In a matter of weeks, the Oregon Ducks are going to be traveling down to Atlanta to take on the defending champion Georgia Bulldogs. It’s a game that holds more meaning this year than it would in other years, simply because Oregon’s new head coach Dan Lanning is less than a year removed from helping lead the Bulldogs to the promised land as their defensive coordinator.
If you take the drama away from the game, though, it is still a juicy matchup that will catch the attention of the college football world. That’s something that the Ducks have been able to do a number of times over the past few decades — schedule a big non-conference game at the start of the season to give the team a monster test before Pac-12 play begins.
We’ve seen Oregon on neutral sites in Dallas, in the belly of the beast in Columbus, or welcoming some top-ranked teams to Autzen Stadium. All of these matchups have been important, either getting the team off to a hot start on the season or derailing their potential championship hopes early on.
We decided to rank the best ones.
For this exercise, we looked at all of the non-conference games Oregon has played since 2000 — bowl games excluded, obviously — and put them in order of the ones where the result, either a win or a loss, meant the most for the team. Here’s what we came up with:
2022 — vs. BYU Cougars
Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Result: N/A (September 17, 2022)
Analysis: It may seem odd to start a list about Oregon history with a game that hasn’t happened yet, but the Duck’s matchup with BYU in Week 3 of the 2022 season will be among the most important games of the year. Everyone is focused on the Week 1 showdown with Georgia, and for good reason, but the Ducks are massive underdogs in that game and will do well to keep it competitive. BYU on the other hand is a very respectable team that Oregon needs to beat. They finished last year ranked No. 19 in the nation, and will offer a great chance for Dan Lanning and this new era of Ducks to show what they’re made of.
2013 — at Virginia Cavaliers
(Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)
Result: Oregon Win // 59-10
Analysis: It was the height of the Marcus Mariota era for the Ducks, and Oregon was coming off of a win in the Fiesta Bowl against the Kansas State Wildcats. Despite that, there were questions about the team, as former head coach Chip Kelly had recently departed for the NFL and left offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich in charge. Would the Ducks be…