For a split second, 59,962 raucous fans fell silent. A sense of shock permeated throughout Autzen Stadium. Amidst the joyous chaos that flooded Eugene, Oregon on Saturday, it seemed like the whole community was put on pause for one moment.
Surprisingly, in the middle of the second quarter, the No. 8 Oregon Ducks football team was attempting an onside kick.
Instead of booming the kickoff out of the end zone like he normally would, Andrew Boyle tapped the top of the ball with the side of his foot and let it trickle for 10 yards before falling on top of it himself. The Ducks had recovered an onside kick for the first time since 2013.
A number of emotions filled the crowd: confusion for why they even attempted it, fear, for if they didn’t recover it UCLA would have advantageous field position, then, excitement once they completed it.
Autzen erupted.
Boyle’s recovery completely changed the shape of the game. With six minutes remaining in the second quarter, the Ducks had just taken a 17-10 lead over the No. 12 Bruins on a 49-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Bo Nix to wide receiver Troy Franklin. However, their defense had yet to find its footing, and the Bruins had two possessions coming their way as they would receive the second-half kickoff. Head coach Dan Lanning didn’t hesitate. His special teams unit had practiced this play earlier in the week, and he saw an opportunity to pull it off.
“That was something we wanted to do,” Lanning said. “It looked like there was some weather coming in. We felt like if there was a chance to steal a possession, it would be before the weather really hit.”
Weighing each of these factors, Lanning disguised his status as a rookie head coach. The onside kick wasn’t the only play, on Saturday, where he outsmarted a veteran, in Chip Kelly, who Ducks fans used to swear by.
In fact, Lanning, and the atmosphere in Eugene, revived the pleasure that many Ducks fans felt when the now-UCLA head coach manned the ship at Oregon. In the week leading up to the top-10 matchup, the Oregon campus was buzzing as it prepared to host ESPN College GameDay for the first time since 2018. Construction of the set started on Tuesday, adding to the excitement.
For the majority of the students, this was the first time they would have the chance to attend the show. For seniors at the University of Oregon — who had longed for excitement on a national level as two of their years of fandom were limited by the COVID-19 pandemic — it meant even more.
Donovan Muniz and Ian Johnson certainly thought so. They were determined to make the most of it.
Muniz and his friends’ day began at 2 a.m. when their alarm went off and GameDay prep began. Some donned togas, as it was the theme for ESPN College GameDay, while others sported pink for breast cancer awareness and the game’s respective apparel.
They arrived at the Memorial Quad at 4 a.m. just as the gates for GameDay opened, and they began to wait. By 6 a.m., when the show went on air, the mob that had gathered on the Quad was wet from the rain and tired from a minimal night’s sleep — or none at all.
The crowd’s excitement outweighed mother nature.
“We wanted to get there early so that we could get good seats and watch College GameDay,” Muniz said. “When else are you going to be able to witness that as a student when it’s at your school?”
While the actions of many on Saturday morning may have seemed irrational, Muniz had a point. This was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence that no other Oregon football team had earned during his time at the school. That’s not for a lack of success. The Ducks went 26-8 in his first three years, were ranked as high as No. 3 in the country last year, and won the Rose Bowl when he was a freshman.
Yet, 2022 feels different.
“It just felt really exciting,” Muniz said. “It felt like Oregon was being put front and center for everyone in the college football world to see.”
Not only were the Ducks hosting their first top-10 opponent since Stanford in 2018, but GameDay was on campus, and it was Parents Weekend. Altogether, it culminated in the fourth-greatest attendance in Autzen Stadium history, and a feel around the team that has rarely been replicated since Kelly left.
Johnson can surely attest to that. The senior, from Scappoose, Oregon, has rooted for Ducks football well before he even began attending the school. During his time as a student, he found himself unimpressed with the lackluster offenses administered by former head coach Mario Crisotbal.
“I think the main thing that I’ve noticed is the quarterback play,” Johnson said. “In comparison to the last two quarterbacks the Ducks have had — Tyler Shough and Anthony Brown — the talent gap is definitely evident when you watch the way Bo Nix is able to air the ball down the field.”
Muniz also referred to that disparity changing the shape of Oregon football.
“I can tell there’s a difference in the Oregon offense,” he said. “They have the ability to run the ball, but they also have the capability, with Bo Nix, to go deep downfield, which I feel like we’ve been missing. Also, I feel like the play-calling this year has been better than years past. It feels like we’re making stuff happen on offense.”
Making stuff happen on offense.
Doesn’t seem like an abnormal strategy, right? Well, it’s something that many students, seniors especially, rarely saw with Cristobal.
In their three-and-a-quarter years as students, Johnson, Muniz and most seniors have had to support a mediocre quarterback carousel. While Cristobal was successful in recruiting what has become one of the nation’s top offensive lines — which has protected Nix to the tune of one sack on the season, and has helped propel him to top-10 in rushing yards among all quarterbacks in the NCAA — he could never get it right at quarterback. Cristobal’s smashmouth philosophy even capped Justin Herbert’s potential.
That stark contrast in quarterback play alone has helped raise the spirits of Oregon students. Even this season, the Ducks have come a long way.
Not many would have predicted an ESPN GameDay visit to Eugene after the Ducks’ blowout loss in Week 1 to Georgia. Yet, there they were: standing in the pouring rain at the Memorial Quad at 4 a.m., then walking to Autzen two hours before kickoff and standing for three straight hours in a student section filled to the brim.
“It got a little chaotic and there were definitely times when it felt kind of crowded and overflowing with the aisles being super full,” Johnson said. “At the same, it just kind of added to the atmosphere.”
Johnson, who stood just a few rows back of the field, was astonished at the capacity of the student section each time he turned around.
On Saturday, Oregon students got a taste of what it must have felt like to be in Knoxville, Tennessee during Week 7, or Austin, Texas, in Week 2. Their beloved Ducks football team won arguably its most important home game in four years.
Pandemonium dominated Eugene last week.
It made it tough for any student to focus their attention on midterms, or any task for that matter. It was put on pause when the season-defining onside kick seemed to take hours to bounce 10 yards, and resumed when it actually, really rained in Autzen Stadium. It did. It continued as the Ducks offense broke their mascot, forcing Puddles to use a slinky to stop his shaking as he pumped out 168 push-ups. It reached an apex when Ducks safety Bryan Addison corralled the game-sealing interception. The nail in the coffin. It crawled into the evening, as fans who somehow had retained energy went out and celebrated the win.
But what will continue to separate the 2022 football season from any other that current Oregon students have been a part of is if this team sustains the success it’s built, if it doesn’t fall victim to a trap game that caught each Ducks team during the Cristobal era.
For now, following the statement win against the Bruins and hosting ESPN GameDay, the delight that came with it will linger and be strung out by students, as it should.
