John Buckland is the author of "Seven Days from Darwin," which draws greatly on his faith

"This is a strong man's conference," Harbaugh said

, "and the strongest team will win the conference."

That Harbaugh has built a strong man's team under the restriction of Stanford's academic standards borders on alchemy.

"Harbaugh has sold those guys on the fact that it's OK to want to be the best in football," said former Washington State head coach Jim Walden, now an analyst on the Cougars' radio broadcasts. "You can be an athlete. You don't have to have your physics book in the shower."

Harbaugh took over a 1-11 team and, as of this week, has built it into a top-10 program. Under him, Stanford is 2-1 against USC. Since Kelly has been at Oregon -- two years as offensive coordinator, one-plus mlb jerseys seasons as head coach -- the Ducks have the same conference record (21-7) as the Trojans. That includes last season's 47-20 defeat of USC.

Kelly has used speed, quickness and a high tempo to build the Ducks into the best offense in the nation. He has spread the field with quarterbacks Dennis Dixon and Jeremiah Masoli. This nfl jersey season, with sophomore Darron Thomas, Oregon has run some option.

"I'm not tied to any one style of what we do as long as we can be productive," Kelly said. "We have a quarterback who's good at it. If I had a thrower, I'd have no problem throwing it 70 passes. We're an equal-opportunity scoring operation and that's the only thing we're concerned with. How we do it doesn't mean anything to me."

On Tuesday, with a record of 14-3 and a Pac-10 championship, Kelly signed a six-year, $20.5 million contract extension with Oregon.

Stanford runs the ball down your throat, with a play-action passing game that takes advantage of quarterback Andrew Luck. Oregon prefers misdirection.

"When [Kelly] first started doing it, their athletes weren't comparable to USC," Walden said. "Now, not only are you deceiving people, you're doing it with damn near as good an athlete."

Stoops built the Wildcats with defense. They rank in the top five in the nation in scoring defense (11.0 points per game) and total defense (230.75 yards per game). Stoops also proved smart enough to answer the phone when quarterback Nick Foles, a former Arizona State commit and Michigan State transfer, wanted to come to Tucson.

That's three of the top four. Then there is USC, lurking quietly alongside the new powers. Football dynasties always come with an expiration date. The Trojans leapt so far ahead of the league in 2003 that it appeared as if the others might never catch up. But they did. They always do.

"They made everyone better," Stoops said of USC. "They made everyone commit to be all in or you're going to get behind. They raised the bar quite a bit."

John Buckland is the author of "Seven Days from Darwin," which draws greatly on his faith

By: Michael

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