Pre-Semifinals Contest Update

With just three games left to play, let's check out the leader board (and some random cards.)

The annual college football pick 'em contest is about to come to a close, and according to the numbers, we may already have a winner. I'm not sure if this has happened before with a few games left to play, but Jason K. leads all entrants in total points, and no one has enough "max" points as it stands to catch him. Jason also won the Mayonnaise contest, so we may also have another unprecedented event as I don't recall anyone winning both contests. We still do have a few people jockeying for position to make it to the podium, with Brandon L., Elliptical Man and Dominic J. currently holding spots 2, 3 and 4 respectively.

I thought I'd throw up some cards (well, not literally!) for you to look at while you're here and selected the last 5 cards I've scanned. If I'm not scanning something for a blog post, it's almost certainly because it's a card I added to my collection in TCDB that was missing image(s). These are mostly football cards, with a Jalen Hurts bronze parallel and a 2022 JOGO CFL Alumni card leading things off. Jim Evenson is a Portland native who played at UO in the '60s before embarking on a pro career mostly north of the border.

Most of the cards in this post came to me in recent TCDB trades, but this one -- a Topps Season Tip-Off parallel, was plucked from a massive lot of cards I came home with from a card show last weekend. This heads to my Ducks binders as it features Chris Boucher. It's also the lone basketball card I scanned most recently.

Here's another Duck in a Ducks uniform. I love that. This is a red parallel from the 2024 Score football set.

Last up is a card from one of Panini's final releases, the 2025 Mosaic set. They still have a few more releases scheduled even though the calendar has flipped to 2026. I'm assuming the Topps license will only go into effect for the start of the 2026 season, or maybe shortly after the draft.

Enjoy the games (both collegiate and professional) this weekend!

Good Luck Ducks, Playoff Semifinal Edition: Seeing Red

Oregon heads to Florida for the next round of CFP action.

The Ducks are back in the spot where they found themselves last season before it all went terribly wrong against the Buckeyes. This time, they'll face a different opponent in the Texas Tech Red Raiders, the champions of the Big 12. After opening up a 34-3 first half lead against James Madison, Oregon put it in cruise control and coasted to a decisive win to set them up for the Orange Bowl today.

The Ducks welcomed the return of a couple of their receivers in the first round game against the Dukes as they seem to be getting healthier at the best possible time. Once again, the speculation turns to whether or not it will be Dante Moore's last game in his short Ducks career, as many draft projections have him going near the top of the draft. Personally, I feel like he's got a good shot at staying put if there's anything short of a championship victory, but nothing would really surprise me. With the imminent departure of the offensive coordinator (Will Stein) who lured him back to Oregon, I could also see him thinking that it's time to move on.

Texas Tech retooled its coaching staff after a 8-5 season and found their biggest ever success as a member of the Big 12, finishing at the top of their conference. The Red Raiders are led by QB Behren Morton, one of the few players who was on the roster the last time these teams met in 2023 (he did not play.) Both teams are very similar in that they have explosive, powerful offenses and stellar defensive play to boot. This game truly feels like a toss-up, but one team will definitely be sent home feeling disappointed.

Notes and miscellany: 

• This will be the first Orange Bowl appearance for both schools, as the traditional bowl fixtures and alliances between conference have given way to... whatever madness this is. I think just about everyone wanted a true playoff system in FBS, including me, but this just doesn't feel like "it".
• Opponent fun fact: One of the Red Raiders mascot is named, naturally, Raider Red. He seems like a rough 'n tumble, rootin' tootin' stereotypically Texas style guy. There's also The Masked Rider, some Zorro lookin' dude who rides around on a horse. They like their finger guns, which is something that would almost certainly get a football player in trouble if one was to do it on the field at an opponent.
• Opponent history: The Ducks lead the all-time series 3-0, including the recent 38-30 win in 2023 in Lubbock when ex-Duck Tyler Shough (hey, that rhymes!) started at quarterback for TTU.
• Game time is 9:00 AM PST on ESPN in Miami Gardens. Go Ducks!

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.

Good Luck Ducks, Week 14: Dirty Dawgs

 

It's Rivalry Week as Oregon takes on Washington.

The Ducks Big Ten conference schedule will end in the same way as it did last season and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. It's time to face the Washington Huskies as the last test before leaving it all up in the hands of the CFP committee. Theoretically, the Ducks could still end up in the conference championship game, but they would need Michigan to pull off a fifth straight win over their hated rivals as well as take care of business today.

Oregon knocked off USC last week in a very satisfying way, all but ending the Trojans chances of making it into the playoffs themselves. While the injuries, particularly to the Ducks talented receiving corps do continue to concern, they were able to spread the ball around once again to an array of ball carriers and pass catchers. Two Oregon tight ends came up big once again, and I'd like to see them utilized even more while they have a lot of their talented wide outs sitting on the bench.

The Huskies are led by sophomore QB Demond Williams Jr., who has put together a nice season for his 8-3 squad. Washington is more of a run dominant team this year and the talent disparity between the two schools has narrowed considerably since last season, which will certainly make winning on the road a tougher challenge this time around.

Notes and miscellany:

• There have been plenty of big moments in this rivalry, but since the move to the Big 10 it feels like something is missing. I think the hatred felt more... organic, maybe, when it wasn't the scheduled last week of the season. Now it feels a little more manufactured perhaps. There certainly isn't a week's worth of hype about the game all over the local news channels like there was with the Civil War. For now, at least, this is just going to feel like the last game of the regular season and not much more.
• Opponent fun fact: While I'm not much of a dog person, I can certainly admit that huskies are pretty cool looking dogs. Of course, Washington's live mascots over the years have been Alaskan Malamutes and not actually huskies, strictly speaking. Prior to adopting the Huskies as their official team name in the early 1920s, however, Washington's mascot was named Sundodger. As in, you know, there's not a lot of sun in Seattle! Apparently it wasn't very popular.
• Opponent history: Washington leads the all-time series 63-49-5. After winning three consecutive close games from 2021-2023, they were blown off the field in Eugene last season. Let's hope this game is more like that game and not the ones that came before it.
• Game time is 12:30 PM PST on CBS in Seattle. Go Ducks!