Good Luck Ducks, Week 1: South Dakota?!

The Oregon Ducks begin another football season with renewed title hopes and one of the top rated players in the game.

Pinch yourself. Rub your eyes a few times. Stare out your window in disbelief, if you will. It's, gulp, football season again. While I wish baseball season could go on forever (and in my dreams, I guess it always will), the schedule makers and handsomely paid devils behind the Great Football Machine have declared this the first week where young people run into each other for little to no compensation.

Oregon begins its season trying to erase the memories of a great season turned spoiled, with ugly losses to Stanford (again) and Arizona (seriously?) relegating the Fighting Ducks to a subpar bowl (Alamo). To their credit, they cruised to victory easily over the outclassed Longhorns playing in their own state, but a new season means a blank slate. Heisman hopeful Marcus Mariota is back, along with defensive wizard Ifo Ekpre-Olomu and a host of other stars on both sides of the ball. Gone are standouts like Josh Huff (graduation), De'Anthony Thomas (hanging out with Snoop? or I guess Kansas City) and Colt Lyerla (the less said, the better.) Will the O-line be able to protect the phenomenal Mariota? Will the D-line be able to tackle anyone? You never know anything about a college football team until they get some games in them. I am hopeful about this season but my expectations are not sky high.

Oregon's opponent tonight should also have not-so-sky high expectations. The Ducks continue their educational (for me) tour through the Missouri Valley Conference this season as they play another school that I didn't know actually existed. It's not surprising that there's a state in the union (South Dakota) that has a school named after itself, but I can't recall ever seeing or hearing of such a thing. Not to be confused with the South Dakota State Jackrabbits (playing Missouri today), the South Dakota Coyotes will take the field against the #3 ranked team in the country. I assume the Jackrabbits and Coyotes are bitter rivals as well as natural enemies. The Coyotes reportedly play ground & pound, smash mouth (i.e. Stanford style) football, so Oregon will get a chance to play against a style they haven't performed so well against, albeit with the difficulty setting set to "easy". That's the assumption, anyway. Strange things have happened during the first week of past football seasons, and the hope is that the Ducks don't become the latest shocking early season upset in a long line of them (hello, Appalachian State!)

Well, it at least beats last year's opening opponent. Nicholls State came for the sacks of money with dollar signs on them and left Eugene more or less intact. 

Game time is 7:30 PDT with national coverage on the Pac-12 Network. Go Ducks!

A Contest, Some Odds, Some Sods

There's a mega contest. Some cards from a trade post. And, hey, look -- my Chris Carpenter list is finally live.

First things first this evening: Red Cardboard, an ardent supporter of a team I cannot support, is holding a pretty massive spring cleaning style contest. I'm planning on doing a bit of spring cleaning of my own, but it probably won't result in anything that would be worth holding a contest over. Anyway, the gist is that you can get a bunch of free cards while doing relatively nothing, so get on over there! There's vintagey stuff and shiny stuff. Both kinds.

Meanwhile, buckstorecards sent me a few gems from across the border, hitting up several different teams of interest to me. I'm a big Oregon Ducks fan, though you typically only hear about it hear during football season. I have so much unscanned Ducks that I should probably cave in and show off a few of these things every once in awhile. Clemens is still in the league, having signed with the Chargers after spending the last three seasons in St. Louis.

I also got a number of 1988 Leaf/Donruss cards that appear to be in pack fresh form. Many of my cards from 1986 through 1988 suffer from a bit of wear, so I bet several of them will end up in my binders. Lance Johnson had some productive years with the White Sox after getting just a taste of the sweet, sweet Cardinal red. He actually randomly made an All-Star team once, but it was after he was out of Chicago.

Good Luck Ducks, Week 3: It Could Happen To You II

Story originally printed on September 17, 2011. Not much has changed since.


Loosely speaking, I attended the University of Oregon for several years during the mid-90s. These were fruitful times, as the Ducks were building on the mild success of the Chris Miller and Bill Musgrave years in which they had made the transition from perennial laughing stock to Independence Bowl and Freedom Bowl fodder. My second year in school in Eugene was the surprising Rose Bowl team. Subsequent years saw the Ducks move up a few notches more, and despite the occasional plateau, Oregon football has been trending upward for the better part of two and a half decades now. This is great stuff.

