The outlook was grim.

We had no food and barely any protection from the driving rain. Our communication lines were broken. We were forced to stay on our feet for 12 hours straight.
A camping trip gone wrong? A kidnapping?
Nope.
Civil War tickets.
From the first day of freshman year to my last few steps as a college student in, wow, a week and a half, football has been the thing. I know Marissa Jones is going to come in here with her thrilling finishes and her March Madness, but football is Oregon’s game. And football will always be the sport of students.
After all, is there anything that defines the college experience more than a beer, a barbecue, a flask and a football game? Is there anything that screams college more than getting to Autzen one hour before kickoff and still, somehow, getting seats halfway up the student section? And so close to a drunk guy that you can smell his brand of bourbon?
I don’t know the longest I ever stood in line for basketball tickets, but I can tell you the exact amount of time it took to get Civil War tickets in 2001. It took 12 hours and 35 minutes. It took me that long to get a four-inch by one-inch piece of paper. But that was the golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s: Ducks and Beavers, two weeks later.
There is no rivalry like the Civil War in football. In basketball? Please. Oregon State couldn’t mop Oregon’s lockers. But in football, the teams clash like titans. In 2000 and 2001, Civil War wins by the Beavers and Ducks, respectively, put the teams in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.
Ahhh, the Fiesta Bowl. Remember? Everybody in the universe, and that includes the sports writers on Jupiter, were pounding the NCAA for the BCS computer system, which put far-inferior Nebraska into the national title game against Miami. Everybody thought Oregon should’ve been in that Rose Bowl game instead of snacking on chips in Arizona.
They were right.
Oregon drubbed Colorado. Samie Parker caught a touchdown right in front of us in the student section. Maurice Morris spun like a top right over a defender in the most outlandish football play I’ve ever seen. But the best part was when they gave out free Tostitos and dip to everyone in the stadium. No joke.
The year before it was the Holiday Bowl. In all, the Ducks went to five bowls in the five seasons I watched.
But take away that success, and football is still the game of champions. The bowls were just a bonus.
Football is an initiation for most students. I went to a game at Autzen Stadium before I ever set foot in a classroom. It was Oregon’s triple-overtime thriller against USC, the one where A.J. Feeley threw a bomb for a touchdown in the dying seconds to send the game into overtime. I hugged the guy I went to the game with, somebody from my dorm who I hardly knew.
I think I went with different people to just about every game of my freshman year. In later years we road-tripped to Berkeley, Seattle and Los Angeles. It was all about football. In fact, sometimes my whole life simply revolved around football.
“Wanna go camping this weekend?”
“Nope. Stanford’s in town.”
Simply put, football is huge in the life of the college student. And most alums are diehards until they move across the country. And even then, they’re still diehard. The Pit Crew is great and all, but I’ll say it: It’s all freshmen. Sorry, Nate Jolly, but it’s true.
I don’t mean to knock basketball, but football is tradition. It’s yellow leaves and “It never rains at Autzen Stadium.” It’s the green turf and the splintered seats. And in Oregon, football is now skyboxes and Xboxes. The former is the main feature of newly-expanded Autzen and the latter is the main feature of newly-expanded locker rooms. Between the Moshofsky Center, the Casanova Center and Autzen Stadium, the football facilities are some of the nicest on campus. That convergence of hot dogs and hot housing has made football the sport of the student.
It’s more than just a long run down the field. It’s changing your calendar every Saturday for three months. It’s skipping classes to wait in a cold ticket line.
It’s standing in the rain, earlobe-to-earlobe with somebody you just met in the first quarter, screaming your lungs out for a team of guys much bigger and much faster than you. But they’re wearing that same “O” that you have on your hat, and somehow you relate.
That’s Oregon football.