Good Luck Ducks, Playoff Edition: Home and Uncharted

Oregon hosts James Madison in the first round of College Football Playoff madness.

We're in uncharted waters here as the Fighting Ducks play host to a College Football Playoff game for the first time. In all previous years and versions of various postseason formats, Oregon has always found itself in ostensibly neutral ground, but often a hostile environment for various reasons. Today they'll host a Group of Five upstart in Autzen Stadium with hopes of advancing to the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day. Yes, we have the unprecedented event of football happening in Eugene in mid-to-late December. Madness! The closest thing I could compare this to is the earliest days of the Pac-12 Football Championship Game, when Oregon hosted (and won) the inaugural game as the top seed before it was moved to a so-called neutral site a few years later.

When last we saw these Ducks a few weeks ago, they were taking care of business up in Seattle, and they still had all of their coaches. Does this sound familiar? Oregon is losing it's offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator, and at least one additional assistant as other schools have already made their moves to snap up some of these guys. They should really consider a hiring/negotiating/no contact period for coaches until after all of the bowls and playoffs are wrapped up, but I know that would negatively impact recruiting and the NCAA barely has any power as an entity anyway. It's just awkward for everybody. Dan Lanning will have his work cut out for him in replacing these assistants, as Will Stein and Tosh Lupoi have had their hands all over the 2020s Ducks and their schemes.

The James Madison Dukes won the Sun Belt in an impressive season, with their only blemish being an early season loss at Louisville. They're led by standout QB Alonza Barnett III, who won himself a bevy of awards in a comeback season after he had ACL surgery barely a year ago. They're certainly good enough to shake things up and should give Oregon a test, but they haven't faced talent (or a defense) like the Ducks. It could be a long evening at Autzen for the visitors from Virginia, but you never know what is going to happen this time of year.

Notes and miscellany:

• I could complain here about the whole mess that is/was the CFP selection process, even though it didn't seem to adversely affect Oregon's situation. The thing is, everything in sports just feels a bit rigged these days, doesn't it? It's fun to shout "rigged!" at things in jest, but there's some truth to it. In any case, I'll say this: Alabama has no business being in the playoffs this year. Teams should be judged by who they lose to (or don't), not who they didn't play. I don't think Miami deserves a spot, either, but that might be because I have a middle finger (or two) up at Mario Cristobal at all times.
• Opponent fun fact: James Madison University was once known as Madison College, but there is a certain school in Madison, Wisconsin that is more associated with that name, I guess. For only having joined the FBS in 2022, the Dukes have certainly made it a quick route to the playoffs. Sadly, their mascot Duke Dog, is not actually a live mascot. I always prefer live mascots.
• Opponent history: These two schools have never met on the football field. In fact, I can't even find evidence that they've faced each other in any sport, but some of that data is going to be hard to find.
• Game time is 4:30 PM PST on TNT in Eugene. Go Ducks!

Contest Reminder and a PWE Round-Up

Cards from little envelopes.

Before I get into today's crop of cards, here is your final reminder to go and sign up for the College Football Postseason prediction contest. It's Year 16! Can you believe that? It's time to start getting those picks in as the first game kicks off around 9:00 AM PST tomorrow morning.

It's now time for a year end recap of PWEs (Plain White Envelopes!) received in the second half of the year, or thereabouts. First up is a single Victor Scott the Sequel purple Chrome refractor parallel from 2024 Topps Heritage High Number, courtesy of Matthew of Number 5 Type Collection. It feels like it's been a few years since I've bought one of those hot box blaster things that contains those purple parallels, assuming that's still how these cards are distributed. With the 2025 set just around the corner (I think?), I'll have to figure out the best (cheap) option for opening some of those packs for myself.

Next up is another fine envelope from gcrl of cards as i see them. Pittman is the younger brother of Colts wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. and was a strange case of someone whose on-field contributions never quite rose to his talent level. I don't normally collect Oregon players who transfer out and finish school elsewhere, but Pittman is in a Ducks uniform, so it works.

In addition to the nice autograph above, I also received this Jake Woodford card that's headed to top loader status.

This shows why it gets a top loader. It's one of those odd "Advanced Stats" parallels. I like the different approach to the stats here, but I don't like that all of the player bios are replaced with a boilerplate explanation on what advanced stats are.

Purple Topps flagship parallels are a rare bird, at least around these parts, where we don't have the stores that supply these exclusives (Meijer, I think?)

