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Congratulations to the Oregon Ducks on their perfect season and berth to the BCS championship game.
Going undefeated for the entire season and doing everything you could do to show the entire country you are deserving of a shot at the national championship is something that should be celebrated.
Just ask TCU.
Oh, wait a minute. Bad example.
Anyway, the Ducks are off to play Auburn for all the marbles next month. Well done, Ducks.
But now we have next five weeks to ponder this question: Just how good are these Oregon Ducks?
You look at their non-conference opponents and you see:
• Portland State, which went 2-9 playing at Division I-AA (Yeah yeah, Talking Points is old-school and still calls it I-AA no matter what anyone else says).
• New Mexico, which went 1-11 and might as well be a I-AA team.
• Tennessee, which had to win its final four games to finish 6-6.
OK, fine. But the Ducks did go 9-0 in the Pac-10, and that ought to be enough to convince folks that the Ducks are really good.
But just how good was the Pac-10 this year? Would you call it a down year for the conference?
Only four conference teams are bowl eligible, and it would have been three had Washington State been able to upset Washington. USC would have been bowl eligible if it weren’t on probation.
But the rest of the conference is filled with flawed, mediocre teams.
That’s not the Ducks’ fault. All they can do is play those teams and thump them, which they did.
But it still makes you wonder …