The thing I enjoyed the most about game days back when I lived inside of them was the walk to Autzen Stadium from campus. I will have the rare opportunity to relive that walk this morning to go catch the Ducks take on an FCS opponent in what will ultimately be a working practice and preparation for the conference schedule. Originally, Oregon was scheduled to play Utah Kansas State this week, but when Utah Kansas State suddenly became a conference ally jerk, suddenly their scheduled non-conference game vanished and no in conference game with the Utes whatever you want to call this replaced it. Such is life when you start juggling conferences continue being awesome. It could get even weirder next year.

I don't want to underestimate a team I know nothing about at all. I didn't know there was a Missouri State Tennessee Tech until a few weeks ago, which is less surprising when you consider that until recently they were known as Southwest Missouri State I don't really follow lower division sports. I am (somewhat) familiar with the Missouri Valley Conference, but only today learned that this Bears Golden Eagles football team plays in the Missouri Ohio Valley Football Conference, an FCS offshoot from a D1 conference that otherwise isn't interested in the American version of the sport of Football. This game doesn't scare me, but you only have to look back two weeks one week to Oregon State's Colorado's debacle with Sacramento State to realize that an FCS loss isn't exactly as rare as winning the lottery.


Last season's matchup with Missouri State was pretty one-sided, though the Bears did score first.

Game time is 12:30 12:00 PDT with local national-ish coverage on Comcast SportsNet Northwest Pac 12 Network. If you're going to the game like I am, apparently you are supposed to wear black green.

Good Luck Ducks, Week 11: That Tree

Some have suggested that this week's matchup between the #7 Oregon Ducks and the #4 Stanford Cardinal is the biggest conference game in Oregon's history. I'm not going to say it's not, but here are some other games that come to mind that had enormous significance: the 1994 Civil War (though as it turned out, Oregon would have gone to the Rose Bowl even if they lost), the 1998 Civil War, the 2000 Civil War, the 2009 Civil War... hmm, see a pattern here? I think I will just agree that this is one of Oregon's biggest conference games not involving Oregon State and leave it at that.

The details are well known, but Oregon has lost just one conference game since Chip Kelly took over as head coach, so there should be no reason to expect a Ducks loss here or at any other time. Unfortunately, that one loss was to today's opponent in the same venue. I never go into a game anymore fully expecting an Oregon loss, and I don't today. If I was a betting guy, though, I would begrudgingly put my money on Stanford.

That said, beyond just aggregate success, there are other reasons to be optimistic about the Ducks today. Stanford has piled up some significant injuries, while the Ducks are relatively healthy at their skill positions. Oregon knows Stanford and their gameplan well in the Andrew Luck era, and I don't think anything the Cardinal does will be a surprise. And USC certainly exposed Stanford's defense. If Oregon can consistently score touchdowns on their drives, there isn't another team in the country that can stop them. As usual, Oregon's worst opponent tends to be themselves. To win, they need to avoid the mistakes that plagued them in the LSU game and just run the offense with a zero tolerance for missteps.

Above footage from the 2010 Stanford/Oregon game, where the Ducks stormed back from a large early deficit to blow out the Cardinal.

Game time is 5:00 PST with national coverage on ABC. I can't wait!

Good Luck Ducks, Week 2: Regroup

We're one week in now and I'm still not sure what to make of this Ducks team. I can tell you my thoughts, but I'm no expert. I think the Ducks were pretty terrible against LSU. I honestly wasn't that impressed by the Tigers. They have a hefty ranking and apparently lofty expectations, but I would be surprised if they're anywhere close to a Top 10 team by the end of the season. (It should be noted that no one ever calls on me for college football opinions or analysis, so take that for what it's worth.)

After month after month of ridiculous hype leading up to the Cowboys Classic game, I've barely paid attention to what's going on this week with the Ducks and Nevada. That would be a scary sign if I was representative of the Ducks football team, but I'm pretty sure I'm not. I have gone through a hectic, mostly sportsless week. Those guys like to practice, hit each other and play their Xbox 360 games in the locker room. I'm so out of touch with today's youth!

The Ducks are favored by about four touchdowns in this game, but it's still a bit nerve-wracking because Nevada was a really good team last year. They no longer have Colin Kaepernick, however, but it seems like they still have a good amount of experienced players from last season. I won't get too excited about this game until LaMichael James scores 3 TDs in the first and proceeds to sit for the final three quarters. Anything less than that will probably be a little scary.

Above footage from a 1997 matchup between the Wolfpack and the Ducks. Still relevant!

Game time is 12:30 PDT with national television coverage on FX. Yes, that channel. Hey, they show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, right?

Put in Kellen Clemens!

Put him in! Playing the 3rd string QB is the only true path to victory. C'mon, Jets! It worked for the Bears... almost.