Contest Update!

Some are doing well. Others are Coug-ing it. 

First off, you have just hours left to make your Belk Bowl prediction. Additionally, after the playoff games on Monday, you'll need to log back into the contest site to make your final picks for the championship game. I will send out some sort of reminder through the ESPN platform to make sure everyone does that.

Here's where we stand now after 26 games played:

• Wilson's MN St Screaming Eagles are in first, with Jafronius's The Big Show followed close behind. Both are in the upper crust (97+ percentile) of all predictors across the internetsphere. (That's a word, right?)
• When you factor in PPR (Potential Points Remaining), Mr Haverkamp's BadgerIPAs are hanging back in 3rd but are better positioned to gain more points. Meanwhile, a number of entrants hanging down towards the rear of the standings actually have the most PPR, but they will need to be more successful with their prognostications than they have been thus far to have a shot.
• Bringing up the rear, and thus staring down a Worst Place Prize (?) is mintxcore's The Miami Marlins of CFB, currently dragging the whole contest down just like the Marlins do to the once proud National League with regularity.

Thanks for playing, and let me know if you have any questions!

Get Your Belk Bowl Picks In

Time is running out! 

There's still time to get one last shot at a cheap and easy contest prize before the clock runs out on 2017. The Belking begins at 10:00 AM PST Friday. You have until then to go here and make your prediction. Who ya got? Aggies? Deacons? The New England Patriots?

Animals, Materials and Humans

Baseball cards are weird. 

Red Cardboard had some extras to unload on the card collecting world recently, and I was quick enough to snap up some goodies. Along with a few random set needs, I also put my name in the hat for some Allen & Ginter minis -- the best kind of minis in my opinion.

Erin decided to collect the omnipresent 2012 Panini Triple Play set back in, well, 2012. She's mostly taken a less than passive interest in cards since then (we have too much stuff and not enough space at the moment), but I have continued to try and help her complete this set quest. The last few cards have been difficult to nail down even though packs of this stuff have been in repacks for years. It probably doesn't help that the cards are short printed as you get close to the end of the set, or that there are these weird memorabilia cards that belong to unspecified players from an unspecified league. (There is an MLBPA logo, at least.) Furthermore, some of the memorabilia cards are scarcer than others, with the jersey and bat cards being the most common, naturally. (I have a number of extras of those.) We're down to needing three Hall of Fame cards, a pants (yikes!) card, and a batting glove card. And then, I will never speak of this set again.

MOOSE!

I wonder what the mayor of Miami thinks about the whole Marlins situation. I don't know why people are all that surprised about their fire sale. This is a franchise that has always gone through cycles of overspending and then burning it all down. The only thing that's really changed is that there's a different ownership group.

A fair share of the mini extras (or extra minis?) were of the Cincinnati Reds variety. You're bound to accumulate these things when you're a Reds blogger, after all. Here's former Cardinals star Scott Rolen late in his Cincinnati days.

Speaking of Cardinals, I also was able to acquire my first Topps Fire cards of the year. This set doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, but that's never going to stop me from adding more Cardinals cards to my collection. Oh had a rough second season with the Cardinals, but I would still expect him to catch on somewhere with a major league deal sooner than later.

It was a big surprise to see Edgar Renteria in the checklist (and as a member of the Cardinals), so maybe this set isn't all bad. After all, it is one of the sets that sees the 2017 return of Jim Edmonds to the checklists after a nearly 6 year absence. (Still need to track down that 2017 Topps Archives Fan Favorites auto of his...)

Answering the Call

Cards in a time of need. 

Bru from Remember the Astrodome was the latest to answer the distress call to get me closer to my goal of completing an Allen & Ginter set sometime while we're all still on this planet. In addition to the sweet Private Stock Alan Benes parallel, I received a nice stack of needs from the most recent A&G offering.

Before we get to the Ginter stuff, here's one more card down from my 2016 Topps Heritage want list. Cardinals have stopped showing up on league leader cards in recent years, which is too bad if you ask me.

Have you ever scanned a card before realizing that you meant to scan an entirely different card? That's what happened with Mr. Glazer here. I have no idea what to say about him, but I was going to say something complimentary about Didi Gregorius until I realized I scanned the wrong thing. Monday nights are not my sharpest.

Three World's Fair inserts were crossed off, including this Statue of Liberty card. I want to say something about the state of this country at the moment, but it's getting late... so I'd better go.

Good Luck Ducks: Las Vegas Bowl

Oregon's improvement is rewarded with a Las Vegas Bowl appearance (and a head coach desertion).

After a disastrous 2016 season that saw the Ducks go 4-8, continuing an ugly slide that began the season before, the athletic department chose to go with an outside hire. He was an up-and-comer, someone who had seen his programs through significant improvement at every level. That outside hire, of course, is an opportunistic prick who bolted at the first chance he could, considering a 7-5 season as a job well done, I guess. That outside hire was given free range to hire his own coaching staff, as is usually the case with these things. Many players with significant talent were successfully recruited. And while that outside hire is somewhere else now, the Ducks are left to pick up the pieces.

Oregon moves on with, for now, most of their assistant coaches in tact. Mario Cristobal was given the title of interim head coach for the upcoming bowl game, and later made the permanent hire. Most of the players sound happy. Most of the recruits seem happy. The rest of the coaches are here, for today, at least. Personally, I really would rather watch the Ducks play football and not hear about recruits at all, but that might just be me.

The Ducks have a football game today, in December, and still have coaches that are familiar with the players and the plays. That's a good thing. There was actually a lot to like about this season if you memory wipe that period of time when Justin Herbert wasn't the starting quarterback because the sporting life is cruel or whatever.

