In August there was unbridled optimism. The Ducks unveiled an opulent football palace, a new $68 million training facility with Italian leather seats and a marble shower floor, floor-to-ceiling televisions and a gleaming dining room with a brightly-colored neon sign that said “Eat Your Enemies.”
With a bevy of returning talent and speed, the Ducks were among the favorites for the national championship. They reached 8-0 after a 42-14 defeat of the UCLA Bruins the end of October. Ranked #2, they made the cover of Sports Illustrated, the high point for a football team that had gone 44-4 since a Rose Bowl loss to Ohio State in January 2010.
If the Ducks win Friday’s 117th Civil War, they’ll finish 10-2, likely to play Oklahoma on December 30 in the Alamo Bowl, a game that would have resonances of its own. A certain onside kick will be played 100 times. As bad as 10-2 sounds now, it’s still one of the top ten seasons in school history, particularly if they win the bowl.
Taken together, the last five seasons represent the pinnacle of achievement for Oregon football, and the fan base has swelled in number and swelled with pride. A bunch of ambitious frat boys sold tee shirts that read, “We want Bama.” The Sports Illustrated cover subhead exclaimed, “The Colossus: Oregon Redefined West Coast Football–Now It’s Time To Conquer America (They’re coming for you, SEC).”
The Ducks are 1-2 since, their lone win coming over hapless Utah, 1-7 in conference. In their two losses, the once-vaunted offense scored 36 miserable points, and on Saturday a lifeless, uninspired Oregon team lost by 26 to unranked Arizona.
Welcome to the new reality for Oregon football, where the Ducks are no longer dominant or superbly-coached. Chip Kelly is gone, and the genius and innovation, the motivation, discipline and preparation he brought to a well-oiled machine is gone with him. The Ducks have come back to the pack, a good team in a conference where everyone beats up on one another and any given weekend is an offensive show with an unpredictable outcome: Utah beat North Division Champion Stanford earlier this year. Last night, the Huskies clobbered Oregon State 69-27, the worst Beaver defeat in school history.
Looking forward, the murky forecast seems to be that Oregon will have the talent to win more games than they lose and compete in the league, that in certain years with special senior classes they will challenge to gain the Rose Bowl they dissed and squandered this year, but the lofty and ephemeral designation as “national championship contenders” is a broken dream.
Oregon’s excellence caused all the other teams in the conference to get busy. UCLA hired Jim Mora from the pros. System guru Mike Leach took over at Washington State, and that team is bowl-eligible for the first time since 2006 at 6-5. Todd Graham has vaulted the Arizona State Sun Devils to 9-2 and the conference championship game. Stanford has built a tradition of excellence around toughness and old-school Smashmouth football. Rich Rodriguez has made Arizona an exciting and dangerous team. USC is resurgent under the guidance of a fiery interim coach who was once 10-25 in the SEC.
Oregon raised the ante with fancy uniforms and a billboard in Times Square. They plucked Chip Kelly from football obscurity and made him a star, the fast-talking efficiency expert with a gift for creating a vision and a distaste for recruiting, now in the NFL where he is free to break down film all during December.
When Kelly left, the Ducks stayed in-house to pick a coach, and they quickly settled on Mark Helfrich with a recruiting class to save. He was bright and affable, an Oregon native. He said all the right things and went right to work.
All during the season they were warning signs. The Ducks had too many penalties, turned the ball over more often, stumbled early in games. The defense didn’t have the edge or the determination of previous years, vulnerable to the run. There were charges of laxity in practice. Players were popping off in the media and on Twitter.
The Ducks practice behind high black walls, and lounge, relax and nourish themselves in comfort and privilege. Saturday, they played like a team without urgency or accountability, a team satisfied to rest on flash and reputation. Arizona, like Stanford, punched them in the mouth.
Now, the former denizens of West Coast football have lost two games, and looked awful doing it, beaten, dominated and overwhelmed. Fans used to success and a string of easy victories feel betrayed, and are looking for someone to blame. They feel let down by the team after investing so much in them. Disgusted, the arguments and recriminations lasted well past the time a comedian shouted out, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” Few Oregon fans were laughing.
If you root for a team long enough, you will experience every high and low of the sport. At Georgia and Florida and Boise State, fans are opening their Sunday papers to read about ruined seasons. Three years ago Auburn was on top of the college football world. Last year they missed a bowl. Their fired a national championship coach, hired his old assistant, and now they are playing Alabama for another shot at the SEC title.
Oregon football used to be a pathetic disaster. Thirty years ago The Civil War was for last place in the conference, and two inept teams blundered to a 0-0 tie in forbidding weather. Mike Jorgensen quarterbacked the Ducks that day in a game that featured eleven fumbles, five interceptions, and four missed field goals, the last NCAA Division I football game to end in a scoreless tie.
Friday’s game with the Beavers, between two teams coming off embarrassing, listless defeats, threatens to be as uninspired and anti-climactic as that one. A scoreless tie isn’t likely, but the story of the game will be which team finds its soul and resolve in time to answer the bell.
Nothing about Saturday convinces anyone it will be the Ducks.
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