I completely missed out on the Topps All-Star Game set and am not entirely sure how they were distributed (at ballparks?), so it was nice to snag a few inserts from it. These cards look like they're die-cut or acetate or something, but they are just extra shiny and have a lot of dead space around the design.

I haven't checked lately, but I think Albert Pujols is still in the lead for having the most unique cards in my collection, even though I've never really sought out his stuff. At least it's one of the game's great players and not, I don't know, J.D. Drew?

This may have been the first year since 2009 where I did not open even a single pack of the new Chrome set, so it's been nice to slowly pick off some of my needs from the base set. I'm not against Topps Chrome, it's just that it's priced itself out of my budget.

Like many of his teammates, Nootbaar's name has been discussed in the trade rumors circle, but it would definitely be a "sell low" situation and I've been told that you generally shouldn't do that.

The Hamm King also delivered more Hamm! Excellent.

The third envelope just contained one single item, but it is a great one that has been affixed to my refrigerator since September. This really cool stadium giveaway comes courtesy of Baseball Cards Fan (and great blue heron enthusiast) Peter.

The final envelope of the bunch comes from Night Owl Cards and includes more Cardinals and set needs. The Jesse Haines card is from the 1961 Fleer Baseball Greats set, which caused a bit of a stir from Topps and their monopolistic ways back in the day. The design is excellent, but you already knew that.

Speaking of excellent design, I've said this before and I'll say it again. These Rookie Performers cards look great. I rarely praise modern Topps stuff, especially in the Fanatics era, but I always enjoy what they do with their insert designs that are inspired by the main set and era they're paying tribute to.

Here's another four-pack of minis from a few different Allen & Ginter sets. This year's A&G set is finally out, but I've yet to see any blasters anywhere.

Panini's continuing legal fight with Fanatics has been in the news this week. Everything I've read about it has made my eyes glaze over (to be fair, most details of court cases will do this to me), but it's clear to me that at least Panini tries to do different things with their products, even if both hands are tied behind their backs over the whole licensing thing. Topps doesn't even try anymore.

Here's the kind of oddball food-related baseball card that I really love. Apparently this known as the 1997 Wheaties set, even though the cards come from all sorts of different cereal brands. When is the last time there was anything interesting to cut off of the back of a cereal box?

We'll end things here with a triumvirate of 2025 Topps Heritage short prints. I swear I'm going to focus on putting some of these Heritage sets fully to rest one of these days.

Contest Time! College Football Postseason Pick 'Em #16

It's once again time to make the best college football postseason picks and win a prize!

Welcome back to Contest Season. This is the 16th year of the College Bowl Pick 'Em contest, although at this point it's more accurate to call it the College Football Postseason Pick 'Em contest.

Our past winners include Adam from Thoughts on Sox (2009-10), Mark from Stats on the Back (2010-11), AJ from The Lost Collector (2011-12), Royal Dan (2012-13), The Prowling Cat (2013-14), Jeff from One Man's Junk (Wax) (2014-15), Matt of Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits (2015-16), MrHaverkamp (2016-17), Anaconda37 (2017-18), Trevor of Bump and Run (2018-19), GLM1 (2019-20), Johnny G (2021-22), Nachos Grande (2022-23), Pete L. (2023-24), and Ginko-5 (2024-25). We've still never had a repeat winner!

If you want to just get to the free stuff, go to the bottom of the post for the sign-up link and make sure you submit picks for every game. There is a separate sub-contest for the non-ESPN people (or whoever!) which should only require a modicum of thought. If you don't have an ESPN account and don't want to give your personal information to Disney, there are burner email options out there (like Proton Mail)... just saying!

• First place will receive: a 2026 Topps Series 1 value box
• Second place will receive: a 2026 Topps Series 1 hanger box
• Third place will receive: a 2026 Topps Series 1 retail fat pack
• The Worst Place winner will receive: mystery unopened packs

At my discretion, I may include additional cards if possible.

