Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out By this time next week, half of the teams in the country will no longer be undefeated. As the season progresses and more teams fall, reality will set in for more and more fan bases — and coaches. Positive, confident outlooks are to be expected, but there are good reasons for coaches to know how far to …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out This is the third annual preseason report on teams that I don’t think are going to live up to the hype. Why bother to read another preseason projection? So far — for 2013 and 2014 — I’m 5 for 6 in picking overrated teams. And this is the swimsuit edition. Or is that “addition” — hard to …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out The wonderful thing about August is that every D-1 football program is undefeated, so dreams of what could happen have yet to be tainted with reality. The door for pundits to put together their Top-25’s and final fours is wide open. With not a whole lot of objectivity to go on, a certain amount of subjectivity is …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out In the 2012 preseason poll, the media picked what turned out to be the 7-6 University of Southern California Trojans as the top team in the land. It took three years to recover from being burned by their compulsive love for USC, but like a battered wife who can’t figure out that her prince just isn’t all that …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out It was just a year ago that many fans were crying “now or never” for Duck football. After all, it was going to be the last year for Marcus Mariota, Hroniss Grasu, Ifo Ekpre-Olomu, Arik Armstead, Erik Dargan, Tony Washington … and the list goes on. “Now” didn’t quite happen, but in the aftermath, it hardly seems …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out For Duck football fans, it used to be about beating the Beavers and the Huskies. Then it moved on to being about winning the Pac-10/12. Now with a Heisman in the trophy case, there’s just one bridge to cross to garner total respect: a national championship. That brings up a new group of rivals, most notably Ohio …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out Ordinarily, when a reputable football news source publishes bowl projections or preseason rankings, you’d say the predictions were “released.” This past week, Athlon Sports published its preseason Top-25 and final four lists, and there’s no way these things were released, not even with a locked-on ankle bracelet. Athlon tabbed Ohio State, Auburn, Alabama and Baylor as its preseason …
Mike Merrell’s Three and Out A recent article posted on obnug.com declared that the Pac-12 could make a “butt load of money by dumping Wazzou [sic].” It’s an idea that has some merit. There’s no way the Cougars could be bringing in their share of revenues – although that doesn’t stop them from taking their share of the pie. But there …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out A long time ago I was presented with a riddle that involved a war in the Middle East and went something like this: You take a hand-held calculator and add up or multiply this and that representing the numbers of opposing forces, tanks, aircraft, etc. Based upon the numbers given, you come up with 14,215,469. Then you …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out When Texas A&M’s Pat Henry complained about Oregon’s “unfair advantage” in hosting the NCAA Championships through 2021, he inadvertently called attention to the changing landscape of college athlete recruiting. Why Henry’s complaint is really about his position in the changing landscape of recruiting — rather than the advantage once on the track — is the subject of this …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out Texas A&M track coach Pat Henry thinks that Oregon has an unfair advantage at the NCAA Track & Field Championships, according to a Saturday article by Oregonlive’s Andrew Greif. Henry, it seems, thinks that the home field advantage works to Oregon’s favor — and he’s right. But Henry misses the boat when he jumps from “advantage” to …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out With the upcoming NCAA Track & Field Championships – and with the utter failure of the preliminary rounds as spectator events — those who oversee the events ponder what to do to generate more spectator interest, and, presumably, therefore more dollars. But maybe efforts to promote track & field should be made with something besides dollars in mind. …
