Kwon Alexander is the college football equivalent of a franchise player.  He's a 6-2, 207-lb. outside linebacker from Oxford, Alabama, named by scout.com as the number one outside linebacker prospect in the country.  ESPN's Jamie Newberg reports he'll be visiting five schools this summer, and Oregon is one of them.

Alexander has incredible range.  Listed as 4.51 in the forty, he flies around the football field, aggressive and attacking.  Consider his statistics from his sophomore and junior seasons:

scout.com 2010 stats: Alexander recorded 147 tackles and 17 sacks, six forced fumbles and three fumble recoveries.

2009 (11 games): Alexander had 147 tackles with 91 solo, 51 tackles for loss, nine sacks, five forced fumbles and one fumble recovery.

Those are eye-popping numbers, and watching the video, it's easy to see how he achieved them.  Alexander plays with joy and abandon, displaying tremendous instincts and range.  He has the agility to cover running backs and tight ends, and he's devastatingly effective on the blitz.

Nearly every major school in the country has offered this young man. including Auburn, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Clemson, LSU, Miami and Tennessee.  Winning this recruiting battle would be an historic coup for the Ducks.

Wide receivers don't have to be geniuses.  To begin with, intelligence is a rough, subjective measure of an individual's ability to learn and solve problems, and there are all kinds of intelligence.  Harvard researcher and professor Howard Gardner has identified seven distinct "intelligences," all of which can be useful or useless on a football field, depending on how attentively they are applied.

Chip Kelly is an intelligent guy and a great communicator, and he tends to attract and gravitate toward athletes that are sharp and directed.  His most recent recruiting class included Marcus Mariota, Koa Kaai and Anthony Wallace, all honor roll students, and 2012 tight end Evan Baylis comes in at 3.8.  The player he's replacing, David Paulson, may be an Academic All-America this year.

Plenty of wide receivers are smart guys.  J.J. Birden, for example, a former Duck speedster, was smart enough to survive eight years in the NFL at 160 pounds, and he's gone on to become a successful entrepreneur.  Jeff Maehl was no Rhodes Scholar, but he was a smart football player, something he showed in lots of little ways, like downfield blocking and covering punts.

It's been linked to death, but he's dead wrong about Oregon and others:  Friday Andy Staples of si.com ran a list of " the top ten coaching jobs in the country."  Here's his list:

1. Texas
2. Ohio State
3. Oklahoma
4. Florida
5. Georgia
6. LSU
7. Alabama
8. Penn State
9. Auburn
10. Oregon

Texas makes sense at number one, but Ohio State makes none at number two.  The Buckeyes are facing major NCAA penalties.  While there's plenty of in-state talent in Ohio, the speed guys it takes to compete nationally are found predominately in California, Texas and Florida.  Increasingly, these players gravitate to warm-weather schools.  With the likely setback of vacated wins, a three-year bowl ban and loss of scholarships, it will take Ohio State much longer to recover than Miami and Alabama did before them.

When success comes to their beloved football team, fans begin to think that it is a birthright and a certain wave of the future.  They will swill their beer with a new carelessness and puff out their chests, become prideful and swagger throughout the conference as if they own it.  The caravans of motor homes grow large, loud and boastful on the freeway, decorated with inordinate pride as they hog the fast lane on the way to another beatdown of another hated rival.  The succession of storied victories swell their head.  Arrogance becomes a drug stronger than meth.  It ravages the conscience and the memory.  "We rule," becomes the thinking.  "We can do anything.  We cannot be stopped."  The team becomes an extension of themselves.  What was once one modest bumper sticker becomes a collection of hats, coffee mugs and cubicle pennants, until the identification and affection becomes the center of our identity.   We wear Duck jackets and tote Duck golf bags.  If it could, our blood would bleed a different color.  We bookmark half a dozen websites and count the days until the opening of fall practice and opening game, fully immersed in the heady baptism of dominance and glory.

Ask the fans of Ohio State, USC and Notre Dame how quickly and miserably it can all go away.  Ask Washington fans, or Gators, Longhorns, Volunteers or Bulldogs.  Hire Lane Kiffin and see how fast a program can unravel.  Ask the Awww-buuurrrnn Ti-gers in about a year.  Better yet, ask the faithful of the Washington State Cougars, our near neighbors, our dopplegangers across the fertile high plains.

Ted Miller points out that Stanford doesn't play Utah or Arizona State, has Oregon. Notre Dame and Cal at home, and concludes the Cardinal might make a run at the national title.

He's right that the schedule is favorable, but the coaching change, two new coordinators, the loss of the top three receivers, three offensive linemen (including Chase Beeler) and nose tackle Sione Fua, cornerback Richard Sherman and fullback/linebacker Owen Marecic point in the other direction.

Andrew Luck is a great college quarterback, but he can't win 12 games by himself. 

Success has its toll. Duckdom has its own version of "Bubba and Earl, sittin' at the 50." It's Brandon and Ryan, hangin' at the tailgate, missing the 3rd quarter.

Two former frat boys, Duck fans for three and a half years, drinking expensive beers with wedges of citrus in them.

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Everything cycles in college football. Go back ten and twenty years, and you'll find games and entire seasons when Oregon was on the other end of the cycle.

The three most potent ingredients of smug, arrogant behavior are victory, testosterone and alcohol. The fourth is a short memory.

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