Rules for 2025-26:

• Please email or DM me your contest information after you sign up. You can't assume that I will automatically recognize your contest entry name. [my Blogger profile / my Bluesky profile]
• Participants must sign up through the official ESPN link.
• Points are scored according to the Confidence System. This basically means that while you are predicting which team wins which bowl game, you will also be responsible for ranking how confident you are in each pick. This includes all FBS bowl games, the FCS Celebration Bowl, and all College Football Playoff games. The higher you rank those games, the more points you'll get when they win and prove that you're totally right and deserve all the I-told-you-so's in the world. See ESPN for complete details.
• You can change your picks at any time, so long as your pick is made before the official start time (usually the TV broadcast time) of each game. This is what ESPN calls a "rolling lock" time.
• Don't be a jerk and lose on purpose just to try and claim a prize. There are many, many of us who are bad enough at picking these without extra help.

Click here to sign up, and click on the 'Join Group' link! It's free! First-timers are always welcome! Password: quackquackquack

DEADLINE: There's a deadline of Saturday, December 13th at 9:00 AM PST. That's the start time of the first bowl game.

But wait... there's more! Available to all entrants as well as non-entrants who don't want to use ESPN, there's a bonus contest:

Leave a comment here predicting the final score and winning team of the DUKE'S MAYO BOWL before the Mayonnaising officially begins (the game is on January 2nd) and win a retail pack of new baseball cards. Whoever is closest gets it. Make sure you watch the end of the game because someone will be getting an actual mayonnaise bath!

(h/t to No Context College Football for the wacky photo.)

Future Baseball Plans

The new Cardinals... maybe not the same as the old Cardinals.

I've tried not to dwell on this too much, but my interest in baseball in general has fallen off of a cliff in recent times. When you combine this with the streamlining of baseball card products in the Fanatics era, I could also say my interest in baseball cards is also starting to crater. I can't dispute the idea that the Cardinals lack of success on the field since the end of the 2022 season has contributed to this, but I still think I would have most of those negative feelings even if the Cardinals had been playing more at the level of their 2010s rosters.

While I won't get into my feelings about the state of MLB in general right here, I will show off some cards that Night Owl sent over back in July. Remember the summer? I miss it already. I guess I'm just having those December feelings right now.

I haven't really prepared any changes in the way I'm going to consume baseball games (or not). I haven't really dramatically changed how I collect cards, either. I'm still going to watch Cardinals games, of course, especially as long as there's free MLB TV access to T-Mobile subscribers, although it appears that deal's days are probably numbered with ESPN's pending acquisition of the platform. (Gross.) There are interesting players on the Cardinals roster on any given day, including speed demon Victor Scott II, shown here on the first "true photo" variation I've added to my collection. I wish these weren't such a tough pull, honestly.

I do nearly all of my trading via TCDB and have managed to add a bunch more Cardinals Topps gold parallels in the past year. The original gold bordered look still reigns supreme, as shown here on Miguel Cairo's card from 2004 Topps.

Will Panini continue to run out its zombie baseball products in 2025? What about the other sports? I know that Panini has a lucrative contract with the WNBA that has been extended by several years, so the company itself won't be going away any time soon. Fanatics supposedly has no interest in acquiring them, and I'm doubtful that they would suddenly start cranking out fully licensed Donruss cards even if they did. If anything, Fanatics seems to want to focus on it's core brands and do the laziest thing possible by applying the same design templates to a million cards a year.

Considering Paul Goldschmidt's Hall of Fame track and the six seasons he spent with St. Louis, I don't think the Goldschmidt want list will ever have a finite endpoint, even though he is no longer a Cardinal.

With Willson Contreras moving to 1B this past season, Pedro Pagés has actually caught the most games the past couple of seasons for the Cards. The entire catching situation is a bit murky right now, though, with Ivan Herrera showing star potential as a hitter and next to zero potential as a backstop. Toss in a couple of prospects on the rise and a cult hero in Yohel Pozo, and you've got a quandary on your hands.

JJ Wetherholt is the prospect of the moment. I honestly thought he would get a late call-up last season (maybe in the 40-man September active roster era), and he certainly has a chance to make it difficult to keep him down much longer if he has a big spring. Will the Cardinals be dreadful again next year? Absolutely. The most frustrating thing about this rebuild is that they should have started it years ago, if that was truly their intentional all along.

Night Owl also tossed in some more set-filling needs, including these inserts from the 2025 Topps Heritage set. Of course, they look very similar to cards from other Heritage and Archives sets, but Fanatics (or whoever) apparently decided they needed yet another insert set of random players on old designs.

We end things in true Night Owl trade envelope fashion with a few more minis from Allen & Ginter sets. Each of these names are of players I haven't thought about in a few years.