Another Perspective

Attack the Quack!

By Brandon Hartley

Dark days are upon us. Any moment now the clouds will gather overhead and burst, drenching this region like the underpants of an elderly woman who has forgotten to pick up Depends on her weekly trip to Hiron's. As yet another moldy Oregon winter rolls in, a plague continues to hold this community in an iron grip. Far worse than four more years of another Bush in the Oval Office is what lies ahead. November 17th, 5:30 PM, only 19 hours left to go. Tomorrow, for better or worse, it will happen - an event that will decide the fate of the people of Eugene for the next month. This cancer, this madness, this hell is, of course, the Civil War game.

By the time this article is published it will all be over, becoming a distant memory or remaining an on-going curse. If Eugene's beloved Ducks win tomorrow, it will be impossible to ward-off the football fever that will turn everyone within a 300-hundred square mile radius of the Casanova Center into rabid automatons. Clogging every available facet of the media, it'll all be on the tips of everyone's tongues until 2001; the Rose Bowl, the spread, the Duck's chances--- there will be no escape. If the Ducks lose and fade off into the obscurity of the Sun Bowl then life will return to normal, well, at least until next September. Tomorrow is a gigantic groundhog with irritable bowels and a head full of hate; it's contempt for this land unparalleled. If it pops its enormous, bloated head out of its hole and sees a shadow then we're in for 6 more weeks of "Ducks! Ducks! Ducks!" If not, it'll be the end, the end of it all, for at least a little while.

There is no stopping what can't be stopped. Those of us who couldn't care less about the Ducks can always hope though. The following is a list of reasons why I and about three other people in Eugene wish Mike Bellotti would take a job with the Seahawks and turn his clipboard over to Gilbert Gottfried.

1. FOOTBALL SUCKS
While not as mind numbing as baseball, or those Magic card playoffs they show on ESPN 2 in the middle of the night, football is still an incredibly boring game. With its 15,000 rules and constant stoppage of play, the sport is about as interesting as a Battleship match between a pair of comatose cancer patients. The average game of college football runs 4-hours but feels more like several decades. Is it really necessary to allow the teams a full 28-seconds between plays? And how about all that padding? What's up with that pansy crap?

So many have compared football to war so why isn't it more like Normandy? Get rid of the rules (all of them, especially that bullshit about "holding"), replace the shoulder pads with flak jackets, stick a few minefields here and there, mix in a dozen slow-witted hamsters and the occasional air strike and now you've got yourself a game. Think of how much more intense an afternoon at Autzen would be if everyone in the stadium, fans and those running the concession stands included, ran the risk of being horribly maimed at any given second.

2. FOOTBALL PROVES THAT COMMUNISM STILL HAS A SHOT IN THIS COUNTRY
Take a walk down 13th on any given weekday. In those few blocks you'll pass: steakheads, indie-rock poseurs, Frog-devotees, alumni, dormrats, exchange students, the homeless and lonely girls obsessed with "Family Ties." A pretty diverse crowd with differing morals, tastes and grooming habits. Now, take every one of these people, stick them in Autzen Stadium with 45,000 screaming morons and watch them quickly become absorbed in the spectacle. A few seconds in Duck Central can mutate the most uptight recluse in Earl Hall into a drooling fanatic. If something as simple as a 22 guys running around with a ball can turn thousands into a hive-collective devoid of any semblance of individualism then Marx's dream could still come to fruition in the US. Despite all this...

3. DUCK FANS ARE BORING AND AREN'T NEARLY AS INTERESTING AS SOCCER HOOLIGANS (OR BEAVER FANS)
Europeans really know how to enjoy a sporting event. If their team loses a big game, they wait outside the stadium and toss Molotov cocktails at the players. Riots, bombs, causalities, alcohol poisonings and bottles full of urine are all common elements in "football" overseas. The fans in Eugene could learn a few things from those people. Something must be done. Attendees should be handed bottles of mescaline and copies of Bill Buford's "Among the Thugs" at every Duck home game. The goal post didn't even come down after the California win last week. The kids in Corvallis tore down theirs after a winning season in '98 and tried to use it as a battering ram on the front doors of OSU's library. What's the matter with you kids? Who cares about things like "good sportsmanship"? Some fans you are. Losers.

