As a sports journalist, I tend to be the source for information on Oregon athletics for a large network of my family, friends and acquaintances.
Friends wake me up at two in the morning with a call from the bar to settle a bet. Family members text me for info on game times and ticket availability. Everyone I see in my day-to-day life tends to want to know something about the team.
The upside – I love my friends and family and I love talking football, so it’s a great common ground for me to engage people on. That’s why I do this, not because I’m a Ducks fan (even though deep down I am, sorry, I was raised a Duck) but because I love sports and the connections these games can forge between people.
And when the team is winning, I’m everybody’s favorite friend. I have the scoop. I’ve seen it up close. I’ve talked to the key players and coaches.
And everybody wants to know all about it.
“How many yards did J-Stew have Saturday, Kevin? Wow, that’s amazing, what did he say about it?”
“How many touchdowns did Dixon throw for? Damn, that guy is killing it, was he stoked or what?”
But in times of crisis for the football team and their followers, my role as life of the party morphs into that of a grief counselor.
Friends who were so boisterously excited to see me two weeks before now glance furtively at me as I approach, hoping I may have some good news. Their eyes implore me to persuade them that there is still hope for something, anything positive to cling to.
The easy way out is to say, “Well, there’s always next year,” or “At least the basketball team will be fun to watch this season.”
But that’s a cop out. I don’t do that. To me, the most satisfying part of being a fan is when your team does break through and achieve, and you can enjoy it because of all the losing you’ve endured while still pulling for the team and never losing interest.
A favorite saying of mine when a team is being blown out is “without huge deficits, we’d never have historic comebacks,” and the same logic applies here.
Bellotti alluded to it before the UCLA game when he said that the story of a team going to the Rose Bowl despite losing their quarterback could be “the greatest story ever told.”
So what I tell them is this: now that the Rose Bowl is out of reach, and many fans have started to break camp on the season, I think the potential for intensely dramatic theater has increased. Here we are in the final act, last scene, and most fans seem to have written this team off.
No one really expects them to win, and at this point the Ducks even scoring against the Beavers seems remote. Civil War tickets for sale are jamming up the craigslist.org and facebook.com servers and fairweather Duck fans are abandoning ship like rats.
What better stage for the Ducks, who have experienced another dizzying freefall from the penthouse to the outhouse, to pull together and beat their rivals for no reason other than pride?
And what could possibly be more inspiring to watch?
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Ducks can make for a great comeback story
Daily Emerald
November 29, 2007
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