*That’s Dan Lanning’s Big Ten, of course. Right now, we’re all simply living in it. Unfortunately, this weekly piece also covers the College Football Playoffs, where the Ducks may play up to three games. The list can expand to include as many things as my fingers can manage and my mind can conjure.
1. Close your eyes and picture a future beyond the fascinating and perilous CFP, all the way to August 30, 2025.
2. Oregon’s season opener is against Montana State. It is possible that the Ducks are beginning their defense of the school’s first national title.
9. Who is the quarterback?
12. With Dillon Gabrielso behind the wheel, breaking records every week, and earning a trip to New York this weekend as the Ducks’ second consecutive Heisman Trophy finalist, it may seem premature to ask this issue almost nine months out of the season.
If the College Football Playoff selection committee has taught us anything, it’s that choosing numbers 1, 2, 9, and 12 for your top four is confusing, Bill. [Please keep it consecutive.]
5. All OK, all right. Where were they, then? Yes, indeed. Asking the quarterback a question is most appropriate at this moment. On Monday, the transfer portal formally opened.
6. As a player enters the unknown, I like to imagine the portal as a mystical one, with the colors and emblems of every NCAA team swirling around and the voices of hundreds of college coaches, each yammering louder than the others, echoing. Unfortunately, it’s essentially just a moving vehicle and a website. dull.
7. I admit that the Ducks probably have more pressing positions to concentrate on in that non-mystical gateway than quarterback. There is just no reason to add to a position that is full of youthful talent, according to my colleague James Crepea. However, I must ask because Dan Lanning and his offensive coaches have recruited the position with such amazing skill.
8. Heisman contenders and Oregon’s past two starting quarterbacks, who combined for 93 career starts, entered through the portal. After starting an NCAA-record 61 games, Bo Nix eventually left Oregon, but Gabriel surpassed that total in Saturday’s Big Ten championship victory against Penn State.
9. With five career starts, 19-year-old Dante Moore will take over as quarterback next season if he is, as one might assume, Oregon’s quarterback-in-waiting.
10. The cornerstone of Lanning’s schemes and the hallmark of Oregon’s recent success has been quarterback experience, while it is obviously not the only indicator of excellent quarterback play.
11. Moore, a former five-star Oregon recruit, jumped to the Ducks after flipping to UCLA and starting five games as a rookie under Chip Kelly.
12. That is nearly as much back and forth between UCLA and Oregon as there is in the last minute of the men’s basketball game on Sunday.
13. Moore played in nine Bruins games last season, completing slightly more than half of his passes and tossing nine interceptions and eleven touchdowns. For a real freshman, that seems about appropriate.
14. In order to maintain his redshirt, Moore has only made four appearances this season, with Austin Novosad acting as the standard backup. The Ducks finished the regular season undefeated after Moore led them on a 74-yard touchdown drive in the fourth quarter against Washington. He then took a knee to end the game.
15. Lanning stated during the July Big Ten media days that it’s more important to be prepared when the time comes than to be thrown into the fire. By next fall, Moore will have even more time to prepare.
16. In high school, Moore fell in love with Oregon and became close to Kenny Dillingham, the offensive coordinator at the time. Moore changed his mind after Dillingham went for Arizona State.
17. The Ducks seemed to have a clear succession plan in place when he joined Gabriel at Oregon as a member of the transfer class last year. However, it raises the philosophical question of whether the Ducks should add another proven starter to provide Moore with more competition than Novosad and three gifted rookies can offer. Do they not target another quarterback because they are confident he is prepared for the position?
18. The most important things to think about in this situation are the pledges Oregon made to Moore to win his commitment the previous season and the quarterbacks who could arrive with the kind of experience that could give them an advantage against the Ducks. Do any of the players that have already or are expected to enter the portal, such as Miller Moss of USC or Darian Mensah of Tulane, clearly provide the Ducks with an improvement over Moore, who will be a redshirt sophomore the following season?
19. It will be interesting to watch how the Ducks perform with a quarterback who is less experienced but not completely inexperienced than they have had in each of the last three seasons. I believe the Ducks are locked in on Moore. However, the responses we receive over the next several days and weeks will be instructive.
20. Would the Ducks be open to adding a highly seasoned mentor and backup if they are certain about Moore? If that’s the case, this is a crazy concept that will undoubtedly make some people uncomfortable.
21. Take a deep breath
22. Targeting Oregon States may be a lot worse for them.As of Monday, Ben Gulbranson, who has started for OSU the past three seasons, had not yet stated if he plans to return for a sixth season in Corvallis.
23. The portal’s disclaimer states that, although it officially finishes on December 28 for teams whose seasons go over that date, it reopens for five days after the season concludes. This implies that any Ducks who could leave don’t absolutely need to decide until as late as January 25 (after the national championship game in Atlanta) or as early as January 6 (after a loss in the Rose Bowl on January 1).
24. In the meantime, I’m still attempting to understand the specifics of how the College Football Playoff committee developed this method. This approach should, in my opinion, take into account the implications of seeding for the top-seeded clubs. As it stands, Oregon, who just defeated them handily, merely needs to defeat Boise State and SMU to advance to the semifinals. Oregon must defeat Tennessee or Ohio State.
25. The Nittany Lions benefit from being seeded lower than their ranking, even though the worth of that bye is incalculable. While Oregon must defeat one of the sixth- or seventh-ranked teams to advance to the semi-finals, they just need to defeat the ninth- and tenth-ranked teams.
26. Although winning a single game may seem easier than winning two, the relative easiness of the championship path should get more challenging as one moves down the bracket, which is not the case here.
27. I’ve given the concept a lot of thought, but as my colleague Nick Daschel explained over the weekend, the obvious solution is to seed based on final rankings and do away with guaranteed byes for conference champions.
28. The four top-ranked clubs that win their league can be guaranteed a bye or a home game in the first round if rewarding conference winners is still a top objective. Therefore, Boise State would host Indiana and Arizona State would host Ohio State this year in place of having byes.
29. I kind of like the idea, but I borrowed it from Joel Odom, the sports editor for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Compared with a top-four seed plus a bye, that seems like a more fitting bonus.
30. Although the current format was created to prevent three SEC schools from finishing in the top four, I would argue that this is far less of an issue in a 12-team bracket than it was in earlier iterations.
31. Although conference champions aren’t always placed No. 9, No. 12, and No. 16, this fact is what has made this bracket so chaotic. If you had to seed it according to rankings, Oregon’s route would resemble having to defeat Georgia, Boise State, and Penn State. or Texas, Indiana, and Notre Dame.
32. Certainly, both of those are challenging. However, compared to the string of challenges they currently face—possibly Ohio State, Texas, and Georgia—they seem like a more logical progression to the top-seeded team playing its hardest game at the end, which is the football equivalent of Odysseus returning to Ithaca.
33. To avoid being criticized for sounding like Homer.
–Bill Oramis, The Oregonian/OregonLive’s sports columnist.
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