Oregon is known as a winning-prone football team in the last decade, and should have no trouble recruiting elite high school players year in and year out. With 10 wins this season, the Ducks have their seventh straight 10-or-more-win season, which is tied for first with Alabama. The Tide is appealing to football recruits these days because of their massive …
While the 2014 college football season is currently reaching the height of recruiting for the class of 2015, Oregon also has interesting features in planning for the 2016 class. There will be two high school juniors in attendance for the Stanford game on November 1st. With two commits already in this class and potentially one more announcing by the end …
A widespread change might be in place for football. The National Collegiate Athletic Association recently voted in favor of giving the five “power conferences” autonomy, to allow the student-athletes to participate in governing the entity they are bound in playing for at a Division I university. If sustained by the end of October, 2014, how will this affect the recruiting …
My FishDuck Friends — I wish to roll out a new feature called “Scott’s Turf” on the site that will appear on every Monday, which will have opinion-editorial pieces written by Scott Reed. Scott has been writing recruiting and game analyses articles every week for the Oregon franchise of Rivals.com Duck Sports Authority for many years. I’ve known him long before FishDuck.com …
The recruiting wisdom of Mark Helfrich is becoming more evident as time goes on. Most recently comes the news that Hawaii defensive tackle, Ratu Mafileo, got his “eligibility” green light from the NCAA and can now attend and play football at UO. The nephew of former Oregon great, Haloti Ngata, sheds new light on a 2014 recruiting class that was …
The Oregon football program is not regarded as a defensive juggernaut. An elite defense wasn’t the catalyst behind the evolution of the Oregon brand. In this new era of Oregon football, where fans expect championship runs, the offense seems almost to have become an after-thought. Improving the defense has become the focal point of radio pundits and TV personalities. Let’s …
While it seems like the 2014 class just signed their papers, the 2015 cycle is already well under way. Two of the common questions early each year are: “How many scholarships are available?” and “How will those scholarships be used?” Using a method I’ve used each of the past two years to predict upcoming class numbers to within one player, …
We all know of them, the “Web Wackos” who post crazy stuff about Oregon football on the major recruiting message boards. You would think they had never experienced a recruiting season before, and perhaps for some of the 14-year-olds posting (in maturity, if not biological), that is true. Sitting at the recruiting luncheon in Eugene, Oregon, a week ago made …
It’s the easiest thing to do — to make snap judgments or knee-jerk reactions. Those are what this world is based on (smartphone and twitter in hand.) However, in this instance — and it’s the same every year — the results from college football’s ultimate exploitation event, National Letter of Intent day, won’t be seen for another 2-3 years, and …
With less than a week left before national signing day, there are plenty of questions surrounding Oregon’s 2014 recruiting class. The only guarantee is that the next seven days will be eventful, one way or another. There are also seven names to keep an eye on during that time: DT Trey Lealaimatafao, DT Rika Levi, DT Ratu Mafileo, S Matrell …
Player personnel in college football is a constant revolving door — finding, developing and then plugging in the “next man up” is a never-ending battle for coaches. Entering the 2013 season, some notable personnel losses for the Oregon Ducks football team were apparent. Three senior linebackers and the program’s second-leading rusher, headlined a group of departing players who had become …
Recruiting is a merciless and often brutal component of the college football system. There’s no reason to sugar-coat it: the past couple weeks haven’t been ideal for the Ducks. This is not going to be another article about Budda Baker. There are plenty of those. The fact is Baker is a great player and a great kid with a chance …
