“Did you hear Washington is replacing Husky Stadium’s AstroTurf with cardboard?” one kid in an Oregon snapback asks another on Taylor’s patio. He milks the pause, finishes his Coors Light.
“The Huskies always look better on paper.” His friend guffaws and raises his drink.
“Huck the Fuskies!”
It’s Monday, and their No. 2 Ducks are fresh off another win, this one a 51-26 blowout over Washington State. With No. 23 Washington on the way to Autzen Stadium this Saturday, the two are on their way to a Happy I Hate Washington week, celebrating the Ducks’ true gridiron rivalry. That’s right — with respect to Oregon’s frenemies in Corvallis, it’s Washington that was, is, and will continue to be Oregon’s fiercest conference foe.
Just look at the history.
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It all started with Gilmour Dobie.
The turn-of-the-century leatherhead, considered the “czar of Northwest football,” compiled an eye-popping 58-0-3 record as Washington’s head coach. A fair share of those wins came against the Oregon Webfoots, and some of Gloomy Gil’s wins were downright humiliating. He once scored on Oregon by using a player’s leather helmet as a decoy football. Another time Washington kicked the ball under Oregon’s bleachers before finding it first and turning it into a touchdown.
College football was a simpler game.
The beatings got so bad Oregon finally refused to play Washington in 1915. And when the Webfoots finally finished unbeaten and won the 1917 Rose Bowl, they couldn’t even gloat — Washington also went undefeated, and the Pacific Coast Conference decided it was simply cheaper for Oregon to go to Pasadena.
But even with the routine blowouts, the burgeoning Border War didn’t become personal until 1948, when Oregon and California tied atop the conference. Back then, the Conference settled ties with a vote. With wider geographical support, Oregon was a lock to head to another Rose Bowl. But Washington convinced the University of Montana to vote for Cal, swinging the tally and preventing Oregon and NFL legend Norm Van Brocklin from ever playing in the Grandaddy of Them All.
And the hate grew.
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Terry Frei remembers the vitriol in the 1970s, when wins were harder to come by for Oregon football. His father, Jerry, coached the Ducks until making the jump to the NFL in 1971.
“Ducks-Huskies genuinely was a 1A rivalry, just a notch below Civil War in my dad’s day,” Frei wrote in an email. “And his day included his stint as an assistant, so it spanned 1955-71. I believe if you were heard to call them the Huskies, rather than the more accurate Dirty Dawgs, you were sent into the corner in fourth grade and forced to put on a dunce cap.”
Growing up within Oregon football afforded Frei a closer look at the rivalry than most. Frei even included bits of Washington’s 1970 win over Oregon in his novel “The Witch’s Season.”
“(In) 1969, Oregon lost 60-13 at Air Force in the infamous Fog Bowl,” Frei wrote. “You couldn’t see the field from the press box. My dad said he’d quit if they didn’t show character and come back and beat Washington the next week. I was 14, and I was thinking, ‘Uh, dad, do you really want to say that?’ They beat the Dawgs 22-7. Washington finished 1-9, but that didn’t matter.”
The ’70s were a seesaw. Oregon shellacked Washington 58-0 in 1973 only to historically 66-0 in 1974, when Washington coach Jim Owens left his starters in until the final whistle, and the Emerald’s sports page runs the headline “Hoops season just one month away!” over the game recap.
The malcontent bubbled and simmered in the 1980’s, but the rivalry was far from competitive. Oregon beat Washington just twice between 1981 to 1993.
But everything would change in 1994.
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“There probably aren’t many plays that can point to one play that turned the program around,” says Chris Metteer, who graduated from Oregon in 1974. “Kenny Wheaton’s interception did that for Oregon.”
After being crowned national champions in the early ’90s, Washington and its fans had developed an obnoxious swagger, according to Metteer. “From an Oregon standpoint, Washington just got to be really arrogant.”
On Oct. 22, 1994, Danny O’Neil and the Ducks hung tough with No. 9 Washington for most of the game. But quarterback Damon Huard had the Huskies driving down the field intent on delivering more heartbreak to Oregon.
“It was another ‘here we go again’ moment,” Metteer says. “And then Huard throws it, and there’s Kenny Wheaton. And just, for that moment of celebration, the poor Ducks — looked down their noses by the Huskies and their fans — they win. It meant everything.” Wheaton’s 97-yard pick-six set a chain of events in motion that would alter the dynamic of the rivalry to this day. “The Pick” caps Autzen’s highlight video on the Jumbotron and lives forever in the hearts — and on the T-shirts — of Ducks fans everywhere.
“Now, the roles have kind of reversed,” Metteer says. “The Oregon fanbase is probably seen as arrogant.”
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It’s been gravy for the Ducks since the turn of the millennium. From 1990 to 1999 Washington was 82-35-1, with a winning percentage of 69 percent. The following decade Oregon went 87-38, with a winning percentage of, yes, 69 percent.
The Ducks have lost three games so far this decade. But don’t talk to current Ducks head coach Chip Kelly about the rivalry.
“We’ve got kids who are 17, 18, 19 years old,” Kelly said during his weekly teleconference. “If you talk 10 years ago, they were 7 and 8. At 7 and 8 they were into “SpongeBob SquarePants”; they weren’t worried about Joey Harrington.” Kelly’s mantra of playing a nameless, faceless opponent has translated into big success during his tenure in Eugene but has done nothing to pour gasoline on the Ducks’ and Dawgs’ fire. Oregon’s current eight-game win streak has also taken the sting out of the Border War.
But for those whose memories stretch past the current glory days, back to a time when a ten-win season was a punchline, Saturday’s showdown couldn’t mean more. And if the Ducks win — regardless of whether the Ducks cover the 24-point spread — Taylor’s patio will be packed with fans capping off another Happy I Hate Washington week.
And finally, courtesy of some chatty Washington fans last weekend in Seattle, here’s a joke for you Huskies: “What’s the difference between Autzen Stadium and a porcupine? The 60,000 pricks are on the outside of the porcupine.”
Oregon’s Border War with Washington remains Ducks’ premier rivalry
Matt Walks
October 2, 2012
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