Good Luck Ducks, Week 5: Placeholder

 

Oregon heads to Pasadena for some #Pac12AfterDark #B1GAfterDark action. 
 
The Ducks finally are headed into their first Big Ten conference game and... oh boy... it's UCLA. Great. That's not terribly exciting. The two ex-Pac-Whatever teams are also being forced to play at 11:00 PM east coast time and somewhere the dark wizards chancellors(?) from Michigan and Ohio State and whatever that control everything in the conference are making sure they force these outsiders and lesser schools to play at weird times and on Fridays and what have you.

The sweetest revenge will be on the field, of course.

Mighty Oregon is coming in fresh off of a Beaver beatdown and a bye week, and they seem to be headed on the right track now heading into this match against the Bruins where they are heavily favored. Heck, last season's starting QB at UCLA left his school to become Oregon's second stringer. (To be fair, this seems like a savvy move as Dante Moore should have at least two more seasons of eligibility after Dillon Gabriel leaves.) Chip Kelly is out as the Bruins head coach, leaving for a supporting role at some other trash B1G program. (Ugh.)

I rarely talk about the (mostly) random Ducks football card I show off in these posts, but it's a brave new (NIL-fueled) world out there now where I can regularly show off cards of current Ducks players if I am so inclined, like I did this week. I would be much more interested in buying football cards if more of the products out there were college focused (or, especially, Ducks-focused). What are your favorite college football cards right now?

Notes and such:

• There's a couple of UCLA horror stories that give me pause. Skip Hicks. Cade McNown (kind of). This is DeShaun Foster's program now, and I'm sure they are feeling like they're on the up and up, but I don't feel like they're going to be anywhere near the top class of the Big Ten for awhile yet.
• Do they have any history at all? Well, of course. Since the Pac-10 became the Pac-12, UCLA was skipped on the schedule more frequently than most (along with USC), but there's still quite a bit of a record to go off of. UCLA holds the edge at 39-32, but Oregon has won 15 out of their last 18 meetings going back to 2000. Whenever I hear about the prestige of the LA schools, I have to choke on my laughter because they haven't really been relevant since I was young.
• Ducks ranking this week: 8 (AP). This was unintentionally not mentioned last week. They started out at 3, dropped to 7, then 9, having not yet lost a game. They discovered last week that the only way to win is not to play, moving up a spot because they practiced hard or something. Polls are still only meaningful for barflies at this point of the season.
• Dillon Gabriel Heisman Watch: Gabriel is still in the conversation, though having a scheduled off week does not help you. Maybe he should have tried harder.
• Game time is the incredibly stupid 8:00 PM PDT on FOX in Pasadena. Go Ducks!

Weekend PWE Round-Up

Good baseball cards sometimes come in small packages. 

 

Although the bulk of the stuff I receive in the mail these days is from TCDB trades, I still have a few friends of the blog who like to exchange blind letters and packages of cards. And they are still very, very fun. Here's a few fun ones, including this offering from late June by Night Owl Cards.

Night Owl tossed a couple of current Cardinals my way, including a screaming yellow Willson Contreras card and this Jordan Walker Prizm insert. We're at the point where it's difficult to see what the Cardinals will look like come next season, but I'm guessing they're going to try to reestablish themselves around a young core which will likely include Walker.

Along with the current guys came a pair of recently retired legends. Adam Wainwright is now trying to balance full-time dad duties with part-time broadcasting and singing pursuits.

Albert Pujols on a 1989 Topps design is always going to look weird.

Speaking of legends, we go back all the way to 1970 with this one. No Heritage here -- this is the real deal.

Night Owl always has a stash of minis seemingly at his disposal, and he was once again cool enough to help me out with some of these Ginter weirdos. Bill Walton will now have a new patch celebrating his life on the Blazers jerseys this coming season.

Next up is another PWE from another Dodgers fan. If you've been here before, you can probably guess that it's going to be a gcrl/cards as i see them envelope. This Matt Carpenter pink parallel comes from the online exclusive Topps Mini set, which I think they stopped making a couple of years ago. I don't think it was terribly popular (or necessary.)

