A Season Salvaged, but Questions on Defense Persist

Mike Merrell Editorials

Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out No bones about it, the 2015 football season freaked out its share of Oregon football fans, proving that there’s a difference between living in the present – which calls for focusing on doing your best — and getting caught up in the moment – which calls for abandoning all rational thought. Despite the sluggish start and mid-season …

Football Mysteries: Player Names, Home Team Losses and Inter-conference Play

Mike Merrell FishWrap, FishWrap Archive

Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out More so than most years, this college football season has produced much which, on the surface, just doesn’t make a lot of sense: home teams frequently losing, hardly anybody staying undefeated, a log jam of one-loss teams that threatens to be impossible to sort out, and yes, even players’ names. Making sense of players names, home team …

Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out: College Football Playoff

Mike Merrell FishWrap, FishWrap Archive

It would be kind to say that a four-team playoff is an improvement over the BCS Championship that it replaced. But what we have isn’t quite the same as trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It’s more like trying to fit five square pegs plus a few splinters into four round holes. What could go wrong? …