“Are you not entertained?”
A phrase borrowed from the classic, Oscar-winning film “Gladiator,” but it started to mean a lot more than that to the Ducks.
While the secondary dominates Big Ten offense after Big Ten offense, a fun celebration makes it all the more interesting. The usage of the “thumbs down,” an homage to the widely-renowned celebration of the Ducks’ star cornerback Jabbar Muhammad, is spreading like wildfire through the program and the university.
“I want to take credit for [the celebration], but we watched the Gladiator movie this past week, and that was kinda the motto. In the Gladiator movie, they do the thumbs down to execute them, or whatever. That was the team motto last week, so everyone was doing that, it’s just ironic that it’s my celebration,” Muhammad said.
Muhammad’s “box down” caught on before the season even began, which was due to his excellence at the position last season at Washington. Muhammad was a crucial part of the Washington squad that made it all the way to the National Championship, which the Huskies lost against Michigan.
It was in Muhammad’s 2024 rematch against the Wolverines when the celebration really went viral.
Heading into Oregon’s roadtrip against the defending national champions, the Michigan Wolverines, head coach Dan Lanning wanted to stress the importance of silencing The Big House and its cavalcade of noise created by over 110,000 raucous fans.
“We talked about eliminating the crowd in this game. The warriors are the ones who fight the battle, and they’re the ones who control the atmosphere, not the spectators. I thought we did an elite job of that,” Lanning said after the contest.
Elite job would be a tremendous understatement. Oregon trounced Michigan 38-17 at the beginning of the month, which was largely due to the team’s ability to score early to silence the crowd. The Ducks scored on four of the five drives they had in the first half and set the tone early that the crowd was to be a non-factor for the No. 1 team in the nation.
What made the moment that much more special were the constant reminders of the iconic film they had watched that week.
Each week, the team’s videography department produces a cinematic recap titled “Ducks vs Them” which chronicles the team’s preparation ahead of gameday. The main factor explained in the Michigan week’s preparation was the team’s play on “Gladiator.”
In the team’s “motivation meeting,” Lanning walked the Ducks through the lessons that Ridley Scott’s masterpiece taught them. The most important one was about the “man in the arena.”
“I’m gonna remind you at some point in this game, I’m gonna tell you to look up at the stands at some point in this game, and you’re gonna start to see it empty out,” Lanning said to his group before the game through the cinematic recap. “We’ve made the decision before we even stepped on the field, all day, it’s thumbs down, it’s no mercy.”
That’s exactly what the Ducks’ head coach did. Late in the fourth quarter, with the game practically put to bed, Lanning called a timeout with the sole intention of showing his team the emptying out of The Big House.
“Are you not entertained?” Lanning asked his team.
The thumbs down celebration has even stretched itself to other departments in Oregon’s abundant athletics sector. Muhammad’s cousin, Amina, is a starting forward for Oregon’s women’s basketball team.
Muhammad instantly became a leader in Kelly Graves’ squad, as she is a junior who spent her first two seasons playing down in Austin with the University of Texas Longhorns. The fun part is that she followed in her cousin’s footsteps and adopted his iconic celebration in her own way.
Amina Muhammad is a tenacious defender just like her cousin, which has shown in the Ducks’ first four wins — Muhammad has averaged just under two steals a game since arriving in Eugene.
Muhammad can often be seen throwing thumbs down after strong defensive plays of her own, which proves the universal manner of the message behind it. Jabbar Muhammad’s celebration made waves even before it was adopted under the “Gladiator” umbrella, as the secondary had been seen throwing its thumbs down all throughout the early portion of the season. Given what Muhammad has said about his defensive backfield, that should be expected.
“All the extra time we spend together. A lot of us are in our last years, and this is it for us, so we put everything we have into it,” Muhammad said.
This group is locked into being the best unit in their position in the country, which inevitably helped fuel the Ducks’ push to the top of the AP Poll for its fifth consecutive week.
The celebration is more of a microcosm of the bonds built between the players on this team.
“We see each other off the field, it’s probably the most connected secondary I’ve ever been a part of, and that’s just a testament to everything we do off the field,” Muhammad said.
Execute and finish.
It showed up in Lanning’s slideshow presentation that week, which described the thumbs down mentality as “finish everything.”
That’s exactly what the Ducks and Muhammad have used to become and remain the No. 1 team in the country for five weeks running. Given how the team has prepared so far, it’s safe to say that the Ducks will continue to execute at the highest level and finish off everything, leaving nothing but downed opponents in their wake.