Inception! That's fun. Cho spent the entire season at the High-A level, and while his bat hasn't seemed to have come around yet, he is very young still.

This is a great collection of Heritage inserts right here. Pong! Hammerin' Hank! A future HOF Cardinal!

Parallels will undoubtedly be the death of any team collector, but it was great to snag a couple more of these yellow things from the mystery envelope.

We end the gcrl envelope with a minor league autograph card. It's Adam Kennedy! A lot of players from sets like these aren't terribly recognizable years after the card has been out, but Kennedy had a nice career that included a World Series ring and ALCS MVP award with the Angels in 2002.

Our third and final envelope comes from the one and only Lost Collector. I've always been a huge fan of these framed Diamond Kings cards from the mid 00's. This Bud Smith card is numbered to just 400.

I've made some good headway this year into collecting all of the various Topps gold parallels (Cardinals) since these became an annual thing back, I want to say, 2001? The less said about this subject, the better, but at least this is one more to tick off the list.

The lone non-baseball card need in these envelopes came in the form of a Sage HIT parallel of Devon Williams, a Ducks receiver who left two years of NCAA eligibility on the table when he opted to enter the 2022 draft. As far as I can tell, he got a look from the Ravens initially but hasn't shown up anywhere prominent in a couple of years.

Thanks, as always, for these fun blind trades!

Good Luck Ducks, Week 3: Everything is Weird Now

The famed Oregon/Oregon State rivalry game... in September?! 

It's already time for the 128th edition of the Ducks/Beavers in-state rivalry bash. (No one really came up with a better name than that when the Civil War moniker was determined to be outmoded and maybe a little offensive.) Oregon meets Oregon State for the first time as a member of the Big Ten, while recent news has shown that OSU will hang onto their Pac-12 conference affiliation for a bit longer, as they've already announced plans to add four more schools beginning in 2026 and are apparently hoping to bring Cal and Stanford back to the best coast.

The Beavs have won three out of the last four meetings between the schools at Reser Stadium where this afternoon's match is scheduled. If the rivalry, such as it is these days, or the recent road results aren't enough motivation, then the Ducks can also look squarely at the way the first two games this season have gone and look at how the national media has disrespected them. All of the elements are there for a breakout performance by Dillon Gabriel and the squad.

And yet, it's still hard to know what to think of this year's Quack Attack. This is at least partially due to the nature of nonconference scheduling, where the full playbook likely hasn't been available to the offense. The Beavers are coming off of a shutout performance at San Diego State, so the much criticized Ducks O-line needs to be on high alert.

If Oregon wants to silence the deafening sounds of a recorded chainsaw over the Reser Stadium PA, it will need to be a lot more dynamic today while avoiding some of the embarrassing errors that have plagued them early in the season. I'm still cautiously optimistic about this team, but at the same time it's hard to know what to make of them.

Notes and such:

• Reser Stadium can be a bit claustrophobic these days, as it only seats around 35,000. Sometimes it's those smaller stadiums that end up sounding the loudest, but I do wonder if the recent conference music chairs and the game being moved away from it's traditional late November rivalry slot will affect the intensity at all.
• Do they have any history at all? Well, yes! It's currently the fifth most contested rivalry in FBS all-time. The only question is how long will it continue. I believe only next season's contest has been officially scheduled.
• Dillon Gabriel (?) Heisman Watch: The numbers are still there. But will the rest of the team pull through for him?
• Game time is 12:30 PM PDT on FOX in Corvallis. Go Ducks!

An Old Pack of Cards: Yo!

Pro Set used to be cool. 

 

Another old pack of cards has been liberated from the stacks of chaos on my decks. I believe I bought this pack for way too much money at an Austin area record store a number of years ago. While I must have bought at least a box's worth of Pro Set MusiCards back in the day, I never got into their Yo! MTV Raps set from around the same time. This is weird, of course, because the ratio of artists in the rap set that I was familiar with, if not actually a fan of, was much greater than that MusicCards release. Was this because of availability or something? It's hard to say at this point.

