So, can someone tell me who thought it would be a good idea to schedule the Oregon/Arizona game for 12:20 in the afternoon on a day most people have school or work? The game could’ve easily been scheduled for yesterday evening, but instead those of us with, you know, jobs and other responsibilities miss out. Thanks Pac-10!

Those of you unable to watch today’s game but able to use the Internet can see live scoring updates here.

God bless the Smoking Gun.

Today’s Register Guard reports that the Eugene City Council took steps yesterday toward regulating drinking at tailgate parties on privately owned parking lots near Autzen Stadium. Currently, the consumption of alcohol is allowed on the massive parking lot next to Autzen on the days of home games. Drinking is technically illegal, but is tolerated in the private lots along MLK Jr. Blvd. This may all change soon as city councilors are considering putting limits on drinking in private lots, but they are putting off making a decision until they know how the University will respond.

Councilor George Poling, who represents the area that includes Autzen, favors expanding the allowance of alcohol to private lots if the University decides not to support any limits on drinking. Of course, the Eugene Police Department and Mothers Against Drunk Driving are against any sort of expansion. EPD stated that the number of brawls and alcohol-related brawls is on the rise, while MADD espoused its typical neo-prohibitionist message.

At least one private organization that provides parking is against any sort of regulation or permits. The Eugene Masonic Lodge manages a 10-acre lot across from Autzen and allows alcohol consumption and just encourages drinkers to dispose of their bottles before crossing the street to Autzen.

(Photo: pete4ducks)

Former Oregon basketball great Fred Jones was today traded by the Toronto Raptors to the 24-32 Blazers. Jones is, of course, one of the best players ever to attend the UO, and while his NBA career hasn’t been as decorated as his college one he will nevertheless be a solid addition to the young Portland team: he’s a good defender and is excellent at dribble penetration. Plus, the Blazers have spent the past few years worrying about their image and, if nothing else, Jones will be a fan favorite thanks to his PDX roots, friendly demeanor, and ridiculous dunking ability.

The only real questions remaining are if his mediocre shooting percentage will go up and if he’ll gel with Coach Nate McMillen and the rest of the Blazers team. I’m guessing that the answer to both will be “yes”– but hey, when one of your favorite players is now on your favorite team it’s hard to not be a bit optimistic.

More on the trade here, at the Oregonian’s Blazers Blog.

Well, it’s 4 am, I can’t sleep, and apparently Ty Schwoeffermann is writing again… just what I needed.

Having disappeared from the Emerald after his now-infamous “Watch out for Jungle Fever” column, Ty is back with a guest commentary entitled “Athletics should offer more to higher education.” Whereas “Jungle Fever” was unrelentingly, overbearingly, crushingly stupid, the latest opus is more mildly confused with just a dash of the famous Schwoeffermann crazy.

The piece begins:

The majority of students are grateful for the opportunity to attend such a high-caliber school, and if your family is wealthy (the average University of Oregon student’s family income is $100,000 per year), then a quality education is implied.

The rest is of about the same quality, except for this little nugget:

Financial assistance along with many other supplements can change the racial and class disparities at this school. The Athletic Department is not causing racism and economic inequality, but it is not advocating against it. By not actively working to fix these problems, the department is only facilitating the inequality by putting student athletes to work on the plantation fields.

So let’s recap: Schwoefferman railing against interracial dating is not racist, but the Athletic Department’s lack of advocacy is. C’mon Ty, don’t athletes get academic support and residence options that aren’t available to the average student? Do you really think anyone takes charges of racism seriously from someone who thinks interracial dating “isn’t right”? Don’t you think it’s a little bit insulting to the memory of the survivors of slavery to compare their ordeal to collegiate athletes in the 21st Century? And I thought the Commentator was desperate for content…

The UO has hired Pat Kilkenny, a prominent donor, Univerity alumni and businessman to be the next Athletic Director. Incidentally, the Moshofsky Center’s field is named after Kilkenny, who “spearheaded” donor efforts to buy out previous Athletic Director Bill Moos’ contract.

To his credit, Kilkenny came across as a genuinely nice guy in the press conference. He made numerous self-depricating jokes and exhibited a likeable charm that will surely play well with other donors. He admitted that he will need “lots and lots of help” in the upcoming months due to his inexperience, but also stated that he was determined to leave the program in a better state than which he inherited it. Kilkenny has been hired for a two year term– a fairly short period of time in terms of AD contracts. President Frohnmayer refused to categorize the hire as an “interim” one, focusing instead on Kilkenny’s business qualifications and history as a generous booster.