Oregon has a date with Boise State this afternoon, which of all of the lower tier bowl outcomes, this is honestly a pretty good one. No matter the season, I expect that Boise State is going to give you an exciting game. There's also some bad blood between the fanbases sparked in part by some sort of on field incident, for whatever that's worth. The all-Northwest match should be fun, if nothing else. The Broncos come in at 10-3, ranked, as winners of the Mountain West title. Oregon, meanwhile, benefited from two Pac-12 teams making it to New Year's Six games, allowing them to move up a notch to a more important game. The smart money would be on Boise State winning, but the Ducks have been an offensive juggernaut with Justin Herbert healthy and on the field, which he will be today. (To be fair, Oregon is actually favored by a touchdown.)

Vegas Links:

• Justin Herbert is a 2018 Heisman candidate, assuming the Ducks can win enough games to stay in the conversation.
• More good news after Oregon dealt with the bad news? Jalen Jelks, one of the bright spots on defense this season with NFL draft potential, is planning to return for his senior year.
• Two key members of the Broncos offense could be back on the field, which may spell trouble for Jim Leavitt's revamped defense. (Please don't be Jim LEAVE-itt.)
• Where Are They Now? Byron Hout is now an assistant coach at Montana State. Hopefully none of his players have punched him.
• Jim Leavitt Status Alert: Drinking Pepsi and hopefully not returning any calls from America's Wang
• Know Your Opponent: Bronco Nation apparently thinks Justin Herbert is a wizard. That's fine with me.
• The Unis!: Green with chrome helmets. Flashy, but not too flashy?

This will be the 31st bowl game in Oregon Ducks history. The 2015 Rose Bowl was the sweetest plum.

Game time is 12:30 PM PST. Broadcast channel is ABC. Your scheduled broadcasters are Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit and Molly McGrath. Go Ducks!

Contest Reminder!

Time is running out! 

There's still time left to join up with the 9th annual Bowl Pick 'Em Capitol Sports on Cards Mania contest (something like that, anyway). The first game is tomorrow morning, bright and early (unless you live on the east coast, when it will be lunch time, I guess.)

You can still guess an enter to win the Belk Bowl thing up until the start of that game, which is two weeks away.

First Look at New Donruss

What 2018 Donruss Baseball would look like if it actually existed. 

Before I dive right in to talkin' basketball cards, I want to ask a baseball question. Did Panini lose their MLBPA license? Does anyone know? There are no future release dates to be found, no sell sheets and scarcely a trace of a mention of baseball over at the Panini America website. As much as I dislike logo-less cards, I would only be okay with Panini getting out of the baseball game if I thought Topps was doing a good job. (Spoiler alert: I don't think Topps is doing a good job.)

I'm really here to talk hoops cards (but not Hoops cards), in case you didn't know. Fresh on the heels of the season's first release (NBA Hoops, naturally) comes Panini's version of Donruss. These look very similar in color and feel to last year's release, but trade the quasi-1990 baseball look for something a little more generic. I picked up a blaster recently "for research purposes" and here are some cards from said blaster.

This Retro Series design is a little queasy looking, but you don't see Dave Bing cards every day. Actually, you pretty much never see Dave Bing cards. I am always a fan of throwback NBA cards.

You can tell this is a late career David Robinson photo because the uniform has the championship trophy patch on it, something that I associate with the NBA on ABC era. Robinson won the second of his two rings in 2003, so let's go with that.

Another year, another Sixers #1 draft pick. And like many of those who came before him, Fultz has injury issues. He also was an incredibly suspicious choice for a #1 pick in my book, the best player on an awful Pac-12 team for just a single season. Of course, you could also say the same about Lonzo Ball, though his team was pretty solid.

More Retro! The Ice Man! I love it.

Gordon Hayward's first All-Star appearance probably came at the expense of Damian Lillard not making the team again. He was famously dealt to Boston, played 5 minutes and suffered a gruesome injury.

My promised one-per-blaster guaranteed memorabilia or auto. It's always memorabilia, isn't it? Harry Giles is someone who I keep having to remind myself is a (theoretical) NBA player, and not Harry Stiles, or Prince Harry -- who sounds like he could be a Harry Giles -- for that matter.

Buddy Hield once slaughtered the Ducks while he was playing at Oklahoma, and I'll never forgive him for that. Or, at least, I'll never forget. One of those two.

This reminds me of something SkyBox would have done back in the day.

Gordon Hayward wasn't the only All-Star to change teams this season, as Kyrie is now in Boston.

I expected more parallels for some reason, but this "orange laser" Doug McDermott ended up being my only parallel pull of the box. It is not numbered.

I find it really obnoxious that the Lakers wear MPLS throwback uniforms at times. Of course, I find everything the Lakers to do to be pretty obnoxious. I do love the look and feel of all of the Court/Hall/Rookie Kings cards, though.

Finally, a Blazer makes an appearance. Here's my first card of Jusuf Nurkic in a Blazers uniform.

Biggie Swanigan got a taste of the NBA life when he got a few starts last month, but he seems to have been exiled to the end of the bench ever since. Yes, Panini is still hanging on to the classic Rated Rookie logo.

Here's Swanigan on one of those Kings inserts that I like.

Hassan Whiteside, rebounding machine.

And finally, here's the Rated Rookie card of the Blazers other draft pick. Portland moved up to get Collins, a lottery pick at #10, and he's now getting his turn at center with Nurkic temporarily on the shelf.