The Register-Guard

September 27, 2007

Bob Welch: Broadcasters, get the score on Eugene
By Bob Welch
Columnist, The Register-Guard

Welcome back to Eugene, Chris Fowler, Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit. It's been seven years since ESPN's "GameDay" last visited. And before you go live to America from a field just south of Autzen Stadium before Saturday's Oregon-Cal game, thought I'd offer an update.

Since your last visit, the Ducks have been up and down more than a car on Friendly Street, whose frequent speed bumps are higher than just about anything in ESPN's home state of Connecticut. (Not to brag, but Lane County goes from zero to 10,358 feet.)

We're proud of our outdoors here. And our arts. And our ability to disagree about everything from global warming to whether cheerleading is an actual sport. (The consensus: Yes, in the same way Ronald Reagan thought ketchup was a vegetable.)

Eugene's new motto: "The World's Greatest City for Arguing About Whether We're Really the World's Greatest City of the Arts & Outdoors."

Springfield, Eugene's next-door neighbor to the east, is known for being a finalist in "The Simpsons Movie" contest and for writer Ken Kesey, who played right guard on the Springfield High football team. And was a huge UO football fan; he once wrote about listening to games on the radio while hunting ducks with his father, who would say: "We're rootin' for 'em and shootin' for 'em."

Since your 2000 visit, Autzen - Latin for "big stadium with really long men's bathroom lines" - has been expanded. Fans are ruder and cruder but not as loud as in the '90s. Like potato salad left too long in the sun, they spoil fast, especially the younger ones.

Autzen has a new skybox - for ospreys. The relationship between the birds and the university is a touch shaky at the moment, the UO having built them a special nesting perch above a light tower, then booting them out before their lease was up last August. (Let's hope the two parties reconcile, lest tree-sitters start ringing the stadium in support of the birds, like those who've strapped themselves to trees around Cal's Memorial Stadium to protest the grove being cut down to make way for an athletic training facility.)

Along with an expanded Autzen, we now have a bunch of state-required football art around the stadium, including those giant X's and O's that people write to me about each week and say: "What are those giant X's and O's?" (Like Jack Nicholson's character and Nurse Ratched in Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," football fans and art have never really hit if off.)

Some things, of course, haven't changed since your last visit. Coach Mike Bellotti is still around; he's becoming the Bob Barker of Pac-10 coaches. Nike czar Phil Knight recently chipped in $100 million to the athletic coffers, speculating that the new basketball arena might be called "Knight Court." And Eugene is still the proud home of the Ducks.

Speaking of which, I'm sure you've heard of our mascot's recent suspension for roughing up the University of Houston's Cougar. We expect the Duck to be back in its usual feisty-but-fair form on Saturday, ready to playfully spar with Oski the Bear, who's wound up in the slammer a few times himself over the years, once after almost tearing the Stanford Tree apart limb by limb.

What else since you were last here? Autzen now serves up something called "The Mighty Duck," a 12-inch, half-pound black angus hot dog. (What? You expected some kind of tofu scramble?) And UO recently announced it was reinstituting baseball, later hiring Cal State-Fullerton Coach George Horton, who promptly said, "We'll take the athletes we have and put green and gold on them and compete with anyone in the country and expect to win."

The audacity! Or as you, Mr. Corso, might say: "Not so fast, my friend."

The school colors are green and yellow, not green and gold.