Most of us want to believe that the Washington-Oregon rivalry means something to everyone.
We like to think of the rivalry as one of the most bitter matchups in the nation, despite its lack of national attention.
Unfortunately for fans of both teams, the rivalry doesn’t mean squat outside of the Northwest.
In recent years, Oregon has become the en vogue college for California kids (myself included) and the football team’s recruiting methods scream that California is the hotbed for prospects.
And frankly, they don’t care about a Northwest rivalry that’s supposed to be so important that it hasn’t even been officially named. There’s no catch phrase to identify the yearly match like the ‘Civil War’ or ‘Apple Cup’.
Because it’s been nameless for so long, who outside of the region is going to hear about it?
Not California-bred football recruits and students who come to the Northwest.
For most of us, our experience with college rivalries either stems from the tepid-at-best Cal-Stanford rivalry, where alumni debate who donates more money to the school, to the battle for So-Cal supremacy, where UCLA and USC are the only two football teams fighting for attention.
Coming from these two extremes, the Bay Area’s apathy toward college sports to L.A.’s turf battle, Californians don’t care about a rivalry they’ve never heard of.
I understand Oregon and Washington fans try to hype the game in rivalry fashion, but it still hasn’t received any sort of national attention that other schools are used to.
Although Oregon fans claim the ‘The Pick’ as the defining moment in the rivalry, I had never heard of it before I attended my first home game and watched it on the big replay screen.
In the Cal-Stanford rivalry, any college football fan can identify the marching band fiasco touchdown as a moment that symbolized its rivalry.
Even though I believe the Ducks and Huskies have a far more intense rivalry than the Cardinal and Golden Bears, in a national sense people can point to the marching band play and immediately recognize it as a moment that’s symbolic of the teams’ feelings toward each other.
The Ducks and Huskies need that type of iconic moment for anyone outside the region to care.
With Washington coach Tyrone Willingham bringing the program back to respectability and soon-to-be prominence, the rivalry looks to be a heated contest in the upcoming years and maybe one of those moments will occur.
It has to if the rivalry is going to receive any attention.
After learning from previous experiences, Mike Bellotti won’t let his players hype the matchup by making disparaging remarks about the Huskies. And Willingham is too reserved and classy to let his players get media attention.
Or maybe no one wants to be recognized at the national level. Because who cares about the annual battles between other regions? Sure, the Ohio State-Michigan games are fun to watch but how many of us care about the history of the teams?
Maybe we should just keep the rivalry a secret and enjoy it ourselves.
[email protected]