Oregon's Real Thanksgiving Rival
The story of St. Mary's and the Governors' Trophy Game.
What if I told you that this season won’t be the first time Oregon has swapped their annual Thanksgiving rival for another?
This year’s holiday weekend is going to look a little different for all of us.
We’ve moved onto the Big Ten and traded the Beavs for the Huskies as our end-of-season game—hardly an upgrade, if you ask me.
And although it will certainly take some getting used to, this kind of drastic change to a historic rivalry game isn’t actually unprecedented for the U of O.
Because believe it or not, we haven’t always played Oregon State on or near Thanksgiving.
We used to play an entirely different rival, and we had a trophy, a designated venue, and at least one Supreme Court Justice in attendance to prove it.
From 1929 to 1935, and then again from 1948 to 1950, the lemon-yellow Webfoots of the University of Oregon used to spend Feast Week competing against the Galloping Gaels of Saint Mary’s College of California.
That’s right, long before Gonzaga and St. Mary’s ever played each other on a basketball court, we served as the original rivals for that little private Catholic college in Moraga.
The Governors' Trophy Game was played almost entirely on Thanksgiving Day at San Francisco’s iconic Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park—just a couple blocks west from what would later become the Grateful Dead house at 710 Ashbury.
Three years into the rivalry in 1932, the winner of the game was awarded the Governors' Perpetual Trophy, which was initially co-created by the governors of California and Oregon.
Oregon’s Governor at the time, Julius Meier, was the son of the founder of the now-defunct Portland department store chain, Meier & Frank.
Unfortunately for me and my existential fears of aging, I can say that I’m just barely old enough to remember the Meier & Frank store at Washington Square Mall, but now it’s a Macy’s because everything in our economy is actually pre-designed to eventually become a Macy’s.
Below, you’ll see a grainy photo of Governor Department Store himself presenting St. Mary’s with the trophy after they skunked us, 7-0, back in 1932.
In 2024, Oregon is a colossal force in modern college football, and St. Mary’s doesn’t even field a damn team anymore, so you would think that the Webfoots must have dominated this intra-state feud, right?
Nope.
In keeping with most of our esteemed history of being bad at football, we lost six of the initial seven meetings. They kicked our butts.
The Gaels’ head coach, Slip Madigan, was 117-45-12 overall at SMC, and he led them to a Cotton Bowl victory over Texas Tech in 1938.
The guy was their Kalen DeBoer, and much like DeBoer, he was basically incapable of losing to the Ducks.
The Governors’ Trophy Game was not played between 1936 and 1947.
I couldn’t uncover an officially stated reason as to why, but it’s safe to assume that 1) World War II played a factor; 2) Oregon was tired of getting bullied by a school with an enrollment of roughly 500 students at the time; or 3) a little bit of both.
But after a 12-year break, the St. Mary’s rivalry sparked back up between 1948 and 1950, thanks in part to then-California Governor and future-Chief Justice/Leader of the Warren Commission, Earl Warren.*
*History buffs might want to check today’s date.
But this time the game wasn’t played on Thanksgiving. It was played in September and October.
Sound familiar?
Time is a flat circle. Everything that is happening now has happened before. And just like how we replaced the Beavers with the Huskies in 2024, we did the same thing to the Gaels back in 1936.
By that time, we had decided to go back to playing the Beavs around Turkey Day, and no amount of trophies or traditions could keep us from making more money by playing our in-conference, bigger-school-having rival.
St. Mary’s was eventually forced to disband their football team in 1951 during the Korean War due to losing too many young men to the selective service draft (A.K.A. the original transfer portal).
And just like that, the Governors’ Trophy Game was dead.
St. Mary’s brought back football for a short time from 1970-2003, but they never played the Ducks again and faded into the marine layer in possession of the actual trophy and an edge in the all-time series, 7-3.
We are certainly starting some new traditions this year, but if history has taught us anything, it’s that we’ll probably just end up finding a way to fit the Beavers back into our holiday plans at some point down the line.
Or, it’s taught us that another massive global event could ultimately force Oregon State to close up shop for good and they might just have to take their rightful place on the WCC hardwoods alongside St. Mary’s.
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” - Mark Twain
Go Ducks.
Always dropping knowledge, thank you. Especially liked the Meier and Frank shout-out complete with a link to an old angelfire page.
Great history lesson. Forgot about ole' Slippin' Madigan!!!