Trojans Wire launched on December 12, 2019, as the first site in the College Wires network to cover a Pac-12 team. Sixteen months later, we finally have company out here in the West.

We at Trojans Wire are very pleased to tell you that our network now has a companion site to cover the foremost athletic program in the Pac-12 North.

Ducks Wire, edited by Zachary Neel and staffed by lead writer Donald Smalley, went live Monday morning. The site will give you extensive coverage of Oregon sports, featuring football and men’s basketball but also including the other particularly visible sports in which the Ducks have a national presence, such as women’s basketball and baseball.

USC and Oregon have been at the center of the conversation in the Pac-12’s two revenue sports during the current college sports cycle. The Trojans and Ducks met in the Pac-12 Championship Game last December in Los Angeles. They finished in the top two of the Pac-12 basketball standings. They had the two best players in the Pac-12, Chris Duarte and Evan Mobley. They had the two best coaches, Dana Altman and Andy Enfield. They met in the Sweet 16.

Beyond the past year, USC and Oregon have established the two best football brands in the Pac-12 (formerly the Pac-10) over the past 20 college football seasons. Stanford under David Shaw has been really good, but USC and Oregon have been better in a 20-year window (as opposed to a seven-year window).

Over the past 20 seasons (2001 through 2020), either USC or Oregon has made a Bowl Championship Series/New Year’s Six game in 17 seasons. The only three seasons in the past 20 in which the Trojans and Ducks both missed a BCS/NY6 game were 2013, 2015, and 2018.

Oregon is the last Pac-12 team to make the College Football Playoff National Championship Game (2014 season vs. Ohio State). USC is the last Pac-12 team to win the college football national title (2004 season).

It is only natural that Ducks Wire joins Trojans Wire in the College Wires family of sites. You want to know what’s happening in Eugene and the Pacific Northwest. You want to get a read on USC’s main recruiting competitor in the North (since Washington’s recruiting is headed in the wrong direction under Jimmy Lake). You want to read about the ways in which Dana Altman is trying to respond to the rise of the Los Angeles schools in college basketball.

Ducks Wire will give you the inside skinny on Oregon athletics. Rest assured that we will use Ducks Wire as a resource to augment our own coverage of the Pac-12. We will also present some special articles this week with a USC-Oregon crossover dimension, the biggest crossover project since NBC integrated Law and Order and Homicide: Life On The Street episodes way back when.

Ducks Wire is live. Trojans Wire is no longer alone in Pac-12 country. Read up on one of USC’s foremost conference competitors. This is going to be fun!