Ducks

Oregon enters its second season in the Big Ten Conference carrying the trophy from its first: the 2024 title, delivered under Dan Lanning three years into his tenure.

The program dates to 1893 and for decades answered to a different name — the Webfoots stuck until the mid-1960s, when Ducks finally took over for good. Autzen Stadium now holds roughly 54,000 for the green and yellow.

Eighteen conference championships span four leagues: the Oregon Intercollegiate Football Association in 1895, the Northwest Conference either side of the First World War, the Pacific Coast Conference through the 1950s, nine Pac-10/Pac-12 titles between 1994 and 2020, and now the Big Ten. Two of those Pac-12 seasons carried Oregon to a national title game — a loss to Auburn after the unbeaten 2010 run, and another to Ohio State in 2014, the year Marcus Mariota won the Heisman Trophy.

The 2010 run traced back to a single afternoon in 1994: Kenny Wheaton's 97-yard interception return, still known simply as "The Pick," turned a game against Washington and set off a period of sustained relevance the program hadn't known before. Chip Kelly's tempo offense, built from 2009, made that unbeaten season possible and reshaped how the rest of college football thought about pace.

Oregon State remains the fixture on the calendar — the rivalry ran as the Civil War from 1929 until 2020, when it was renamed the Oregon–Oregon State Rivalry Series, the Platypus Trophy still going to the winner. For now, the standard Lanning has to hold is the one his own team set last year: a Big Ten champion in its debut season, with no margin left to slip in its second.