ATLANTA — The studios of 92.9-FM “The Game” are located in a beautiful high-rise building in midtown Atlanta. The hosts of their afternoon-drive radio show invited me in for a sit down on Thursday.

We talked Oregon-Georgia. They asked about Ducks’ coach Dan Lanning. Then, the conversation pivoted. One of the hosts leaned forward in his chair and asked me about Falcons’ first-year quarterback Marcus Mariota.

“Can he lead a team?”

Oregon is in this city for the most important football game of a new era. Lanning is going to coach his first game. The Ducks are 17.5-point underdogs. But it’s the 28-year old Mariota who continues to pop-up in conversations here.

“Can he still play?” fans ask.

“Does he have anything left?”

“We had Matt Ryan for 14 years — how long will Marcus last?”

It’s been nearly eight college football seasons since Mariota won the Heisman Trophy. He’s easily one of the most celebrated athletes in UO history. Oregon named its performance center after him. The facility features a gym, field turf, a boxing ring and even has a nap room. But the former Duck has arrived at the crossroads of his professional career, eager to wake the world up and prove he’s an NFL starter.

The Ducks are an underdog. So are the Falcons this season. But is there any bigger underdog in the land than the guy the Tennessee Titans gave up on?

I told the radio show hosts in Atlanta a little about Mariota. I told them he made his bed every day when he lived in the dorms and that Oregon felt unbeatable when he was in uniform. He was 36-5 as a starter in college. But it was the games Mariota lost that taught me more about him than anything.

Against Stanford, his second season as a starter, the Ducks lost a heartbreaking game on the road. After, I waited by the visiting locker room. I overheard Mariota in the locker room, telling his teammates, “We will be OK. We will pull closer together and learn from this.”

Then, I watched the quarterback slip out the back door of the locker room, where his father was waiting. Mariota said nothing. His dad, Toa, didn’t speak either. They just hugged, a father and his son, in the darkness of the night.

It’s the most memorable post-game scene of my career.

The following season, Mariota and the Ducks had sky-high hopes. They slipped in the early part of the season, and lost a home game against Arizona. Mariota played well, but fumbled late on a critical possession. As he left the field that night, I walked behind him and saw the quarterback do the most interesting thing.

He spotted a young kid who was wearing a No. 8 jersey. The boy held a football. Mariota saw him, walked up, lowered himself, and looked the kid in the eyes.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “I’m sorry we didn’t play better.”

I about fell over.

The Ducks won nine straight games after that, reached the College Football Playoff, and suited up against Ohio State in the national title game. Mariota won the Heisman, got drafted No. 2 overall, and played well enough early in Tennessee.

Mariota can lead, absolutely. Some of his best moments, in fact, have come with his teams facing adversity. He’s great on third down. He’s terrific in the red zone. But Mariota always seemed to be at his best with the deck stacked against him.

He’s now in Atlanta serving as the honorary captain in his alma mater’s long-shot attempt to beat the defending national champion Bulldogs. Vegas bookmakers have installed Georgia as a 6-to-1 favorite to win the game.

“I love that aspect,” Mariota said this week. “It’s kind of what we’re dealing with here in Atlanta. I think that underdog mentality is dangerous and I’m excited for this team because when you strap up the pads and you go out there and play, it’s a whole different ball game and it doesn’t matter what other people think.”

Mariota spends part of his summers in Oregon, still. His wife, Kiyomi, is a former Ducks soccer player. She was born in Gresham and went to Barlow High. They met as athletes at Oregon and were married last summer in a quiet ceremony in Hawaii.

I’m not here to write the definitive column on Mariota today. That will come soon enough. But the quarterback has something to prove in the next few months and it’s a storyline living in the background of this Oregon-Georgia opener.

Can Mariota lead?

We’ve all seen it. He carried Oregon to the national title game. But I wonder about the supporting cast of the Falcons. Is the offensive line good enough? The tight end, Kyle Pitts, is a star, but does Atlanta have enough talent at the other skill positions? The NFL is a league rooted in opportunity, Mariota is going to get one, but will it be enough?

He’ll answer the questions this season.

TAKE A CHANCE: Chance Nolan had a couple of statistically shaky games last season. The Oregon State quarterback threw for only 48 yards in a start against Washington, for example.

He wasn’t much more productive against Arizona State. Nolan completed only 12 passes for 90 yards in that game.

Guess what?

