Election Day

These Ducks are really, really good.


I spent Saturday night watching USC try to hang with Oregon; and they did, for about 2 and half quarters. But then the Duck offense kept rolling and Matt Barkley and company couldn’t keep up. As the Trojans struggled through the last few painful minutes, I switched over to Titanic, showing on TBS. How appropriate- a story about a excessively opulent anachronism that goes down in a hubris-laden disaster. On this same weekend last year I wrote that Oregon had ended the Carroll era at USC. Not only was I correct, but they are now the standard bearer for the conference. From a completely selfish standpoint, I am glad that the Pac-12 with the two divisions goes into effect next year. That way, we don’t have to play Oregon every year and only need to focus on beating our division opponents: UCLA, the Arizona schools, and Utah/Colorado. If this year is any indication, only Arizona and Utah poses a challenge. Utah will be a tough date and I expect the Utes to win that game for the next couple of years. Utah at Oregon will make a great Pac-12 championship




Iowa had a great game against Michigan State last weekend and climbed back into the Big-10 race. One play from the blowout made ESPN’s top plays for the day: a spectacular one-handed by receiver McNutt. But that was not the best play of the game! The most amazing play, one that is easily the play of the year so far for Iowa, was a bizarre hook and ladder pick-6 interception return for a TD. Check it out here: Sash to Hyde.  What is cool about this play is that pick-specialist Tyler Sash made the grab, and then tossed it behind him to Mica Hyde. Sash could have gone a long way on his own- there was plenty of open field in front of him. But he tossed it to Hyde anyway. Why? Obviously it was something they had practiced before. But also Mica’s brother happens to also play defense for Michigan State. So, Sash ensured that the Iowa Hyde brother got something to brag about over Christmas dinner!



As Iowa and Nebraska met their obligations in cutting the number of undefeated teams down to 5, I stumbled onto ESPN's sportsnation website: http://espn.go.com/sportsnation/polls .  They had a number of polls about the BCS "candidates": the 5 undefeated plus Alabama, asking who should be number 1, who is more deserving, Boise State or TCU, etc.  What is really fun with these polls is to click on the "view map" after you vote and see the regionalization of these topics.  When asked if a one-loss Alabama should be put ahead of an undefeated Boise State, the regions were very clear: everyone in the SEC thinks Alabama should be there and most of the rest of the country picked Boise State. There was one notable result: a majority of voters in Oregon chose Alabama!  I guess the Ducks dont want to lose to Boise State by a knockout like the start of last season!

Fight On,

Hans