But No Oregon Duck Football.
Lots of birds at Cannon Beach.
Seagulls, puffins, cormorants, pelicans, crows, swallows, jays, a titmouse.
The whole flock flew between Hemlock Street and Haystack Rock.
Just no Ducks. Plenty of wind and rain, but no Ducks.
What did Cannon Beach sports fan miss?
The most engaging football being played in the nation, that's all.
Is a Portland State vs. Montana game better football? Any Cal game? They were on television, not the Ducks
The force-fed SEC games are easy to understand, the same way six hour Castro speeches televised in Cuba were normal.
But Cannon Beach isn't Cuba. No Castro, no Ducks.
Instead of College Football Saturday, it became College Football Scout Saturday at Cannon Beach.
And it looked good.
The Oregon Ducks would either beat every team playing, or at the very least play better football. At the end of the day, football is a game of inches and instant replay. Every two yard run is poetry in motion. But Oregon is more.
The Duck players show poetry and intelligence with their motion. How smart are guys that find their spot in a hyper-speed offense? Forrest Gump would be a horrible Duck.
My step-dad Glenn checked in with a Washington vs. Stanford update. He's a Husky fan living two miles from Autzen in Eugene.
The Ducks have both teams in their sights, or both teams are gunning for the Ducks. Glenn said they looked great. Oregon will be in trouble. He likes trouble for Oregon, but he's changing. So are the Ducks.
Instead of reloading and letting new coach Mark Helfrich settle in, Oregon sets new scoring records for games with fifty points.
Instead of wallowing in the loss of defensive players to the NFL, the Ducks put the clamps on opponents.
Since the Colorado game wasn't broadcast on the cable package, and no internet, the crawler at the bottom of the screen during other games was it.
The bold headline in the Sunday Oregonian said "UO struggles, pulls away."
Struggled to a 57-16 win? Struggled against a team that led twice early? The final score doesn't show a team pulling away. A twenty point win is pulling away. A forty point win shows some attitude, like "This is what happens to teams with an early lead."
It feels like revenge, but what has Colorado done to deserve that? Everyone is over the Fifth Down game against Missouri. There's no asterisk on the 1990 NCAA National Champion decal on their bus. It was an honest mistake in the heat of an important game.
Duck fans understand heat. When Oklahoma came to Autzen they felt the heat of home cooking on one onside kick. Don't blame teams because refs can't keep track of four downs or ten yards.
In an interesting twist of scheduling, the Ducks blew out 1990 champion Colorado and now head north to play 1991 champion Huskies.
Will the Oregon vs Washington game show up on Cannon Beach cable? Will the national sports stations show the respect due the #2 team in the nation by leading their updates with the Ducks instead of getting to them after the break?
My beach time is over so the broadcast won't be an issue. ESPN won't be an issue either. They don't get their marching orders from Oregon, but they should.
Who doesn't want to see the game of football evolve right in front of them? Enough of the brute force power game. There are no three yards and a cloud of dust on artificial turf. The most you get there is a spray of black rubber chunks.
Better to show the rest of America the new game in town. Gap the O-line and dare the defense to find Mariota. Flood one side with down-field receivers and dare the defense to cover. When one Duck has a webbed foot in seven touchdowns, what can a defense do? When that one Duck comes up first on Google when you enter the name Marcus, it's a problem.
Washington can solve the problem with their defense. Call them the Purple Gang, or the Gold Diggers, as long as they sic Harry the Husky on the Ducks and tune their pipes to sing Bow Down to Washington they'll have a chance.
If OU struggles to a forty point win, then at least Washington matches Colorado.
That's all the birds in Cannon Beach look for.
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