56 - M.C. Hammer - Was anyone bigger than Hammer in 1991? Of course the critics were already out in droves by this period, but he was selling a ridiculous amount of records and was simply unavoidable for a period. There was an entire generation of music listeners who probably hadn't been exposed to a hit song based around a sample (Rick James' "Super Freak") prior to M.C. Hammer biggest hit.

37 - Heavy D. and the Boyz - Heavy D (RIP) was best known to me at the time for being behind the theme song (both versions) to FOX's Black-oriented sketchy comedy "In Living Color". And don't forget The Boyz!

64 - Public Enemy - I'm listening to PE's "It Takes a Nation of Millions..." right now as I write this. It holds up! Chuck D is a great social media follow, especially if you like basketball.

15 - Digital Underground - Humpty Hump (RIP) and his crew were sort of a party-rap collective that employed Tupac as a fringe member/dancer at one point.

20 - Doctor Dre and Ed Lover - It's the guys who (mostly) hosted the Yo! MTV Raps tv show! Dre, of course, is of no relationship to that other Dr. Dre, the one who abbreviates his title.

95 - Young Black Teenagers - Have I mentioned how perfectly '90s the design of these cards is? It's wonderful. This is the only card in the pack where I can't specifically recall one of their songs.

4 - Bell Biv DeVoe - Here's what the backs of the cards look like.

82 - Tone Loc - Tone had two huge hits that were collaborations with Young MC (of "Bust a Move" fame) and would appear in various television shows and movies in the '90s and beyond.

28 - Eric B. & Rakim - Ah yes, your favorite rapper's favorite rappers. Only Public Enemy could join them in the A tier from this pack.

35 - Fab Five Freddy - My recollection of Fab Five Freddy, aside from being name-checked in a 1980 Blondie hit due to his status as an early hip hop scene pioneer, was his showing up for lengthy on-the-street interviews during late night Yo! episodes. I bet he has a ton of cool stories to tell.

Of course, it can't be a proper Pro Set pack without one of these sweepstakes card things. Let me get in my time machine and win one of these things...

Good Luck Ducks, Week 2: Boise Battle

Oregon hosts a team from Idaho for the second straight week. 

 

Well, if you liked Idaho last week, get ready for plenty more of that tonight! Might Oregon plays host to Boise State tonight, though fortunately it will be on the home turf of Autzen Green instead of the questionably blue Smurf Turf. This week's game is expected to be a much tougher go than last week, where the Ducks were favored by something like 47 points but only really managed to put the game away in the final few minutes.

About last week: that was, uh, something, right? I have to confess that I was only able to watch a portion of the first half because I had tickets to a big Timbers match, and thanks to cable tv broadcast shenanigans, the game was blacked out on the Big Ten Network making it so I was unable to record the rest of it to watch at home later. Because of this, I'm not sure it's fair of me to assess how concerned I am about the team right now. I mean, they won, right?

I think these questions are why, more and more, I'm starting to having some issues with my personal college football fandom. It's the only thing I follow where a win isn't just a win. Margin of victory matters. Impressions matter. Opinions matter. It's all very silly. Can you imagine watching a baseball game, any game... even an important one... and not being satisfied with a win, no matter what the score? Hell, even the NFL makes more sense when it comes to this. I just watched the Eagles win last night in a back-and-forth, closely fought contest where they ended up winning by less than a touchdown. Do I think, after one game, that they're destined to go all the way? Not exactly. But! They won the game, so it feels good right now. I have watched too many college football games where my team won and I felt irritated (or worse) afterwards.

Let's do a vibe check, then. How concerned am I after the ten point win against the Idaho Vandals? Honestly, on a scale of one-to-ten, I'm proabably only at a two. It might have been a three or a four if there were some more key injuries, but I'm not really worried about it at all. The Boise State game was always going to be a bit of a challenge, and I am fairly certain that Dan Lanning and many other coaches are hesitant to open up the playbook in Week 1 against an opponent from a lower division, even if the game does get tight. I'm optimistic that the Ducks will show up in better form tonight.