So the question is, why is the UO hiring someone who is essentially a wealthy fan with no significant prior sports management experience to helm the University’s Athletic Department?

My feeling is that Frohnmayer and many of the prominent donors desperately want the new basketball arena to get built and believe Kilkenny will be the guy to bring the funding in and get the project rolling. Kilkenny said in the press conference that building the arena “is kind of a pet project of [his]”, and that he’s assuming “the University will still cash [his] checks.” He clearly seems like the sort of man who will be good at wooing donors and getting them fully on board for the project.

The real question is how good of a job Kilkenny will do in, uh, everything that doesn’t involve bringing in money. As a University alumni and Duck fan will he be able to make tough personel and administrative decisions? Will Mike Bellotti and Ernie Kent’s staffs continue to be treated as deities or will accountability be introduced? In a light moment he listed firing people as being a “a core competency of [his],” but I think he may find that firing people in the insurance business and firing them from a public University are two very different things.

A live video feed will apparantly be available for free on O-Zone.

The editorial boards of both the Oregonian and Register-Guard weigh in on the academics versus athletics hullabaloo at the University.

From The Oregonian:

To be fair, it’s easy to see the source of [the professors’] frustration. Private giving to Ducks sports is at an all-time high, while Oregon has slipped to 46th in the nation for per-student public funding of higher education. That’s a national embarrassment, and it translates directly to higher tuition, bigger classes, fewer course offerings and fewer full-time professors.

But sports aren’t to blame for the University of Oregon’s financial or academic woes. The athletic department is almost entirely self-sustaining and doesn’t siphon money from academics. At its best, it may even help the academic side by raising the university’s profile. What’s more, many of the university’s biggest sports donors earmark money for scholarships and academic programs.

From The R-G:

To the extent that a university relies on private donations, it must respond to donors’ priorities. That’s neither the university’s nor the donors’ fault. If the UO athletic department appears to be well-off financially, it’s because donors want it that way. University administrators would be foolish to reject their generosity - though naturally they should also court donors whose gifts are directed elsewhere on campus.

In the UO’s case, the importance of private donations has been amplified by a decline in public support. State support has fallen by more than half since 1990, and now accounts for only 14 percent of the university’s budget. Professors aren’t underpaid because coaches make fat salaries. Disinvestment by the state, not a successful athletic department, is the real source of penury for the UO’s academic programs.

It is probable that the imbalance in spending between athletics and academics will not be resolved to the professors’ satisfaction anytime soon, but that’s not the fault of this school’s administration. Rather, it is donors who tend to be more attracted to giving money to the University’s athletic programs. The football team is going to have more media recognition (no matter how poorly they perform against Mountain West teams) than any of the University’s research labs. It’s up to the professors themselves to curry favor with private donors and encourage them to start putting more money into the learning side of things, rather than criticizing the administration. The administration, for its part, seems to be doing what it can.

Another salvo in the battle between academics and athletics appeared in Sunday’s Register-Guard in the form of an opinion column by UO biology professor Nathan Tublitz and UO English professor James Earl, both former UO Senate presidents. Citing the $2 million settlement of outgoing AD director Bill Moos’ contract and multi-million dollar spending on housing and recruitment for student athletes, the professors accuse the University of financially prioritizing athletics, resulting in the devaluation of its academic reputation. One solution they propose to resolve this imbalance is to divert some funds from athletic programs for academic scholarships:

Many people think athletics makes money for the university, but that is not true. At Notre Dame and Ohio State, the athletic departments give back more than $10 million every year to education - but at the UO, not a penny. A few years ago the faculty asked the athletic department to add a mere 25 cents to football and basketball tickets, to be earmarked for student scholarships. The request was refused. We asked that a small percentage of every donation to athletics be earmarked for education. The administration refused. All athletic revenues and gifts go entirely to the athletic budget, which has been growing four times faster than the university’s. When education is in trouble, we think the Ducks should be able to contribute something more than fun.

We are by no means suggesting that the university get out of intercollegiate athletics. Athletics is and will remain an essential part of campus life at the UO. But the current emphasis on athletic success draws our attention away from the real problem, which is academic decline, while the administration pretends that everything is fine.

A total of 90 UO faculty members co-signed the opinion piece.

Update (01/16): Frohnmayer issues a reply in the R-G.

