and guardians concerned about head injuries, participation in youth football continues to decline. In response, a number of youth leagues have eliminated tackling in both practice and in games. The Ivy League recently eliminated live tackling in …
Something a sportscaster stated in one of the Sweet 16 pre-game shows really resonated with me, when he offered that, “Every time I watched Oregon this season – they were a little better.” Amen, as the improvement (a classic Dana Altman occurrence every season) became very noticeable for those of us that had been watching from November until now. I’ll …
Yes … he really did! In his interview with sportscaster panelists on ESPN First Take Bill Walton was his usual self spouting interesting and at times, outrageous lines while being highly entertaining in the process. They asked him, “Who is going to win it all?” Bill answerd, “OREGON … I love the way they play.” A panelist exclaims, “Oregon? A lot of …
My friends – I went looking for information about Duke basketball, and ran into an article that just dumped all the material you can to brag about a team into one compact view. The post was supposed to be about the match-up between the Ducks and Blue Devils, but it was all about their tradition, their great coach, the plaudits …
Mr. Lawrence Scott Commissioner, Pacific 12 Conference 360 3rd Street, 3rd Floor San Francisco, CA 94107 Dear Mr. Commissioner, As a graduate of John Harvard’s University, I am reasonably certain that somewhere along your educational path you studied the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. The law that tells you ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ has to be one of …