Notes and such:

• No blackout issues are expected this week, as the game will be nationally streamed on Peacock. They have a bunch of games scheduled later this season on major broadcast networks like FOX, so I'm hopeful this won't end up being a repeated issue. It's just annoying that for the first time in my life I actually wanted to watch the Big Ten Network, they replaced all of the programming (even the postgame show!) with a weird looping documentary about the University of Oregon.
• Do they have any history at all? Oh yeah. The Broncos have won all three meetings between the schools, including the 2009 season opener that kicked off the Chip Kelly era with a famous postgame punch. That game would be the last time any visiting opponent would win a nonconference game in Eugene. The Ducks most recently lost the 2017 Las Vegas Bowl after Willie Taggart fled the ship he sunk like the rat he is.
• Dillon Gabriel (?) Heisman Watch: By all accounts, Gabriel wasn't the problem last week and his stats would seem to back that up. Of course, some of the most ridiculous quarterback stat lines have come in desperation, so it's at least comforting that Gabriel was able to put this in the win column.
• Game time is 7:00 PM PDT on Peacock in Eugene. Go Ducks!

World Headquarters Edition

Green football and loads of baseball. 

 

Awhile back, Dennis from Too Many Verlanders came into a bunch of cards and was generous to share some of the spoils with yours truly. As is often the case, the package came with an excellent selection of football guys I collect. You know, the guys in green! Nick Foles is near the top of my list of modern Eagles to collect as he led the team to the promised land not too long ago, so it's always great to pick up something fun like this rookie patch thing.

Green means Ducks as well (mallard green!) DAT was a fun player to watch, always a complete blur on the field. (Didn't they call the offense "the blur offense" at one point?) Many of my favorite looking Oregon cards were made by Upper Deck for some reason.

Patriots rookie (well, last season) Christian Gonzalez looks especially good here in a green parallel version. I'm glad this is from the draft set where Gonzalez is wearing his college gear, although I'm sure I'll eventually have a bunch of his cards where he's wearing that dastardly Patriots garb.

Marcus Mariota may not be wearing green here, but it's alright by me.

These playing card-themed inserts are pretty silly. I don't know that I've seen any other ones besides Gonzalez.

DAT is back again, this time on another Upper Deck card in acetate.

I don't think I have a clue about this brand. Pro Picks? It blends in with Wild Card and Leaf and Sage and whatever other small potatoes college brands are out there. I never really see this kind of stuff on shelves.

Akili Smith's son, also a quarterback, is set to join the Ducks next year. I wonder how much influence Smith Sr. had on his son's recruiting decision, considering how different things are at UO now than they were in the late '90s.

It's back to Eagles territory we go with a few more former Birds. The current team is set to open their season with the Packers in Brazil shortly.

I always thought Mack Hollins would make a much better name for a lineman, or at least not a skill position guy.

Jalen not-Hurts looks absolutely thrilled to be stuck inside this Christmas ornament. Does Panini release a holiday-themed version of their Donruss football set like they do with NBA Hoops, or was this just part of the regular set?

After all of those football guys to get your football weekend started (FOOTBALL!), here's a former Trail Blazer basketball pro. The backdrop of these cards looks like some cheesy computer generated graphic pattern that you could find in a Google image search or something.

The red bird baseball team can't avoid the green either.

Looks like mojo!

Elite Extra Edition is a weird and fairly janky looking product every year. It looks like this year, Panini got bored with their usual pink parallels and decided to unleash whatever the heck this is to the collecting world.

There needs to be a prominent set of round cards (or discs!) every year. It should be baked into every contract. I would actually order Slurpees if 7-11 ever decided to bring back their discs, and I never drink that kind of stuff.

We go from the circular to this die cut gem. I think these inserts are fairly tough to come by.

Speaking of tough to come by, I've run across these '90s Sportscenter themed inserts a bunch of times, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen a World Headquarters Edition parallel before. Nice!

Last, but certainly not least, is this huge pile of Topps Heritage cards (mostly short prints!) and Allen & Ginter minis that all checked off various needs from my various wants. One fuzzy picture from my phone can't possibly do this justice, but suffice it to say that I was very pleased with this overall.