Easy Sunday: Oregon Duck football

I don't care about Oregon football. 

Still, I am sad about the outcome, for my own reasons.

Georgia 49, Oregon 3.

Georgia player leaps for joy in the end zone. Yet another touchdown.

I watched about 15 minutes of the game in the 3rd period. Georgia got a couple more touchdowns. I couldn't stand it.

Here is why it matters a little to me, but none of it has anything to do with football itself. It has to do with Oregon pride and politics.

1. Phil Knight pride. He is Oregon's mega-billionaire. I want Phil Knight, co-founder and CEO of Nike, to keep caring about University of Oregon sports. He has some $35 billion dollars worth of Nike stock, so he is in a position to do crazy-expensive things, like build a beautiful track facility at the U of O. Also, if the current owners of the Portland Trail Blazers decide to sell, Phil Knight has the money to pay full price and keep the team in Oregon. There are a lot of billionaires in the U.S. who think it would be fun to own a sports team, and there are bigger markets than Oregon. The team might get moved out of Oregon if Oregon didn't have a billionaire of our own. I buy Nike branded stuff. I support Oregon.

2. Political pride. Oregon is going through a reputation rough patch. The blowout loss to Georgia is a continuation of this.  Portland had been understood as the best city on the West Coast. It was "weird" in a good way: Livable, charming, and  affordable compared to other West Coast cities. Its liberality expressed itself in a giant bookstore, food trucks, free mass transit in the downtown, and an industrial district that had become full of trendy restaurants. It had a bit of that Brooklyn or Austin vibe. Now its reputation is for uncontrolled encampments of people living in parks and median strips, and anarchists who want to "burn it all down." Somehow, at least among people who watch Fox News, "Portland" has morphed into "Detroit"--a once great city that is failing.

Oregon football might have helped re-create a "winner" reputation, but yesterday was a setback.

3. PAC-12 pride. Oregon teams have long felt unappreciated in our conference. Even back in my youth when it was the PAC-8, UCLA and USC thought they were too good to be in a conference with small market teams like Oregon, Oregon State, and Washington State. UCLA and USC have big-market heft, and they finally pulled the plug on us, moving to the Big Ten conference, where the big TV contract money resides. College sports has lost its fig leaf that is about student athletes and all-in-good-fun traditional rivalries. College football is an alternative league to the NFL. Ohio State playing Alabama or USC playing Michigan will draw a national audience. Oregon State versus Washington State will not. Oregon is football backwater--unless we can play with the big boys.

If Oregon had defeated Georgia then outsider wanna-be conferences and small city markets are in the big leagues after all. But we certainly weren't yesterday.

4. Herschell Walker pride.  Walker played for Georgia and won the Heisman Trophy there before going on to a big NFL career. Yesterday's win surely reminded Georgians of how great it felt to watch a victory by a team with their state name and colors. Walker is part of that tradition. I don't want Georgians to feel that glow of state pride and affiliation, and associate it with Walker, a candidate for U.S. senator. I would prefer they feel pride in their current senator Raphael Warnock. They may grudgingly admit Walker says some stupid things, but if his mind is screwy it may have happened because of hard hits he took playing for Georgia. Herschell is a veteran of Georgia football, and by golly he made them proud.  And Georgia football makes them feel that pride all over again.

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I don't care about Oregon Duck football, but I wish Oregon had won. 

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