September 12, 2008
By Jay Jones

While The Register-Guard’s George Schroeder, host of “The Writer’s Block”, travels to West Lafayette, Indiana Friday morning to cover Saturday’s Oregon-Purdue game, I will be hosting the show from 9:00am-10:00am on KSCR 1320 AM “The Score” in the Eugene/Springfield area.

And it’s going to be all college football.

Here’s the lineup for the show:
- Talking Oregon-Purdue with Jason Vondersmith from The Portland Tribune
- The Corvallis Gazette-Times’ Cliff Kirkpatrick is going to preview the OSU-Hawaii game and go around the Pac-10
- Heading out to West Lafayette, Indiana to talk to the Journal & Courier’s Tom Kubat about Purdue

If you want to call the show, 284-8571 is the number.

Get all your sports news on the Oregon Ducks at DuckSportsNews.com. Innappropriate comment? Let us know. Spam filters are set on high. Please be patient for your comments to be posted.

One thing that struck me while putting these together is how much Oregon’s defense has improved in 2008. Obviously, the Ducks have played 2 lower-tier football teams, but even comparing the numbers to last year’s Houston and Washington games, there is visible improvement.

Average Stats in games vs Houston and Washington:

Rushing Defense: 239.2 yards
Pass Defense: 243 yards

2007 Defensive Stats (13 games):

Rushing Defense: 132.7
Pass Defense: 249.2

2008 Stats (2 games):

Rushing Defense: 91.5
Pass Defense: 182.5

September 8, 2008
By Jay Jones

Here’s a television agreement update from University of Oregon Senior Associate Athletic Director Joe Giansante:

“Oregon’s new relationship with Comcast SportsNet for three live football games this season has no bearing on the restriction to deliver games nationally on DirecTV or Dish through ESPN GamePlan. The University of Oregon is prohibited by the Pac-10 and FSN from delivering these games on ESPN GamePlan. Oregon vs. Purdue can be seen regionally on ABC stations throughout the country, including those in Eugene, Portland, Medford and Bend. The Comcast SportsNet agreement has no effect on the network agreements with ABC and FSN. Games selected by those two outlets will be available in all areas, as they always have been. The university continues to aggressively work to provide coverage of the remaining OSN games, vs. Boise State and vs. WSU to carriers in Bend, Medford and other areas not served by Comcast SportsNet. Those games can be viewed as well at goducks.com.”

Get all your sports news on the Oregon Ducks at DuckSportsNews.com. Innappropriate comment? Let us know. Spam filters are set on high. Please be patient for your comments to be posted.

This Pac-10 TV schedule is brought to you by Vik Construction Company.

UPDATED Friday 10am: A couple of games have been changed due to Hurricane Ike. Thanks to Eric for the updates.

September 7, 2008
By Jay Jones

10 Quick Hits?

Long story short: DSN co-owner Ryan Welch migrated subjecting each other to our in-game text messages to subjecting you, the DSN audience, to my text messages to myself.

Got it? Good. Because here we go…

1. Biggest Week 1 to Week 2 Improvement: Duck Vision. Now, I have to admit a bit of a bias here. But, regardless, the smoother transitions, de-flickered graphics, larger fonts, and improved audio all made for a much better Duck Vision experience.

2. Utah State Quarterback Sean Setzer, did you get a chance to talk to former Sheldon High School and WSU quarterback Alex Brink about coming home? Just curious.

3. Shutting out the Aggies for the game should have been the defensive goal. Shoot.

4. (Overheard) “What’s an Aggie?” An “aggie” is someone who attends an agricultural school. Texas A&M is probably the most famous “Aggie” football school. Over the course of its early history, Oregon State students were probably called “aggies”, until the term “Beavers” became increasingly popular. (Plenty of “aggie” jokes out there if you Google it.)

5. If you booed Jeremiah Masoli at any point during the game, you should have been kicked out of the game and considered persona non grata from all future Duck games. Are you serious? Booing the kid in his second game? In a blowout? Give me a break. (John Stossel impersonation completely unintentional.)

6. (Overhead right before halftime) “Bellotti looks mad.” Yeah, he probably should have been somewhat upset. But not at anything that would justify booing!