As Sho pointed out earlier, it snowed in Eugene today. Now snow is something that most people take for granted: it’s an everyday part of their lives for three to five months of the year. But here in Eugene, snow is unusual and frightening: it looks like rain and it’s supposedly made out of the same material as rain, but it’s all weird and white and cold and causes us to slip and fall and ache for days and oh the humanity.

So, in order to keep the hospitals relatively clear of bodies most Eugene schools simply shut down at the first hint of snow sticking. This morning, for instance, nearly every public school in the area closed for the day. The exception, of course, is the University of Oregon, whose administrators have such a callous disregard for human life and comfort that they almost never cancel classes because of weather. Well, at least that’s what I was grumbling to myself as I slid to campus this morning.

But as I shuffle past the outdoor tennis courts I notice that there are people running around the track. At 8:00 AM. In ~26 degree weather. And they’re smiling and laughing as they jog next to each other.

Clearly, these people are insane.

Anyway, I continued walking past the courts and the two artificial turf fields until I came up to Coach (and marathon guru/running legend/magazine editor/author) Joe Henderson, whose class the happily jogging students were taking part in.

Coach Henderson’s students are training for 5K and 10K marathon races. None of them had to go out running this morning– today’s class was voluntary and they received extra credit for coming in. According to Henderson, 27 of his 40 students showed up to run, which was a far better attendance ratio than in any of my classes in the toasty Lillis Complex. And in the six years he’s been a coach here they’ve never canceled class and only retreated indoors twice. I suppose most people would call these runners determined and motivated. I call them crazy– but that’s probably because I’m the sort of person who considers 65 Fahrenheit cold and walking to my car exercise.

So if you’re the sort of person who enjoys running, enjoys being cold, and enjoys receiving extra credit for it, then you too should be a long distance runner. Hell, you probably already are one. Me? I’ll wait for a 2008 Olympics game to hit the Xbox.

The high is supposed to be 31° tomorrow and they don’t have running classes scheduled on Fridays, but I suspect Coach Henderson will be out there bright and early regardless of what the mercury reads.

More random, low-quality snow pictures from around campus after the jump.

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From the R-G article:

When Moos was hired in 1995, Oregon publicly identified four finalists and brought them to campus for meetings with UO faculty, staff and donors. At least for now, Frohnmayer has chosen a more streamlined and confidential process.

“Time is really very important here,” Frohnmayer said. “I’d like to see the position filled as rapidly as possible. The search process … will enable me to make that selection in maybe a much more expeditious way than some appointments at the university do.”

Frohnmayer said he’s looking for an athletic director who can take the athletic department to another level while addressing some immediate concerns, including the “high priority” of building a new basketball arena to replace McArthur Court; stabilizing the department’s financial situation; shoring up relationships with donors; and improving the academic success of athletes.

Frohnmayer said he hasn’t ruled out hiring an interim AD.

“If I have what I think is a good interim solution that addresses those issues, that’s something that I could entertain as a way to go forward,” he said.

Frohnmayer hopes that the University will find Moos’ replacement by April 1.

Oregon Ducks Head Coach Mike Bellotti, on last night’s loss to BYU:

“Both quarterbacks took a very long time to get started,” Bellotti said. “We didn’t find a way to get them in rhythm.”

And coach Gary Crowton:

“I was very disappointed we didn’t get anything going early, which would have taken pressure off the other side of the ball,” said offensive coordinator Gary Crowton, the former BYU head coach. “We weren’t in a rhythm as a team. Offensively, when the quarterbacks are making good, quick decisions and everybody is on the same page as that quarterback, the offense is in a real good flow and good rhythm, and we weren’t in that today.

Neither Quarterback could establish a rhythm because both were being asked to do just that. Well coached football teams resolve their Quarterback controversies, not allow them to fester and grow.

Update: As one would expect, Every Day Should Be Saturday has a great summary of the game.

This was it. This was the last straw.

Mediocrity is one thing– Ducks fans are used to that, and it doesn’t bother us as much as it would at a school that actually takes pride in its athletic programs– but Mike Bellotti has allowed this team to regress to the point where they’re just plain bad. The Ducks were beat by a Mountain West team by 30 points. And it wasn’t even that close. Oregon was out-coached and out-played in just about every aspect of the game, despite having two high-priced coordinators and one of the most talented rosters in the Pac-10.

The players looked unprepared and unmotivated. The coaches appeared confused. Maybe they thought the Ducks were playing Portland State again. Maybe the paint on the new helmets released some sort of intoxicant upon contact. Or maybe it was a late Wednesday night at Sheri’s Ranch. Whatever the case, they seemed only mildly aware that there was a football game taking place in which they were supposed to participate.

