The Kamikaze Kid

Utah's rise to the top of the Pac to me is very similar to UO's rise under Rich Brooks. Slow but steady march up from the bottom based on tough nosed football. By finding the right 2-3 star guys and coaching them up, they finally surpassed USC and the fuskies. I look forward to some great games with Utah in the future with both teams looking at the playoffs with a win.

"We want to throw them in there early," Lanning said. "Let them get some experience and see how they take it. I'm not a big believer in having guys learn and watch from the sideline. You want to be able to get mental reps when you can, but you can do that by getting reps. We're gonna throw those guys out on the field, coach them as we go, and if there's things we can improve on, that's what we want to focus on."

Lanning put together a top notch coaching staff and held together a splintering recruiting class all while game planning a smothering defensive scheme for the mighty Bama in a championship game. Outside of Coach Smart himself, can anybody really claim to be in his league?

UCLA is the tag along "friend" in a horror film. We all know how this will end before it begins.

We're in their heads like Freddie Kruger.

If the BIG sees these comments, they might just invite UO for the rivalry aspect alone!

I still think the Pac, Big 12 and Mountain West should combine and create two conferences. One would be a rival of the BIG and SEC (UO, UU, OK st SD st etc). The other would be a life boat for the less sports driven universities (WSU, OSU, Cal, K st, CSU etc). If that new upper conference forms an alliance with the ACC playing games, that should keep the top teams in the playoff picture with strength of schedule and should be able to generate a decent TV deal.

Mariwho?

I think she understands that most pro teams have large yearly value growth regardless of how they are run. She seems fine with just holding on and letting the value rise regardless of how much ownership incompetence damages the competitiveness of the team. I'm afraid the Blazers are sailing towards worst case scenario.

Eugene is one hour east of some of the most beautiful coast line in the country and one hour west of 10,000 foot mountain peaks. Day hiking around Fall Creek or up the McKenzie Highway will not disappoint!

If you're into tradition, forget about Notre Dame. Nobody will ever be able to compare with the string of national championships in the 1890's by Yale!

I think Texas, Notre Dame, USC and fuskies all should be in the Delusions of Grandeur (DoG) Conference. There they can all declare themselves preseason #1s regardless of what reality says.

The more I think about OegonDucks plan of a neutral site game in LA, the more I like it. I could see Uncle Phil sponsoring some sort of yearly challenge to the best of the best against the Ducks at So Fi Field. Like the pre season NIT in NYC for basketball. Turn it into a monster LA recruiting event and USuCk and the bumbling bruins would really regret their BIG decision and the Ducks would own that town.

The Ducks are 3-0 vs USC, UCLA and tOSU in the last three games played on their own fields so you're probably right. Oh and might as well ad in Michigan and make it a perfect 4-0!

This one wins the internet!

OST8 Howdy. I think must folks here are just shell shocked by the sudden departure news and are just throwing out different options to get a sense of which direction the Ducks should go in. I don't think anyone is disrespecting the Big 12. The appeal of SDSU is more about having a footprint in the So Cal TV market which has been the UO's recruiting hotbed up to this point. Since most feel that USC and UCLA's prime motivation for leaving the Pac was to shut out the Ducks from dominating recruiting in LA, a top priority people are feeling is to figure out how to get back in there while staying nationally relevant. If we become conference mates in the near future, I'm sure the fan base will embrace it. Right now, I think most of us are kind of feeling like we just got dumped on prom night.

As we pour over every scrap of information we can find and every possible merger and realignment, scenario gets discussed, are we sure everything is even that bad? I think the worst aspect of all of this is more about viewership in the LA market and TV revenue dipping than anything else. If the UO just stays at the top of whatever conference they find themselves in, they will still command attention. How excited will recruits be to join up with 7-5 USC or 5-7 UCLA when 11-1 #5 UO is battling to get into the playoffs year after year. The LA schools locking themselves into super conference mediocrity may be the best thing that's ever happened to the Ducks. Even as the Pac 12 has been down the last few years, the UO has still been recruiting like mad all over the country. Maybe the best thing to do is keep on keeping on as we always have. If the Ducks keep hovering around the top 10 they will be added into some super conference at some point and we can still cheer on a top 20 team in the hunt for a playoff spot until then.

I don't think the Pac or Big 12 poaching a few teams from one or the other moves the needle that much. I think a full merger just creates a bloated conference with a lot of dead weight. It seems like the only way forward would be for the two conferences to realign and form two new conferences. If that happens poaching SD St from the Mountain West would also make sense. I have no idea if this kind of realignment is even possible but something major needs to happen or all involved will get left behind.

Now that you brought it up, Auburn scored a safety after a weak motion penalty on UO negating a near first down run when they were just trying to run out clock to protect a halftime lead. The Harris interception was on the ensuing drive which Auburn converts into a touchdown one or two plays later. Deyer's down, get up and run sets up the 0:00 game winning field goal. Twelve points gifted to one team in a championship game. Grrrrrr

And the Cliff Harris interception was good!

Howdy McDawg. To help get caught up to speed, the proper term for Oregon State is 'Little Brother". The proper term for Washington is fuskies as in "Huck the Fuskies!". Which brings us to both our favorite win and favorite phrase, Kenny Wheaton's gonna score! This one play in one game in 1994, completely altered the trajectories of both programs to this day.

Yeah. I don't see him bankrolling a bunch of 4/5 star guys in the future, but I could absolutely see him do it in this instance to prove the point that he could in these earth shaking times of realignment.

Makes me wonder if Uncle Phil doesn't just step in with huge NIL bling here just to show the The BIG and SEC that he ain't messing around.

I'd love to hear what a conversation between the SEC commissioner and Uncle Phil sounds like. Something tells me they'd be speaking each others language.

After thinking things over, here is a plan that I think would be even better than just simply joining the BIG 10 or combining the PAC and Big 12. It would take the PAC, Big 12 and Mountain West and combine them together into two conferences. Here are the conferences as they are now. Big 12: Ok St, Baylor, ISU, KSU, KU, WV, TCU, TTU, Cinn, Hou, BYU, CFU Pac 12: UW, WSU, UO, OSU, Cal, Stan, UU, CU, AU, ASU Mountain West: USU, Air Force, BSU, Wyoming, CSU, NMU, SD St, Fresno St, Nev, SJ St, Hawai, UNLV Here is one option of what this plan could look like: New Conference A: OK st, Baylor, KU, TCU, TTU, Cinn, Hou, BYU, UW, UO, Stan, UU, CU, ASU, SD St, BSU, Fresno St, UNLV New Conference B: ISU, KSU, WV, CFU, WSU, OSU, Cal, AU, USU, CSU, Air Force, Wyoming, NMU, Nev, SJ St, Hawaii With this plan, the best sports schools align together. New Conference A has 18 teams with a presence in So Cal, Nor Cal, NW, Las Vegas, Phoenix, SLC, Denver, and Texas. Teams can stay within there geographical areas without traveling across the country. West Virginia and Central Florida may need to join somewhere else or stay. This new conference would still be third place behind the expanded SEC and BIG but it would be much closer to them than just keeping the Pac or Big 12 as is and adding a few teams to them. I know some old time rivalries get axed for many schools but desperate times call for desperate measures.