By Steve Ritchie
The University of Oregon football team’s amazing journey to the national championship game ended Monday night in the Arizona desert, with a hard-fought, last-second 22-19 loss to the Auburn Tigers.
But for thousands of Duck fans, including this writer and many other local folks, the disappointment from the loss was tempered by the lingering excitement of seeing the UO make it to the title game and by their pride in an undefeated regular season. Oregon’s stellar, if less than perfect, performance on the national stage was also heartening, and made for one of the more exciting endings in a BCS championship game.
Win or lose, none of the local fans attending the game voiced regrets about the time and money spent to be there.
Silverton resident Cam Starner, a graduate student at Eastern Oregon University, drove all the way to Glendale with a friend, even though they didn’t have tickets. Their plan was to buy scalped tickets outside the stadium. With a budget limit of about $500 per ticket, they knew there was a possibility they might not be able to secure tickets, but Starner was hopeful. Unfortunately, there were many more buyers than sellers outside the University of Phoenix Stadium Jan. 10. Ticket prices started out high and stayed that way, even after the game started.
“The cheapest ticket we found was $2,000,” Starner said. “We were tailgating with some Auburn fans who had tickets and they sold all of theirs for $3,000 each. We got to hold some tickets and had a photo taken with them but that was it.”
Starner ended up watching the game in a nearby pub, which was packed to the rafters with fans, many of them from Auburn who also traveled to Arizona in the hope of buying a game ticket.
“It was actually a lot of fun. The Auburn people were the nicest people you would ever want to meet. I heard three different War Eagle stories (about the unique Auburn cheer) and still don’t know the actual truth about it,” Starner said.
Driving back home Tuesday, Starner said he would make the trip again, despite five days of driving, and he expects to go if the Ducks make it to the Rose Bowl next year.
Mount Angel School Superintendent Bob Young and his wife Pat did have tickets, but, like Starner, they found themselves surrounded by Auburn fans. They were in Section 434 with a handful of Duck fans and a horde of Tiger supporters.
It did appear to those in the stadium that there was twice as many Auburn as Oregon fans. Young said he was a little disappointed that there weren’t more Oregon fans present, but he credited the Auburn people, saying, “They are definitely passionate about their football.”
Young isn’t lacking in passion for the Ducks, though. He attended his first Duck football game in 1962, even before Autzen Stadium was constructed, and he hasn’t missed many games in the past 48 years.
“I’m a diehard Duck. This was my seventh bowl game. Pat and I went to the last two Rose Bowls. We lost them both, so we said last year we weren’t going to any more Rose Bowls, but we would go to a national championship game . . . So we got the chance. It was a wonderful game and an exciting atmosphere,” Young said.
Of the thousands of Duck fans on hand to support their team, Silverton resident Ron Jones was one of a select few who not only played football for the University of Oregon, but also played in and won a post-season bowl game. Jones played offensive and defensive line for the Ducks, and was a starter through most of his career, which was capped by a 1963 Sun Bowl victory over Southern Methodist University.
Jones is also unusual in that he attended the game not with Duck fans, but with a group of seven friends from Silverton who are all Beaver fans – his wife, Jane (who becomes a Duck fan “one day a year,” Jones said), Ken and Darby Hector, Bill and Judy Schmidt, and Steve and Connie Johnson. The group of friends decided this was a once-in-a-lifetime event that they couldn’t miss, so Jones came up with some not so inexpensive tickets, while the Johnsons handled the transportation, and Ken Hector set up the golf outing and land transportation.
“They all graciously consented to be Ducks for the day,” Jones laughed.
Jones was part of one of the most distinguished groups of football players ever to enter the University of Oregon. In his freshman class in 1960 were future Hall of Famers Mel Renfro and Dave Wilcox, who both had illustrious NFL careers, in addition to being college stars. Jones also played with consensus All-Americans Ron Snidow and Bob Berry.
In fact, Jones shared that his freshman class was so good that, in the days when freshmen were limited to playing on the frosh team, they went “undefeated, untied and unscored upon” the entire season, while playing other freshmen teams from Oregon State, Washington and Washington State.
Kennedy High School Athletic Director Kevin Moffatt didn’t attend the game with any Beaver fans, but, while in Arizona, he stayed at the house of one of the more famous OSU alums, current Arizona Cardinals quarterback Derek Anderson.
“He couldn’t bring himself to attend the game,” Moffatt said, “but he has been a very gracious host for us.” Moffatt, in fact, scored his tickets to the game through a mutual friend of his and Anderson’s, and that led to the invitation to stay at his house.
Moffatt’s only regret? “I have to get an early flight Tuesday and get back to Mount Angel for our basketball games that evening. It will make for a long day.”
All in all, it was a game to remember.
