Good Luck Ducks, Week 8: Top 10 Showdown

The first big conference game of the year brings ESPN College Game Day to the yard. 

 

After a bye week, a rested Oregon Ducks squad is back at Autzen to host Chip Kelly's UCLA Bruins. This is the first Chip Kelly team that quite honestly has been any good since he left Oregon a decade ago. UCLA is led by super senior QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson and his scrambling attack. As usual with any Chip Kelly team, they can be fairly unpredictable on offense with an overall goal of keeping the defense out of rhythm.

The Ducks cruised to a win two weeks ago at Arizona and haven't really been challenged by anyone other than Washington State since the opening week debacle. This is the time of year where it actually starts to make sense to start ranking teams, and as fate would have it, both of these teams find themselves in the top ten and looking for control of first place in the conference. This is the first season since expanding from ten teams where divisions have effectively been eliminated except for the purpose of scheduling. This year, the top two teams in the team will face each other in the conference championship game instead of the two division winners. This means that Oregon can't afford to lose to a southern opponent and still expect to get an automatic spot in the December game in Las Vegas. Of course, playing in front of the home crowd with an offense that's really been rolling, losing will be the furthest thing from their minds.

Notes and other things:

• UCLA, of course, is one of the two schools moving to the B1G in a couple of years. They're deserting the only conference they've ever known for more TV money and a potentially wider audience. To me, this seems like it will cause the larger conference to lose its identity, but it might also be the push to make conferences themselves largely irrelevant. It's an interesting shift that flies in the face of tradition. I'll miss the way things were but not the ridiculously overrated and overhyped LA schools.
• Something that hasn't been seen so far this season in Eugene: cold, rainy weather. That's definitely in the forecast today, although It Never Rains in Autzen Stadium.
• College GameDay is in Eugene right now. If you made it down early, you might have scored some free donuts or something. It's interesting that ESPN picked this one as the game is one of the few top tier games today that is being broadcast by FOX.
• UCLA has never been involved in the College Football Playoff discussion and hasn't been to the Rose Bowl since 1998, the first year of the now defunct BCS playoff system and the only BCS appearance they would make. And yet, they are off to greener pastures. Must be nice.

Game time is 12:30 PM PDT on FOX in Eugene. Go Ducks!