Piece of cake for Oregon in 2010
There is no way for one person to be able to tell what will happen or how a team will finish a season on opening day. The Oregon Ducks, to more than likely the surprise of no one, are still undefeated at 9-0 and are sitting in prime position to be
invited to the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) big game coming up in January of 2011. However, a little research into their schedule and how strong it is has come up with some glaring differences between teams.
Oregon’s schedule
Oregon ended last season in first place in the Pacific 10 (Pac-10) conference and are heavy favourites to repeat this late in the season. They started off this season against the New Mexico Lobos and absolutely destroyed them, 72-0.
Their second game of the Ducks season was against the Tennessee Volunteers and destruction took place with the Oregon offence putting on a dominating performance and scoring 48 points in the process. The only blemish on the Ducks in this game was that the
defence let up 13 points. So, after two games, the Ducks had points for total of 120 and only 13 allowed. It only gets better from here.
Their week three game was against the Portland State Vikings, and another clobbering took place. The final score of this game was 69-0. Is a game like this really a test for a team like the Ducks? The Oregon fans love it, however many fans across the Pac-10,
and the whole BCS are starting to wonder.
Week four brought perhaps Oregon’s toughest challenge, a game against conference foe Arizona State Sun Devils. The Ducks still managed to run up their offensive score to 42, but the defence might have been taking it too easy as they allowed Arizona State to
score 31 points. An eleven point victory was the closest margin of victory they have had to date.
Week five brought in their first ranked opponent of the season in the Stanford Cardinals. It did not change anything as the Ducks still scored 51 points to the Cardinals 31. This was the second week in a row that the Oregon defence allowed 31 points, showing
that they are human – sort of.
Week six had another in-conference match-up. This time, it would be Washington State defence that would get owned by the Ducks. Another 43 points were scored by this offence to Washington State’s 23.
They had a bye in week seven (like they really needed it), so it was on to the UCLA Bruins and week eight. Another defensive massacre took place as the Ducks once again ran up the score. At the final whistle, the score was 60-13.
Week nine featured their second ranked opponent of the season in the USC Trojans. The Oregon offence steamrolled (of course) to a 53-32 victory.
Last weekend’s victory over unranked Washington was another 53-point performance.
Clearly, these Ducks have not been tested, and will remain untested and unproven until they can beat the high class of the rest of the division. Each team has to play a majority of their games against conference teams, but seriously let’s give these guys a
run for their money, instead of having them play teams like Portland State and New Mexico (no offence meant to these programs, they are just in a way different league than Oregon).
The offence sits atop the country in most categories, which gives teams like Auburn (who is also undefeated) a very unfair shake in the grand scheme of things. Auburn plays teams like Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana State, and Arkansas and has competition
all season long.
To finish out Oregon’s season, they have only one game left against a ranked opponent which is currently Arizona. But if Arizona loses before this game, odds are they will become unranked, leading to perhaps an even easier-than-thought schedule for this Duck
team.
It has become clear that Oregon’s strength of schedule is actually the weakest in the Pac-10 which leads some people to believe that the Ducks do not deserve to be in the BCS Championship game.
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