Good Luck Ducks, Week 1: Marcus in the Middle

Well, well, well. It's our old friend, college football. This marks the fifth (!) season of Good Lucks Ducks at Cards on Cards, where I take a momentary break to babble on about young dudes in pads at the place where I went to school for awhile. Since I rarely post on Saturdays, anyway, you baseball card fans can rest assured knowing that this isn't taking up any of your precious take-me-out-to-the-ballgame time. For now, it's time to put away the redundantly sung peanuts and Cracker Jack and reach into the fridge for a cold, I don't know, Bud Light Ultra Mega Platinum, or whatever it is football fans drink.

Oregon had an amazing season last year, once again, which makes me sound like a broken record. The Ducks are 44-9 since I started writing these missives back in 2008. They overcame a opening game loss to the eventual BCS runner-up LSU, survived a bitter November defeat at the hands of the cheating Trojans and ended up with their first Rose Bowl win since they beat Penn way back when people were still navigating the Oregon Trail, getting dysentary and such. LaMichael James is gone. Darron Thomas is gone (presumed to be working as a teller at Wells Fargo, I guess?) The Ducks take the field for the first time in a season with a starting quarterback (Marcus Mariota) who has not taken a snap under center in a real game for the first time since Akili Smith shared duties with Jason Maas back in 1997. Some guys have transferred. There's a lot of talent left, however, and a #5 ranking to live up to.

Arkansas State is a Sun Belt conference school. I would normally be completely dismissive of them, but they did finish 10-3 last year (and win their conference) and this year see Gus Malzahn taking over as head coach for the first time. Malzahn was the offensive coordinator at Auburn when the Tigers beat the Ducks in the BCS title game less than two years ago, so there's little doubt that he knows a thing or two about Oregon. This is the year the Ducks went full-on SEC with their non-conference scheduling, with three home games against vastly inferior schools. Tonight's game is the most worrisome of the three. Let's hope the Ducks are ready. We know their uniforms will be.

I'm not a big fan of fan-made compilation videos, especially ones with music, but this one was especially well done (aside from the use of Eminem.)

Game time is 7:30 pm PDT with national coverage on ESPN. Go Ducks!