The offensive playcalling was particularly awful– I wouldn’t trust Gary Crowton to teach a newborn how to cry. This is the second year in a row where his high school junior varsity gimmick offensive schemes have been routinely exposed by teams with real, live coaches. Here’s a goddamn pro-tip, Crowton: When your Wide Receivers and Running Backs are far superior athletically than the other team’s defensive backs, you throw the fucking ball deep. You don’t call quick screens, you don’t call quick outs, and you don’t run the option with a quarterback who’s been sitting on the sidelines. You throw the ball deep like your quarterback is Sexy Rexy. Or hell, you have two very good Running Backs. Line up in the I and pound the ball down their throats.

Gimmick offenses are often used by teams with glaring positional weaknesses like slow Wide Receivers, a porous offensive line, or a low-quality Running Back. Teams with superior talent like the Ducks shouldn’t ever have to resort to permanent gimmicks– they should be able to outrun or outbruise teams like BYU. Gimmick offenses wouldn’t be gimmicks if they actually worked on a regular basis against competent teams.

And speaking of superior talent, the immense talents of both Dennis Dixon and (gasp) Brady Leaf has been utterly wasted by Bellotti and Crowton. Both of these quarterbacks would have been good enough to start for all but two Pac-10 teams this year. But Bellotti never committed to just one of them as he should (and any competent coach would) have. In the two bowl games of their era he has played roulette with the position, virtually guaranteeing that every drive would be helmed by a quarterback deprived of rhythm and confidence. It’s as if he’s been coaching to not hurt either Quarterback’s feelings.

Basically, it’s time for a change when your team hasn’t won a bowl game in four years and has been outscored 56-140 in the last four games of the season. Mike Bellotti appears to have lost the ability to prepare, motivate, and make adjustments to his team. At the very least, Crowton should be fired and the Defensive Coordinator position evaluated. Losing isn’t good, but it is tolerable if your team plays superior opponents or remains competitive throughout games. Losing because your coaching staff is unprepared and befuddled is absolutely unacceptable for any self-respecting collegiate program. This is why coaches like Larry Coker and Walt Harris are fired, not patted on the back and asked to try a lil’ bit harder next year. The administration must take action during the offseason if they want Oregon to be known as something more than “that team with the horrible day-glow uniforms,” because getting blown out by religious teams from garbage conferences isn’t exactly going to help bring in donors or recruits.

Edit: “Embarrasing” seems to be the operative word as far as this game’s concerned.

Tonight’s game between Oregon and BYU should be… uh… well… hopefully better than last year’s Holiday Bowl, right?

The Ducks haven’t won a bowl game since Joey Harrington was quarterback. Given the fact that BYU is a Mountain West team and that the Ducks have as much talent as any Pac-10 team not named “USC,” they have any excuse to not end the losing streak right here and now. But hey, even if they lose it won’t be as embarrassing as what they’ll likely be wearing.

Anyway, things should be pretty heated on the field, at least after Tuesday’s altercation between members of both teams:

What was supposed to be a light-hearted and spirited pep rally for BYU and Oregon and their fans came within a whisker of turning ugly Tuesday night at the Fremont Street Experience in downtown Las Vegas.
While a BYU captain was giving a short speech on a stage above both teams, which were facing each other, several BYU players started doing the Haka, a traditional Maori war dance. The Cougars do the Haka as a team on the field before every game.
An Oregon player of Polynesian descent apparently took exception to the dance. He jumped over a metal barrier separating the teams and shoved a BYU player. A minor fracas ensued, although no punches were thrown.
Security personnel and BYU team officials were able to separate the players, and nobody was injured or detained for questioning.
“One of their guys jumped onto our side, but nothing really happened,” said BYU lineman Jake Kuresa. “Just a lot of shoving and mouthing off. Luckily, guys kept their cool.”

I didn’t even know dancing was legal in Utah, to be honest.

I really don’t know what to say about the Ducks’ new helmets. Call me a traditionalist, but I missed the old UO logo when the University switched to the newer “O.” Now, just when I’ve accepted the newer logo, they pull this shit.

Well, hopefully the new helmets will motivate the team to play some good football in Las Vegas next week because, as Jordan Kent puts it in the R-G article, “We have to make sure we show up for the bowl game and deliver because they’ll look ridiculous if we don’t play right.”