4. DUCK PLAYERS ARE BORING AND NOT NEARLY AS INTERESTING AS THEIR HOLLYWOOD COUNTERPARTS
Maybe I've seen "He's Got Game" too many times, but the Duck's starting line has failed, time and time again, to live up to the standards of their fictional doppelgangers. Considering that these pampered rubes are constantly being handed billboards, groupies, and petty cash, you would think they'd spend at least some of their free time flaunting their affluence. The university has given these guys so much and so many opportunities to shove their privileges in our faces, why all the humbleness? Why don't they spend their free time tearing up the lawn at Hayward with all those nifty green Humvees? Joey Harrington's so bland he looks like he belongs in a Tommy Hilfiger ad, not on the gridiron. Well, I guess if I had to choose between licking Dom Perignon off the breasts of sorority sluts in my university-provided penthouse and being a huge asshole to the rest of the student body without any fear of repercussion, I would... hmmm, that's a tough one. Moving along...

5. "THE SCIENCE DEPARTMENT HAS FOUND A CURE FOR BOTH CANCER AND MALE-PATTERN BALDNESS? WHO CARES, HOW'D THE DUCKS DO ON SATURDAY?"
Some day these words will be overheard in Doc's Pad, I guarantee it. The University of Oregon and the people of Eugene in recent years have made no attempts to hide where their true loyalties lie. So many places on campus are in dire need of improvements: the EMU, the Collier House, Gilbert Hall, etc. Instead of academic halls, what's everyone hot and bothered to pump money into? New sky boxes in Autzen Stadium! This is a university that loaned $170,000 meant for parking garage to fund the construction of the Moshofsky Center, a superfluous waste of concrete. 9 months a year, 5 days a week, 18,000 students struggle to commute to campus. 45,000 people easily get together at Autzen 6 days out of the year. On top of this, Belloti makes more money per year than Fronhmayer. Why doesn't anyone else have a problem with all this?

6. DUCK GAMES TAKE UP VALUABLE AIRTIME THAT WOULD BE BETTER FILLED WITH COREY FELDMAN MARATHONS AND BLAZER HIGHLIGHTS
I guess this one's pretty self-explanatory.

7. I ALMOST FLUNKED SPANISH 101 FRESHMAN YEAR AND IT'S ALL AKILI SMITH'S FAULT
Well, not really. Akili and I were in the same foreign language class a few years back. On several occasions, the two of us were stuck together in groups and forced to speak broken Spanish to one another. He was better at it than I was. I almost flunked the class and now he's on the Bengals. Oh, and a guy I know named Adam once sold him 2 nickel-bags in a single day. I've also touched Pat Boone and Steve Buscemi. What does any of this have to do with the article? Nothing really. It's filler. The title of this section is completely misleading. Don't you feel used?

8. FINALLY, THE DUCKS HAVE FURTHER CONTRIBUTED TO THE DECAY OF KEN KESEY'S CAREER
"Also, ahem, two tickets which I foolishly ain't got. Damn! If the game were in Eugene, I'd have a lot of connections. Must be that's why I'm writing this little piece: Any kindhearted souls out there able to help a worn-out old Duck?"
-From a recent edition of ESPN Online's "Page 2"

These are words from the laptop of Ken Kesey. Once, long ago he created Randle McMurphy, the greatest anti-hero in 20th century literature. Ken's star faded a long time ago and now he has to grub for cash from ESPN. This tripe belongs on the cardboard signs of strange middle-aged men standing outside of sporting arenas, not attached to the name Kesey. If this isn't proof enough that college football is inherently evil, I don't what is.

The Ducks will probably win tomorrow. I hope that on the way to Pasadena their plane goes down and crashes into a Carl's Jr. in Sacramento.

Wait, how could I write something like that? What's the matter with me?

I'd much rather watch the Ducks lose the Rose Bowl an unprecedented -12 to 368; a loss so pathetic and career-destroying that the team's star players will miss out on the NFL draft, forcing them to take jobs selling cellular phones out of plastic booths in the middle of Valley River Center. After all, isn't that a fate worse than death?

Brandon Hartley, a senior majoring in English, is a featured columnist for the Oregon Commentator