7. Shutting out the Aggies in the second half should have been the defensive goal. Double shoot.

8. Harper made a throw! Yeah!

9. The view from the camera deck (on the roof of the south-side suites) is pretty cool. And windy. I’d highly recommend it. It was just me, the football videographers, and a bunch of security types.

10. Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, I guess. Oregon runs over Utah State in Oregon on Saturday. Gary Colemen backs out his car at a bowling alley, hits a car, and runs over a pedestrian in Utah on Saturday.

Photo by AJ Untermeyer.

Now, the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum,
What might be right for you, may not be right for some.
A man is born, he’s a man of means.
Then along come two, they got nothing but their jeans.

But they got, Diff’rent Strokes.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.

Everybody’s got a special kind of story
Everybody finds a way to shine,
It don’t matter that you got not alot
So what,
They’ll have theirs, and you’ll have yours, and I’ll have mine.
And together we’ll be fine….

Because it takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.
Yes it does.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.

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September 6, 2008

Here are some photos by AJ Untermeyer of the Oregon-Utah State game.

Get all your sports news on the Oregon Ducks at DuckSportsNews.com. Innappropriate comment? Let us know. Spam filters are set on high. Please be patient for your comments to be posted.

I know the Husky game has come and gone, and the team is looking forward, but fans don’t have to do that. I’ve been keeping an eye on the Husky message boards and blog posts lately and it’s been pretty entertaining to say the least. 

My favorite, by far is the In-Game Thread on Bob Condotta’s blog Saturday night during the game. You’ll notice how the optimism is brimming at kickoff and slowing falls into Ty-Hate as the game progresses. 

Below, are a sampling of comments from Condotta’s recent blog post. 

Don’t get too excited. Here’s Lappano’s play book:

1st down — run up the gut, gain zero
2nd down — run up the gut, lose a yard
3rd down — pass play (results in broken play b/c half the kids don’t know WTF they’re doing out there thanks to terrible coaching) pray like crazy that Jake improvises a first down

then, if Jake gets a first down, start over

if not, punt the ball 6 yards

——–

is it possible for UW to place 11th this year? If so, I’m sure Ty will find a way!

——-

Ted Miller: “That should improve this week inside a home stadium where calling audibles at the line of scrimmage will be far easier than inside boisterous Autzen Stadium. ”

The Huskies have audibles?????

——–

ja…didn’t you hear?!?!

We’re “opening up our playbook”!!!! Hooray!!!

We are actually going to OPEN UP our PLAYBOOK…

We are actually going to the bookshelf…look for the playbook called “HUSKY PLAYBOOK”…take it off the shelf…and OPEN IT UP…

GENIOUS!!!

——–

In an effort to help boost ticket sales, any catchy slogans out there for marketing purposes?

I have the following:

“Catch the excitement! We’re usually within striking distance in the third quarter!”

“We’ll get this thing figured out eventually!!”

“Bad clams”

——–

I noticed several threads back that duck fans actually went from hating us and talking smack to pity. What a kick to the crotch. I’d rather have their hate than their pity.

———

Agree with first poster “Scott”. Also, the whole Oregon team was out to win one for their fallen comrade who died just a few weeks before.

Don’t discount the emotional motivation of a team that has been thru a tragedy.

Here are a few select photos from the UO-UW game. Photos by Cameron Resnick.

Get all your sports news on the Oregon Ducks at DuckSportsNews.com. Innappropriate comment? Let us know. Spam filters are set on high. Please be patient for your comments to be posted.

Hugh Millen (former Washington QB) was at the game Saturday night and he was impressed by the Ducks. Among other things, Millen said the Ducks passed his ‘eye-ball’ test as he watched them warm up in pre-game. Millen was on KJR-AM 950 in Seattle yesterday with Ian Furness and said ‘Oregon stacks up with any college football team athletically.‘ 

He went on to say that the Ducks are ‘a QB away from being a national championship contender.‘ Also, a bit more obvious to most, he said the Ducks are ‘so much more talented than we (Washington) are.‘

If you want to hear the 3-minute snippet, click here.