Oregon has taken over this corner of the Internets!

Well, this isn’t an anecdote, but a perspective that you might want to bear in mind: despite the Pre mystique and current Ducks’ success, Eugene has never been a sports town in the way that other college towns are.

As a leading city of the Granola Belt, it’s a town that prides itself on being quirky, anti-establishment, and politically activist. To many students, staff, and townsfolk (unlike the more conventional students who follow the Ducks while passing through town for four years and remain faithful ever after) the success of the Ducks is not necessarily somehing to celebrate.

Their transformation to a national powerhouse places increasing emphasis on an athletic program that may seem more a part of a national problem than any kind of solution (e.g., national media attention embedded in corporate sponsorship; affiliation with Nike, which is more known in Eugene for its abuse of workers’ rights than for subsidizing the Ducks; the sense of entitlement on the part of some student athletes, exemplified by the many arrests over the last few years; etc.). The jock BMOC that might thrive in Lincoln or Columbus or Gainesville seems strangely out of place in Eugene, where the really “involved” students are trying not to get their dreadlocks tangled as they chain themselves to a logging road blockade. (That’s sarcasm, by the way, which might as well be directed at my own younger self.)

Don’t get me wrong: I love my Ducks these days and follow them closely, but I never even considered attending a game while I lived in Eugene (from the late seventies through the nineties). It simply is not a piece of the counter-cultural atmosphere of Eugene—and in Eugene, ironically, the counter-culture is the dominant culture. The only time many of us ever entered Autzen Stadium was when the Grateful Dead were playing there. What Duck game-days are best known for these days, at least among the locals I stay in touch with, is the lack of traffic that makes bicycling down the streets so much more pleasant.

Go Ducks!