{"id":460916,"date":"2025-12-20T22:21:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T22:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/460916\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T22:21:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T22:21:13","slug":"everyone-caught-up-to-oregons-business-model-can-ducks-win-it-all-in-a-world-they-pioneered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/460916\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyone caught up to Oregon\u2019s business model. Can Ducks win it all in a world they pioneered?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletic has live coverage of Oregon vs. James Madison<\/a> in the College Football Playoff first round<\/a>. <\/p>\n

After decades of milestone wins on its climb to college football powerhouse status, Oregon found itself on the other side of a signature victory this season.<\/p>\n

As Indiana celebrated on the Ducks\u2019 home field on Oct. 11, an Oregon staffer shook the hand of a Hoosiers assistant coach and congratulated him on a 30-20 win that helped validate IU as a national championship contender.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hard to beat,\u201d the Oregon staffer said.<\/p>\n

No doubt. Since joining the Big Ten last year, the Ducks are 17-1 in conference play and 24-2 overall, with a league title in their debut season. Since 2010, Oregon is tied for fifth in the nation in victories with Oklahoma at 161. Only Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson and Georgia have more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been building to a standard of what winning football looks like, regardless of conference,\u201d head coach Dan Lanning said this week.<\/p>\n

After the Ducks spent years breaking through barriers that previously required something akin to birthright status for entry, college football has met them where they are. Adaptability and innovation are cornerstones of the Oregon brand, so of course, no school was better prepared to succeed when NCAA amateurism crumbled and the ability to effectively pay players became a necessity for programs that aspire to win national championships.<\/p>\n

Oregon football has never been better, but the Ducks are no longer college football\u2019s gate-crashers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been some great stories in college football, but it\u2019s even harder to stay there, and (the Ducks) have found a way to stay there,\u201d said Craig Pintens, who was a high-ranking administrator at Oregon from 2011 through \u201918 before becoming athletic director at Loyola Marymount.<\/p>\n

In this year\u2019s College Football Playoff, Indiana, Texas Tech and Ole Miss are the new-money climbers, no longer constrained by their histories.<\/p>\n

The Ducks? Heading into a first-round home game against 12th-seeded James Madison on Saturday, they are just another team trying to win a championship.<\/p>\n

Well, maybe not just another team.<\/p>\n

You see, Oregon is not quite a member of the establishment class, either. It has a lot more in common with Ohio State, Georgia, Oklahoma, Alabama and Miami these days than with the Hoosiers, Red Raiders and Rebels \u2014 with one notable exception.<\/p>\n

That first group has combined for 13 national titles since 2000 and 34 in college football\u2019s poll era, dating to 1936.<\/p>\n

The Ducks are still seeking their first.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve built the entire sundae at this point,\u201d Pintens said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of putting that cherry on the top. And it is inevitable. It\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

College football has never cultivated upward mobility. Past success is the best predictor of future success. Lineage and tradition are prized commodities.<\/p>\n

The schools at the top of the food chain tend to stay there \u2014 or have an easier time getting back when they slip. Those toward the bottom generally get stuck.<\/p>\n

There are outliers. Nebraska looks as if it may never recreate the glory days of the 1970s, \u201980s and \u201990s. Clemson went from good to elite under Dabo Swinney, but that era of dominance is increasingly looking like a moment in time rather than a permanent change.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Oregon, the most obvious exception that proves the rule.<\/p>\n

The Ducks didn\u2019t have USC\u2019s Heritage Hall, a shrine to a program that claims 11 national titles and eight Heisman winners. They didn\u2019t have Touchdown Jesus, Notre Dame\u2019s iconic monument to the program\u2019s essential place in the history of college football.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t have the kinds of things that Ohio State and Texas and all these legacy programs had, but we did feel like we had a chance,\u201d former Oregon athletic director Pat Kilkenny said.<\/p>\n

The first baby step toward Oregon shedding its history came in Shreveport, La., of all places, with quarterback Bill Musgrave leading coach Rich Brooks\u2019 Ducks to a victory in the program\u2019s first postseason game in 26 years, the 1989 Independence Bowl against Tulsa.<\/p>\n

The mid-1990s featured trips to the Rose and Cotton bowls that signaled progress but also showed the Ducks still had a long way to go: Oregon lost those games to Penn State and Colorado by a combined score of 76-26.<\/p>\n

Nike co-founder and Oregon alum Phil Knight\u2019s involvement and investment in the program brought a grander vision in the early 2000s. Why not put up a billboard in Times Square to promote quarterback Joey Harrington as a Heisman Trophy contender in 2001?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think our optimism was more about Holiday Bowl and Top 25,\u201d said Kilkenny, an Oregon native. \u201cBut somebody like Phil Knight gets involved, that doesn\u2019t work for him. He doesn\u2019t want to do anything unless he can be the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oregon football had no distinguishing characteristics, so Knight helped create them.<\/p>\n

