Oregon won the Pac-12. Fans of other teams, certain writers and even a radio host will try and throw asterisks at the mere presence of Oregon in the championship game, but those other teams didn’t win. One team with a lot to complain about is USC, losers of the Pac-12 Championship. The Trojans played a hard second half, not cutting …
Oregon won big at USC on Saturday. They won so big that USC might end up searching for a new head coach. That was the basis of almost every question posed to Clay Helton after a massive home loss to the surging Ducks. One reporter asked Helton if he went in to the game thinking that he was coaching for his …
Time to open up the DVR and realize that we’ve seen this movie before. The seventh-ranked Oregon Ducks are set to face off against the under-appreciated USC Trojans football team. Oregon is coming off a thrilling victory against Mike Leach’s Cougars while the Trojans are coming off a come-from-behind win against Colorado. This is not the first time Oregon has …
Mike Merrell’s Three-and-Out It’s time for my fourth annual calling out of three teams that I think are overrated. Qver the past three years, I’ve been right on 7 out of my 9 picks. Of course the two times I’ve been wrong, I’ve been very, very wrong (See Ducks, below, for explanation.), so take it to Vegas at your own …
Ok, so I’m just going to keep doubting the Ducks. That’ll mean that they keep winning … right? No, in all honesty, this is why I love and hate college football! It’s so maddening that the Ducks are playing as well as they are now. This means that they clearly should not be 7-3 whatever the reason: injuries, bad play …
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 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 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 …