The Beavers went 2-0 in those games.

Nolan needed to make some offseason improvements. He had a few bad turnovers last season. A couple of times, he held onto a play a little too long and fumbled (See: Washington). At least two other occasions, I remember Nolan forcing a pass he should have thrown away (See: Cal, Washington State). But the research team compiled some interesting stats that paint a promising picture.

Take a look at the top Pac-12 passers from last season:

The “green” notes quarterbacks who are returning in 2022 with the same team they played with in 2021. The numbers cast Nolan as a very capable returning quarterback. In fact, OSU’s starter finished in the top-five last season in passing yards (No. 3 of 12), touchdowns (No. 4) and completion percentage (No. 5).

Also, he won seven games as a starter, including beating Utah and USC last season. Oregon State’s run game got a lot of attention, but Nolan’s regular-season completion percentage as a starter was the program’s Rosetta Stone last season.

When Nolan completed more than 64.5 percent of his regular-season passes, Oregon State was 6-0. When he completed less than 58 percent, the Beavers were 1-3. The regular season pretty much unfolded along those lines for OSU.

His passing attempts as a starter were also an interesting study. It’s evident that OSU wants to run the ball effectively and use Nolan to keep the defense honest. When he attempted fewer than 25 passes in regular-season games last season, the Beavers went 5-0.

Keep an eye on those stats on Saturday when OSU suits up in the home opener against Boise State. There just isn’t a more significant player on the field for the Beavers this season. His coach, Jonathan Smith, told me this week, “He doesn't have to flat-out win the game by himself. But he’s got to put us in position.”

HEALTH OF THE GAME: Pitt football coach Pat Narduzzi celebrated his team’s 38-31 victory over West Virginia by scolding ESPN. The worldwide leader apparently announced on SportsCenter in the run-up to the game that the Panthers’ home stadium would be dominated by West Virginia fans.

Narduzzi said: “Our Panther Nation stood out. I saw some stat that it was going to be 75 percent West Virginia fans. You guys messed that up on ESPN.”

I loved the exchange between Narduzzi and my favorite ESPN host, Scott Van Pelt, here:

John Canzano @johncanzanobft

Pat Narduzzi with the win:

2:14 PM ∙ Sep 2, 2022

This is not on Van Pelt. He’s a pro and inherited the fiesty coach after a big win. Narduzzi was obviously miffed. I don’t know where ESPN got the “75 percent” estimate, but it’s a good reminder about the danger of perpetuating false narratives. There are a bunch of them currently circulating in college football — where the champion should be crowned after an inclusive playoff.

Currently, we have a four-team “invitational” tournament that leaves the entire left side of a map of the country left out.

The Pacific Time Zone captures about 17 percent of the population in the country. The Mountain Time Zone includes another 7 percent. That’s about a quarter of the nation that hasn’t been regularly included in the playoff. I can’t think television partners are happy about that.

The CFP’s current format has been in place for eight years. That means 32 total teams have participated. Of those, only Oregon and Washington have campuses anywhere other than the Eastern and Central Time zones. Those two time zones have controlled 94 percent of the playoff in this era.

There’s currently a fresh push to expand to 12 teams, possibly sooner than expected. I’m not optimistic that college football will get it right. But postseason changes can’t get here fast enough. If they expand, it absolutely needs to include automatic berths for the major conference champions. The sport doesn’t need equality of outcome. It needs equality of opportunity and geographic inclusion.

I’ve covered the Big Ten as a beat reporter. I lived and worked in the ACC footprint. I even served as the beat reporter for Notre Dame one season. But one of the most revealing conversations I ever had came when I was working as a columnist at the Fresno Bee and encountered Pat Hill.

The crusty, out-spoken Fresno State head coach, had an “anywhere, anyone, anytime” mantra when it came to scheduling. He also had a piranha swimming around in a tank in his office, but that’s another story.

Anyway, I asked Hill once about the college football postseason system and he said, “Just throw us a bone. The system needs to throw us a bone. We can go undefeated, beat a bunch of Power Fives, and still not get in. That makes no sense.”

He’s right. But it gets even worse when you consider that the current system has only four spots, includes wild subjectivity, and is geographically flawed. Even the Power Five members are at a disadvantage.

I know we’ve spent a lot of time and energy in the last couple of months talking about the future of college football. I wonder sometimes if the commissioners in the SEC and Big Ten care much about its health.

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