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QuickTake:
Ducks should out-class the Dukes, who had a good season, yes, but faced a much lower level of competition. On the basketball court, the UO women took their first defeat of the season on the road against No. 4 UCLA, and the men took their fifth loss in a row.
All things considered, the College Football Playoff draw couldn’t have worked out better for the Oregon Ducks.
They get their home game against James Madison — a team that rightfully earned its playoff spot by steamrolling the Sun Belt Conference. James Madison also owns the 123st strength-of-schedule nationally. A win gets Oregon a date with No. 4 Texas Tech in Miami.
Then it could be No. 1 Indiana in Atlanta before a potential return trip to Miami for the title game — and the possibility of a Rose Bowl rematch with No. 2 Ohio State.
But the route to Miami begins with James Madison, a fine football program that’s won 11 in a row. It’s also a group that didn’t beat a ranked team in 2025, has a coach leaving for UCLA after the playoff and faces a severe talent gap against the Ducks.
Consider this: James Madison has three players on its roster who were four-star recruits or better. Oregon has more than that in its running back rotation — and 58 in total.
From a football perspective, Dan Lanning’s Ducks can work with that: A gradual wading into the pool, unlike last year’s belly-flop into the deep end against the Buckeyes.
But from a sheer entertainment perspective, it’s a comedown from the talk in preceding weeks of football giants making their way to Eugene just before Christmas.
What if the school that originated “We Want Bama” finally got Bama? How cool would Notre Dame’s helmets have looked under the lights? Could you imagine Lanning vs. Cristobal?
But hey, the Dukes are cool. They’re from Harrisonburg, Virginia — I’ve recently learned — and once beat my Montana Grizzlies in the 2004 Football Championship Subdivision national title game. They call their mascot Duke Dog, made the jump to Football Bowl Subdivision in 2022 and have one bowl win in program history: the 2024 Boca Raton Bowl.
OK, maybe that’s why Lanning fielded a handful of questions Sunday about filling up the stadium in late December while students are away on winter break.
“I don’t think I have to create a pitch,” Lanning said. “Our fans are going to show out for this game. There’s zero doubt in my mind that they’ll be there. If it’s not a student, it’ll be another Oregon fan that’s in there, but they don’t want to miss the opportunity to see the one playoff game in Autzen Stadium. That hasn’t happened before. So I think we’ll have a lot of fans who support it.”
A matchup against a bigger-name school certainly would have made for a unique moment in Eugene, but that’s not really what Lanning’s concerned about. The moment he’s chasing comes after winning four more games.
And the Dukes are the first team standing in the way.
“We got to take care of business here,” Lanning said.
The coordinator search continues — sort of
As first reported by CBS Sports, the Oregon Ducks are expected to promote from within to fill their vacant coordinator positions. Tight ends coach Drew Mehringer will take Will Stein’s job on offense, while secondary coach Chris Hampton will be elevated into Tosh Lupoi’s role.
But Lanning wasn’t quite ready to talk about that.
“I am not going to hop on that right now,” Lanning said during his Sunday playoff announcement press conference. “There are great opportunities for a lot of guys within our staff, but that’s not the focus of this talk.”
Mehringer, 38, is in his fourth year with the Ducks, was promoted to co-offensive coordinator before the season, and has previous playcalling experience as Rutgers’ offensive coordinator in 2016.
This is Hampton’s third season in Eugene, where the 39-year-old also held a co-coordinator role and was previously defensive coordinator at Tulane.
While Lanning wouldn’t confirm his new coordinators, he did expound upon the challenge facing Stein and Lupoi as they juggle finishing out their Oregon stints while setting up shop at their new gigs.
When Lanning was hired by Oregon in December 2021, he split time between Eugene and Athens as he finished out his national title run with the Georgia Bulldogs.
“It’s a tough position to be in, but it’s one that’s really rewarding,” Lanning said. “The reality is, you have to be able to do a job here, and you have to be present for that job, so the hard part is doing that knowing that you’re not going to be able to be somewhere else. You’ve got people you trust there, but there’ll be a lot of conversations between now and the end of the thing for those guys to be able to make sure they maximize that opportunity.”
Undefeated no more
Kelly Graves’ Oregon Ducks finally came back down to earth.
After starting off the season 10-0, the Oregon women opened Big Ten play on Sunday with an 80-59 loss at No. 4 UCLA.
Days after torching the nets in a blowout of Oregon State, the Ducks missed their first six attempts against the Bruins and shot 3-of-18 in the first half as UCLA pulled out to a 23-point lead at the break.
The Ducks regrouped to outscore UCLA 33-31 in the second half, with Ehis Etute and Katie Fiso finishing with 14 points each to lead the Ducks.
“It just shows that we can play with them,” Graves said. “There aren’t many people going to come in and beat these guys here.”
Altman’s Ducks drop fifth straight
The Oregon men followed a similar script in Westwood. Dana Altman’s Ducks lost their fifth in a row — 74-63 at UCLA — in a game that saw Oregon fall behind by 13 in the first half before outscoring the Bruins 32-30 in the second.
UCLA hit six of its first eight 3-point attempts, and the Ducks just couldn’t keep pace, despite 20 points from Jackson Shelstad and 14 from Takai Simpkins.
Playing his first game back after missing two due to injury, center Nate Bittle scored three points to go along with four rebounds.
The Ducks are now 0-2 in Big Ten play and 4-5 overall, after opening the year 4-0.
