At his press conference yesterday, Mark Helfrich was asked how often him and his coaching staff bring up the phrase "national title" with the team throughout the course of the season.
Some guys think you've got to bring it up to keep it in the forefront of your players' minds, while other coaches focus on the weekly results and let the big picture take care of itself.
The Oregon program is somewhere in between, Helfrich pointed out, and now the program is two wins away from bringing a national title home.
"We talked about it the first meeting of the season, the first day...and then I would wager your paycheck on probably never since then" he noted to the reporter.
The reporter then asked if they don't talk about it because it is now the expectation for the program to always be in the chase for a national title, and Helfrich responded with an interesting analogy.
"I think you state your goals, and then you just forget them and you dive into the process and you're 100% invested in the process, and then that other part - way down there - has a chance of happening."
"If we just sit around and talk about winning the lottery, we're going to be spending a lot of money on burned tickets. But if we got to work with the possibility of making that happen, it just might."