NCAA Football: The Oregon Ducks Need to Look Themselves in the Mirror

The Oregon Ducks lost another game against a top-tier team last night. LSU beat the Ducks with their back-up quarterback and man-handled the Ducks fast pace offense with stout defense. Oregon has garnered a lot of attention because of their style of play and their fancy uniforms made by Nike. It may be a little early, but I feel like the Ducks are and have been overrated for quite sometime.

The Pac-12 is made up of finesse teams that do not possess the toughness of a team from the Big Ten, SEC or Big 12. Finesse does not work well in football. Oregon is not in the same category as the former USC teams coached by Pete Carroll. The multiple Pac-10 champions may be all they have in common.

With Pete Carroll's former Trojan teams, they played like men amongst boys. Oregon only displays that type of attitude when they are playing Washington or Arizona St. Oregon is a quality program, but it may be time to stop putting them on the pedestal as if they are a Alabama, Oklahoma or an Ohio State. 

Head Coach Chip Kelly is getting away with faltering under the bright lights. When Bob Stoops and Jim Tressel became failures in the big game, the whole world heard about it. In the past few seasons, they have lost to many upper echelon programs in College Football. Boise St, Ohio St, LSU and Auburn have taken care of the Ducks like nobody's business. 

No, the Pac-12 is not what it once was, but there should be no excuses for the Ducks. Kids around the country are dying to play for them because of their style of play and their fashion crazy jerseys. Meaning that there is not a huge talent drop compared to other schools. Losing against LSU may have been what the Ducks have needed. Another humbling loss from a big school to knock them off the pedestal of the elite. It becomes a problem if you have more jersey combinations than quality wins against quality programs. Maybe some of the time is needed devising a better game plan rather than worrying about how you are going to look on the field.