There's so many good things in this piece, it has me wishing this writer would come up north and replace Goe and that little bald man at O. There's a reason Oregon played for the national championship last year, and why the Ducks have won their conference showdowns with Stanford the past two seasons. It's not exclusively about talent, although that's an obvious factor. It's that coach Chip Kelly really doesn't give a damn. He's a decent guy at heart, but if you invited him over, you might find him rifling through your office files, or breaking a few wine glasses in search of a beer mug. He's brazenly reckless, oblivious to the consequences, and after Oregon's 53-30 win at Stanford Stadium on Saturday night, Kelly will once again be the talk of the collegiate coaching fraternity. If you recall last year's game in Eugene, the day Oregon came back from an 18-point deficit, it was a totally unexpected onside kick - with the Ducks trailing 21-10 - that changed the momentum in the second quarter. It was a crazy-genius notion, and it led to a final score eerily similar (52-31) to Saturday night's rematch. Who goes for a two-point conversion, on the road, after a touchdown breaks the ice in the first quarter? With a tight end throwing to a linebacker? Kelly did that, for an 8-0 lead, when a misfire would have earned him ridicule. Leading 15-9 with three minutes left in the second quarter, Oregon faced a 4th-and-7 at the Stanford 41. I'm not sure another coach in the country would have taken that gamble, especially with an offense that gained a total of minus-1 yard in the first quarter. Come up short, and you've given Andrew Luck some pretty nice field position to orchestrate his hurry-up offense and take the lead at halftime. Then again, this is a coach they call "Big Balls Kelly" around the Oregon campus, and he didn't have a first down in mind. A wide-open De'Anthony Thomas turned a screen pass into a 41-yard touchdown, a 22-9 lead, and a sense among the sellout crowd - everyone aside from that lively pocket of Oregon partisanship in the northeast corner - that things might not end well. "That's what coach does," said defensive end Terrell Turner. "Keeps everyone on their toes. You can't just come into a place like this and hope for the best. We've got to play our game, shock people. That's what we do." So it all goes away for Stanford: the conference championship, the winning streak (snapped at 17), a shot at the BCS title game, perhaps even the Heisman Trophy for Luck. He'll be a most deserving winner if it comes his way, but Oklahoma State (10-0) now has the inside track to a BCS showdown against LSU, and the Cowboys' quarterback, Brandon Weeden, threw for 423 yards and five touchdowns Saturday in a 66-6 thrashing of Texas Tech. If Oregon's intent was to shock people, the tactic worked to perfection. Luck, while running up big numbers (27-for-41, 271 yards, three touchdowns), was sacked three times, intercepted twice and made to appear downright ordinary at times. Not that Kelly was hearing of it. Told that Luck looked "confused," he replied, "No. I'm not going there. Until about two minutes left, my only thought was to keep him from getting the ball back." Turner, who was in on six tackles, said he was a bit surprised at Luck's demeanor. "He's such a nice guy out there, I was callin' him Little (Tim) Tebow," he said. "I lay him out and he's like, 'Nice hit, 45.' I go, 'You ain't talkin' to me like that. I gotta be mean out here.' " One of the week's main topics had been Stanford's grass field, conveniently ignored of late to perhaps slow down the Oregon attack. "Yeah, I'm kind of surprised a school like this didn't have a lawn mower," Kelly said with a smile. "But they had to play on the grass, too. A couple of their guys slipped and fell out there, including Luck." This game was won, Kelly said, because "we put Stanford in a place they hadn't been this year. They'd taken big leads in all their games, which enabled them to be very methodical on their drives, line up in some exotic formations. We took them out of their rhythm a little bit." And when it came time to take a risk or two? "We were going for it, no matter what," Kelly said. What a scene at game's end: As the disconsolate Stanford players trudged toward the locker room, some two dozen Oregon players raced to that northeast corner, their safe haven, where the Ducks' fans were going crazy and the school band played on. Out in the parking lot, a traffic jam was already well in place. A basic truth had been told, again, in most convincing terms. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/12/SPVD1LUH7T.DTL#ixzz1dcntjqaC http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/12/SPVD1LUH7T.DTL
I'd prefer, 'Ah shucks, my balls are huge!' Damn, in one single article, I get more good stuff than I get out of Doe and Can combine in an entire year. And this guy isn't even local.
