Good Luck Ducks, Week 3: BYU

The Quack Attack hosts BYU in the first meeting between the two teams since 2006. 

 

The Ducks are back! The Ducks are back in the Top 25 (?!) If I made the rules, there would be no Top 25 rankings for at least the first few weeks of the season (maybe even the first six?), because the whole system is based on incomplete information and heavily biased towards those that have experienced the most success / have the highest reputation (tv ratings?) at those early stages of any given season. Could it be that there are some... flaws... in the big sport of college football?

Brigham Young University's football is also ranked and has a pair of impressive wins on it's ledger in the early days of this season. This is also a program that went 5-0 against the Pac-12 conference last season. (The Pac-12 is going through a bit of a rough patch right now, in case you hadn't heard.) This shouldn't be a Georgia level opponent that Oregon is facing today, but this is a team who is gunning for an at-large bid at a top tier bowl game at the very least. The Ducks, meanwhile, were able to take all of their frustrations out on Eastern Washington last week, erasing any doubt of the outcome very early on in the game. They were even able to get a couple of backup quarterbacks some work before it was all said and done. Again, the information on this team is still very incomplete at this point, but there's a lot of hope for a good performance from the home squad at Autzen Stadium today.

Notes and other things: 

• The Ducks are slim favorites this week at the stadium where it never rains, but most of the attention right now is on the BYU Cougars after knocking off Baylor a week ago. I feel like the Big 12 and the Pac-12 are pretty much on the same level these days, which says that this team seems capable of taking down almost anyone in the west.
• BYU flat-out embarrassed Oregon in a basketball game that I attended in Portland almost ten months ago, so I am extra hyped to see some payback this afternoon. The amount of Ducks fans that came out to the Moda Center was pitiful (we're talking like a 90/10 split in favor of the team from Utah), but I'm not going to put this on the Ducks fanbase. It's hard to get anyone interested in college basketball before March these days. Still, it was really humiliating as a fan to witness up-close.
• Speaking of humiliating, the last time Oregon played the Cougars was in a 2006 bowl game blowout loss. A random YouTuber recently posted some highlights from this game and I have almost no recollection of it. I was surprised that Brent Musberger was trotted out for such a mid-tier game. Dennis Dixon was just a game away from the start of his abbreviated Heisman campaign, and yet Mike Belliotti was still tinkering with his two-quarterback system. (Brady Leaf was... not elite.)
• Game time is 12:30 PM PDT on FOX in Eugene. Go Ducks!

A Thursday PWE Round-Up

The latest batch of PWE's includes a @nightowlcards variety pack. 

 

It's Thursday night, which means we're already well into the preweekend if you're into that sort of thing. I have a few more envelopes of the plain and white variety to go through, so let's get it going.

First up is a pair of gems from gcrl. It feels like Alex Reyes is entering some sort of make-or-break season to determine what kind of career he's going to have, which makes it less than ideal that he's going to begin the season on the IL, an unfortunately familiar place for him. The blue Chrome rookie refractor card of his (numbered to 150) is really nice looking, though. I like the way the triangular patterns in the background were used on the 2017 Chrome cards, even if I never liked the design itself.

The other aforementioned gem is one of those heavy metal cards from 1996 Leaf Preferred. This Eckersley card is actually a gold parallel, which might well be a first for my collection. At the very least, I haven't seen many of these.

Next up is small pile of things from Night Owl. The rookie variations from last year's Allen & Ginter set just serve as a reminder of how much better the designs from the first few A&G sets from Topps were.

Randal Grichuk just got traded to the Rockies today, so this one is a bit timely. It's a gold parallel card of the always classic Arch-in-the-background shot.

Here's a new(er) one for my meager George Springer collection. I don't feel like I saw a lot of new Donruss Optic cards last year.

The end of the lockout means that Yadier Molina will actually get a shot at a full season in what is planned to be his final one. I don't know how pink became such a go-to color for Topps Chrome refractors, but I'm not complaining.

This is the first time I've added a card from the 2009 Topps Update Propaganda inserts set in quite a long while. This is right about when Manny Ramirez's career started taking a dark turn.

Night Owl also sent this nice six pack o' Turkeys from the first Topps version of the old cabinet cards.

Last up is a few (American) footballers from Trevor P. This is a really nice shiny 2005 Bowman Chrome refractor from the former Ducks star QB Joey Harrington.

I could have sworn I had this Dion Jordan rookie card already, but I must have been thinking of some parallels. It looks like Jordan is wearing Ducks gear here, but Topps Photoshopped it out of recognition.

Jason Fife only got one full season in as Oregon's starting QB after backing up Harrington before giving way to Kellen Clemens. I don't think he ever saw any regular season action in the NFL.