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!