Everyone Loses Games. Few Change Them.
Oregon lost out on their 2020 College Football Playoff dreams when they fell short of a tremendous comeback against unranked Arizona State, but the Ducks are just getting started.
“Everyone Loses Games. Few Change Them.”
That quote—from a Nike ad—still hangs on the wall of my childhood bedroom. I cut it out of The Oregonian on January 11th, 2011, the day after Oregon fell to Auburn in the program’s first National Championship game.
The ad was a backup plan. It replaced an assuredly more celebratory picture/headline that was intended to congratulate Chip Kelly’s innovative and history making Ducks—had they won.
But they didn’t win. And so Nike chose to use their already-paid-for full page spread to run this reassuring “runner up” version.
I remember that it didn’t do much to reassure fourteen year-old me, but it had an “O” on it, so I taped it up anyway.
The quote means something a little different every time I think about it, but it always manages to give me just a little more hope. All fans need hope.
That particular Oregon team went 12-0 in the regular season. Second year head coach Chip Kelly’s spread offense took the country by storm. LaMichael James began his journey to become the best running back in school history.
That team changed the game. That team still managaes to give me hope.
The Ducks have lost quite a few games since falling to Auburn on January 10th, 2011. They’ve been upset. They’ve upset others. They’ve filled up trophy cases, left a few of those shelves empty, and had a couple different coaches along the way.
Up until Saturday night, the Ducks hadn’t lost a game of football since August.
We saw another second year head coach, Mario Cristobal, in the process of re-establishing the Oregon brand. It wasn’t always pretty. It wasn’t nearly as flashy as the halcyon days of Chip. But there was no shortage of hope.
And even after another heartbreak in the desert for this program, there’s still more reason to hope in Eugene than there’s been in a long time.
The 2019-20 Oregon Ducks hadn’t played a full four quarter game all season. We saw that incompleteness exposed in the initial Auburn loss, and we managed to pretty much ignore that fact throughout the ensuing nine-game win streak. Arizona State, another program in progress, didn’t ignore that fact. They attacked it.
I’d like to think that I handled Saturday night’s loss better than fourteen year-old me would have, but of course it still hurts. I let myself hope. Investing so deeply in something you can’t control almost guarantees that you’ll be disappointed more often than you’re not—and I can’t wait to set myself up for disappointment all over again.
That’s why we do this thing.
It would be unfair to say that anything other than the College Football Playoff is a backup plan. There’s still time for this team to grab 10+ total wins, their first conference title in five years, and to send these seniors off right.
None of those things are equivalent to a hollow “runner-up” Nike ad you’d find in The Oregonian on January 11th, 2011.
Mario Cristobal and his staff are in the process of changing the game for Oregon. Changing the game in recruiting, in physicality, in mental fortitude, and—eventually—in the trophy cases.
They haven’t lost any hope for what this season can still be, and neither will we.
I hear Pasadena is a place worth dreaming about.
Everyone loses games, but Mario Cristobal doesn’t plan on losing many more.
Go Ducks.