Are Oregon Ducks Big Ten's Best Chance To Win 2024 National Championship?

Can we all agree Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel throws the prettiest spiral in football? 

Rainbows aspire to be as aesthetically pleasing. 

Parabolas admire their symmetrical perfection. 

If somebody hadn’t already created Twitter’s @SportsButMakeItArt account, they’d do it to spotlight Gabriel’s greatest hits.

What is it about lefties — Gabriel, Ken Griffey Jr., Jimi Hendrix, Lionel Messi — that makes them look so much cooler at their craft than a similarly talented righty?

Gabriel dropped bombs right into his receivers’ hands at key moments of Oregon’s 32-31 victory over Ohio State Saturday night at Autzen Stadium, leading the third-ranked Ducks to the slight upset of the second-ranked Buckeyes.

Gabriel finished 23 of 34 for 341 yards, 2 touchdowns and no interceptions against an Ohio State defense that had surrendered just 34 points in its first five games combined.

So many people were excited to watch this matchup — and, presumably, Gabriel’s spirals — the Big Ten drew its largest primetime audience for a conference game since Oct. 25, 2008, when No. 3 Penn State defeated No. 10 Ohio State by a 10-3 count in a battle of Big Ten unbeatens.

An average of 10.2 million viewers tuned into Saturday night’s game, a number that spiked to 13.4 million during the fourth quarter when the lead changed hands three times before Oregon thwarted Ohio State’s last-minute drive with 11 and/or 12 defenders on the field.

But did this victory establish the Ducks as the Big Ten’s Great Optic Yellow Hope to claim back-to-back national championships? Let’s not get silly. Not yet, anyway.

For starters, here’s where the Ducks (6-0) have played their games to date: Oregon, Oregon, Oregon, the Rose Bowl, Oregon and Oregon. You can’t be crowned the best in the Big Ten without leaving the Pacific Time Zone.

Here’s the evidence: So far, Big Ten teams have played 13 conference games where the visiting team had to jump two or three time zones to play. Those visiting teams have amassed a 3-10 record.

Here are the three winners: Penn State last week at USC — when the Nittany Lions looked awful for a half before rallying for an overtime win — and Indiana and Minnesota at UCLA. We don’t want to speak ill of the downtrodden, but the Bruins just might be, shall we say, dreadful. UCLA’s 14.5 points per game rank 133rd out of the 134 Football Bowl Subdivision teams — and that average is bolstered by Bryan Addison’s 96-yard pick six.

But we digress. Let’s focus on the Ducks — and the expected effect of repeated coast-to-coast travel. Let’s be honest. The league’s lopsided geography does not work in the West Coast teams’ favor.

Three of the former Pac-12 teams have to play three long-distance league games this season — Oregon, UCLA and USC — while Washington must make four long road trips. On the flip side, the 14 “old school” Big Ten schools are required to make just one West Coast trip apiece.

Oregon’s first time-zone hop happens this week — when the Ducks go from EDT to PDT for Friday night’s game at Purdue. Considering the Ducks and Boilers reside at opposite ends of the Big Ten standings, this probably isn’t the weekend when time travel helps hand the Ducks a loss.

But two weeks from now, Oregon travels to No. 24 Michigan. And two weeks after that — Nov. 16, to be precise — the Ducks fly to Wisconsin. Coincidentally, that’s smack-dab in the middle of the official duck hunting season in Madison.

Oregon might turn out to be the Big Ten’s best bet to win it all. But the Ducks haven’t proven nearly enough. Yet.