The Oddsmakers Top 25 and a Fighting Duck

Apparently these guys are ready to take on the often questionable and unpredictable rankings from the Coaches, AP, and Harris polls of college football. This poll, which was released last December and is in the DXP archive ranks college football teams according to who the Vegas gambling gurus would make favorite on a neutral field if they played. This is so interesting in so many ways.

As of today, they keep the top 3 the same with USC, LSU, and Oklahoma, but then things change dramatically. It then goes from Texas to West Virginia to UCLA and then to, yes, NEBRASKA at #7. Florida? Wisconsin? Cal? Wisconsin is actually at #14 and Arizona State, who is unranked, is at #17. There is a reason that these fellas bring in a BILLION dollar gambling industry to Las Vegas every year. It’s their job. Not taking away anything from the coaches and the AP writers, but they don’t study every game, every team as in depth. It’s not their job. They have film to study, game plans to make, and articles to write. Trust me, it won’t be this year or even next year, but eventually this will have a significant impact on the BCS and on the college football polls when we realize they know more about teams than any of us.

(Thanks Chris Fowler for some of this information. I wonder why you paid to see these rankings? Let me know who you are taking this week.)

Now to the fighting Duck…

Two weeks ago, Donald or Puddles (both accepted by the U. of Oregon) the Duck had a little incident with U. of Houston Shasta the Cougar. This is from a Oregon perspective and misses to show Shasta with a pile drive. I bring you Puddles vs. Shasta.



That reminded of the Stanford Cardinal ‘Tree’ vs. the Cal Bears’ ‘Oski’, which is still hands down the best mascot fight ever. The quality isn’t good, but it is narrated by the late great Charlie Stein and how good is a mascot that gets arrested and taken to jail?



Stay tuned for Lil’ Red vs. Ralphie the Buffalo……