It’s a swamp battle for Ducks, Beavers

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, November 23, 2016

I get it. You’re certain there has never been a time quite this bleak. And you’re a little nervous about the future.

I’m writing, of course, about Saturday’s football game at Reser Stadium. Oregon and Oregon State will battle for the 120th time in the Civil War, with nothing at stake except pride and perhaps the future of one coach.

Both teams will finish with losing records. The only discussion of bowls is about the flavor of the soup or of the mind-soothing concoctions that will be served at tailgaters.

To be fair, the Beaver Believers can find optimism from memories of Ryan Nall rampaging through the Ducks last season — and Oregon State’s trouncing of Arizona last weekend. And Duck Devotees will be buoyed by the fight their flock showed in winning Saturday at Utah.

Still, this is the first time since 1991 that both the Beavers and the Ducks enter the clash with losing records. A generation has grown up thinking of the state of Oregon as a place where pretty good major college football is played. For them, fathoming that the Ducks (4-7) and Beavers (3-8) are playing to decide who finishes at the bottom of the Pac-12 North is difficult.

But it doesn’t mean this is a pointless game. A little perspective:

In the 1980s, it was difficult to fathom that either program would rise to something approaching competitiveness (fathom, by the way, is the perfect term, given the depth to which each program had sunk and for the amount of water that usually cascaded onto the turf during games).

Back then, the Civil War was talked about all year because it was the only game on the schedule fans could believe their team had a chance to win. So they kept showing up, and were rewarded with some truly classic battles. With scores like 7-6, 6-3, 7-0, you can imagine how atwitter everyone was about the action.

The downside? Way back in the 1980s and early ’90s, we couldn’t tweet or post on Facebook about our emotions in real time, so we gathered under windblown canopies for postgame dissections that went on for hours, or until the “antifreeze” was gone.

No day was a more classic bonding experience than Nov. 19, 1983. I remember it as if it were yesterday, mostly because my feet have not yet completely dried. The record shows 33,176 of us gathered at Autzen Stadium to witness a game for the ages. There never will be another game so spectacularly pointless (I can’t prove that college football added overtime because of this game, but I have my suspicions).

We saw 16 punts! We witnessed 11 turnovers! Instead of boring field goals flying between uprights, we saw four kicks dance in the wind like balloons.

A lasting memory from that game: OSU coach Joe Avezzano chose to punt on fourth-and-short from midfield with 90 seconds left. It didn’t compute. UO punt returner Lew Barnes was the most dangerous Duck in the stadium. Also, the Beavers had not beaten the Ducks in eight years (sound familiar?). Avezzano had a 4-38-1 record as the Beavers coach at that point.

These are the types of decisions that challenged the thinking football fan, leading to remarkable levels of self-discovery and self-deprecation.

Alas, Barnes waved for a fair catch, the Ducks completed two passes — and then lost their fourth fumble of the day.

The Beavers punted one last time … and the game’s special place in our football history was secure.

Less remembered — but only slightly less entertaining — was the 1982 game in Corvallis. It was the first Civil War I covered as a journalist, representing Oregon’s student newspaper. You can imagine my excitement ahead of the Titanic clash between teams that entered the contest with 1-8-1 records. It also featured two offenses that had scored 23 touchdowns — combined.

The teams stuck to the strategy of avoiding TDs, which meant the Beavers were in fine shape thanks to two field goals. Then, in a fit of inspiration almost as unlikely as Oregon winning last weekend at Utah, the Ducks put together a three-play drive capped by a 26-yard pass from Mike Jorgensen to Osborn Thomas with 2:32 on the clock.

The play sparked some colorful commentary in the Parker Stadium press box. The 7-6 win left this young reporter relieved that I wouldn’t need to ask Oregon coach Rich Brooks how it felt to lose a Civil War.

In those days, small victories were big. In our family, the outcome of the Civil War sometimes meant the difference between eating turkey or roasted duck at holiday gatherings.

Sure, nobody outside of this state will give a flying fritter about the 120th edition of our Civil War. That’s OK. This is our game. We own it.

Besides, instead of spending dollars on bowl game trips, Beavers and Ducks can share an extra microbrew or latte and remind one another that things could be even worse.

pdanzer@portlandtribune.com