I've never been to Oregon, so my only impressions of the state come from my friend Quill and the uniforms of a college that I have zero real knowledge of other than Animal House was filmed there. So what I've managed to cobble together in the sludge that I call my brain is that everyone who goes to the University of Oregon once sang really bad karaoke with me in a Japanese bar while I was trying (and failing) to hit on girls, wears nothing but Nike tracksuits, and watched helplessly as John Belushi drank and drugged himself to death.
Man, the University of Oregon's been through a lot, I assume due to my lack of real knowledge. If this were any time period before 2001, we could just leave it at that, but since Wikipedia and Google do exist and can be exploited for a sarcastic piece that hopefully no one decides to get litigious about, maybe I can delve a little further into Phil Knight's personal fiefdom.
HISTORY
In the 1870s, the citizens of Oregon who had somehow avoided death by cholera or by drowning as they tried to ford a river when they should've caulked it (or at least waited for conditions to improve) decided that they wanted a university. I'm referencing The Oregon Trail, an educational video game from developer MECC.
All the cool, land-grant kids were getting them, so why not them, dammit? Unfortunately for the various carpenters, doctors, blacksmiths, bankers, and farmers, the state of Oregon faced a budget crisis at the time. Undeterred, the plucky Oregonians traded two axle wheels and 45 bullets to purchase the land to create a public university. Still referencing The Oregon Trail by developer MECC.
Eventually the University of Oregon evolved into the state's biggest name in public schooling. UO has gotten hundreds of thousands of applicants over the years, but can only carry 200 acceptance letters back to their registrar's office at a time. Okay, that was my final reference to The Oregon Trail, a wonderfully informative interactive gaming experience from developer MECC.
ACADEMICS
Meh. US News & World Report has them as the 106th best college in the country, and recently they've been worried about losing their spot in the Association of American Universities. You can't get an engineering or a medical degree from Oregon, but you can get a degree in fibers or metalsmithing and jewelry, which should come in pretty handy as you start your new career panhandling or the back alleys of Portland even though your mom is paying rent and you just mooch off your friends for everything else. The University of Oregon also has the nation's 100th ranked law school, so you know... don't go there.
All of this information is apropos of nothing, but it'll help us feel a little better about the outcome of the game should we lose, albeit in a hollow, sad sort of way.
PHIL KNIGHT
Phil Knight was the first human borne from an egg. Slowly hatching over the course of several days, he emerged fully-formed and immediately co-founded Nike, one of the most recognizable name brands in the history of the planet, right behind other possibly evil companies like Chiquita and Union Carbide.
His ability to ignore the plight of tiny Asian children being abused in his shoe factories has served him well, and by that I mean he's worth over 20 billion dollars. Somewhere in between creating a culture where it's somehow acceptable to spend 300 dollars on a pair of shoes and rolling on a pile of cash with a doze naked women, Knight found the time to get a degree from the University of Oregon, and as such donates millions and millions of dollars to the athletic program.
And then the money is spent on things like Roboduck:
The Oregon football program recently finished a new football facility with a hefty Phil Knight donation, and ritually sacrifices a live goat every Thursday on the roof to appease him. If you actually look at the thing, you get the impression that it will serve as the re-education center for the bourgeois wine-and-cheesers from Oregon State once the revolution comes and their backs are against the wall.
THE OREGON DUCK
For a long time, a handshake agreement existed between Walt Disney and the University of Oregon stipulating that the university could use a bastardized Donald Duck as their logo and mascot, but Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was completely off limits and God help them if they even thought about it.
Disney (the company, not the man, who is super dead) has gotten a little less generous over the years, which has led to a drawdown in Oregon Duck related merchandise and branding and whatnot. This has led to some really uncomfortable moments, like the time Oregon thought that going to the island of Dr. Moreau and retrieving some kind of horrifying duck-man was a good way to connect with Kids These Days.
Puddles, as the Duck is sometimes known, has also gotten into his fair share of scrapes, most notably when he decided to fight Shasta, which is not a cola but in fact the name of the Houston Cougar's mascot.
The best part of this fight is the dawning realization of everyone involved that Puddles isn't goofing around in some kind of pre-scripted routine, he's just a huge asshole.
FIGHT SONG
Oregon's fight song is crap, but I admittedly have no real ear for music. Here's the bridge, you can decide for yourself:
Go! Ducks! Go!
Fight! Ducks! Fight!
Go!
Fight!
Win! Ducks! Win!
"...they should have sent a poet..."
EMBARRASSMENTS
Well, these kids, for starters.
As his car was pelted by snowballs from all sides, Simmons slowed down and stopped. When Simmons opened the car door, Oregon tight end Pharaoh Brown dumped a bucket-full of snow on the retired professor. As Simmons approached students to speak with them, he was pelted repeatedly in the face, obscuring his glasses.
Hahah YEAH, take that old man! That'll teach you to be old around us, you stupid old nerd. Go tell the crusty dean that we're too cool for you and your starched shirt snobs club.
There was also that time Chip Kelly paid 25 large for horribly outdated recruiting info complied by a charlatan who said that he could get them in with some of the biggest names in college football. That scandal is particularly funny to me, because Oregon with gridiron success still sometimes feels like a starving person who just saw a pineapple for the first time in his life and has no idea how to react to it.
THE UNIFORMS
Here's 50 of them, maybe four or five of which actually look not godawful.
My favorite recent Oregon Ducks uniform story is this one, where apparently the company that more or less owns the football program can't even sew a dumb little patch on correctly and then made up a blatantly obvious lie about it. Even better is the idea that the logo was probably just part of a poor photoshop job that could've been fixed at any point in time, but instead of just doing that, Nike decided it'd come up with an easily refuted story about commemorative angles or some BS.
ETC.
- Jason is insistent that I mention that the Goonies was set and filmed in Oregon. I've never actually seen the whole movie, but I bet I'd like it.
- Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and hero to teenagers who completely missed the point of Fight Club, is also an Oregon grad.
- The city of Eugene is supposed to be pretty amazing, an admission on my part which should rebut the accusation that this whole article is just pure jealousy. Or fuel it!
- Mike Bellotti, Chip Kelly's predecessor, famously interviewed for the Ohio State job before Jim Tressel got it. That would've been completely insane.