With Nike\u2019s help, Oregon made uniforms a differentiator in recruiting, unveiling a fresh look almost weekly.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing fashion-progressive isn\u2019t exactly indicative of a strong football program, but (Knight) saw it as brand-building,\u201d Kilkenny said.<\/p>\n

The Ducks were on the front end of the spread offense revolution under coach Mike Bellotti, then promoted Chip Kelly to head coach<\/a> and changed the way the game was played by optimizing fast-paced football.<\/p>\n

When the facilities arms race was escalating, Oregon built its so-called Death Star, a tinted-glass fortress with a barber shop, sleep pods and tech-integrated lockers. The $68 million Hatfield-Dowlin Complex, funded largely by Knight, opened in 2013.<\/p>\n

The Ducks reached the national championship game in 2010 and 2014, losing each time.<\/p>\n

They haven\u2019t been back since, which suggests the ascent has stalled. That\u2019s not the case. Through a whirlwind of coaching changes from Kelly\u2019s successor, Mark Helfrich, to Willie Taggart to Mario Cristobal to Lanning in the span of only seven years, Oregon was still progressing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019ve built a tremendous culture, and that culture has turned over through multiple coaches,\u201d said Pintens, who credits his former boss, athletic director Rob Mullens, with overseeing the continued growth at Oregon.<\/p>\n

Even with Knight\u2019s backing, Oregon is not among the top revenue-generating programs in college football.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOregon is not as resourced as some of the other top powers in college football,\u201d Pintens said. \u201cThey lack a population base. They don\u2019t play in a huge stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n

Autzen Stadium\u2019s gameday experience is one of the best in the country<\/a>, but the place seats about 56,000, about half the capacity of the largest stadiums in the Big Ten and SEC.<\/p>\n

When Oregon spends,<\/a> it spends on what matters most.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to be a top-10 team in college football, you better be invested in winning,\u201d Oregon\u2019s Dan Lanning said earlier this season in response to then-Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy\u2019s comments about how much the Ducks\u2019 roster costs. \u201cWe spend to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2020, the NCAA lifted its ban on paying college athletes for their name, image and likeness. Quickly, those deals became a proxy for paying players, and Oregon was again an early adopter. Founded by Knight and other prominent donors, Division Street quickly became one of college football\u2019s most well-run NIL collectives, groups that pool funds from boosters to license players\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n

Taggart and then Cristobal had already changed the nature of Oregon recruiting, turning the school into a destination for blue-chippers, despite the school\u2019s limited number of those prospects within its geographic footprint.<\/p>\n

Lanning was hired away from Georgia to keep that going in 2021. His ability to embrace a more transactional form of recruiting while still establishing a winning culture has allowed Oregon to narrow the gap between itself and the likes of Ohio State and Georgia.<\/p>\n

NIL has been \u201can equalizing force,\u201d Pintens said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could have better facilities, you could have better coaching, better everything, but at the end of the day, if you don\u2019t have any dollars to support that, it\u2019s going to be really difficult to put together a team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The transformation that took Oregon decades is happening much faster elsewhere, as paying players spreads talent around and gives the traditional have-nots a chance to become haves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe historical programs that weren\u2019t able to compete, it did give them a chance to put a little jet propulsion into their football program, if that\u2019s where they chose to invest,\u201d Kilkenny said.<\/p>\n

Fourth-seeded Big 12 champion Texas Tech, with a roster backed by billionaire booster Cody Campbell that reportedly cost more than $28 million, this season won its first outright conference title since 1955.<\/p>\n

In the SEC, sixth-ranked Ole Miss has effectively mobilized its resources with the Grove Collective and ripped off three straight double-digit victory campaigns while LSU and Florida (with a combined six national titles) fired their head coaches this season.<\/p>\n

In the Big Ten, Indiana, which started the year having lost more games than any other major college football program, has turned unprecedented investment into an unfathomable turnaround under coach Curt Cignetti. The Hoosiers kept rolling after the win in Eugene, knocked off Ohio State in the conference title game, and enter the Playoff as the No. 1 team in the country, boasting the program\u2019s first Heisman Trophy winner in quarterback Fernando Mendoza. The Ducks are no longer the disruptors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe willingness and the belief in taking what had been done and saying, OK, we can be No. 1,\u201d Kilkenny said. \u201cWe can win it all, and we can be a national brand, that has all happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oregon\u2019s challenge now is not just to check the last box on the resume and join the blue bloods once and for all but to keep the new wave of gate-crashers from jumping ahead of them in line on the way to the top of the mountain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic has live coverage of Oregon vs. James Madison in the College Football Playoff first round. After…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":460917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1428,1318,1317,1315,1316,9445,62,222,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-460916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-ncaafootball","13":"tag-oregon-ducks","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-sports-business","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115754230493193031","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}