The U of O Ducks beat the Texas Longhorns last night in the Alamo Bowl. This was their third consecutive bowl win.
In 1947 my family moved to Eugene. I was 9 years old, in the fourth grade. To keep me out of the house on Saturdays my dad bought me a season pass to the Knothole Club, a ticket that allowed me to sit in the South end zone of Hayward Field with hundreds of other grade school boys and watch the Oregon Ducks play football.
I had never seen the excitement and pageantry of college football before. Sitting in a crown of cheering
fans, in a crowd of boys my own age, and watching Norm Van Brocklin and Woodley Lewis and the other heros of that 1947 season made me a lifelong fan.
When the Ducks lost the 1948 Cotton Bowl to SMU I was devastated. Somehow the name of their running back, Doak Walker, stuck in my mind as the player most responsible for SMU winning the game.
In 1967 in a bar in Aspen, Colorado one of the other ski patrolman approached me leading a largish older man with a big grin. "Nick," he said, "I'd like you to meet Doak Walker." By this time Doak was retired from a successful pro football career and he enjoyed a celebrity status among the skiers.
I took his hand and said, "Doak, all my life you have been the enemy. You broke my heart in the 48 Cotton Bowl."
At first he was taken aback but then we both laughed and began drinking and talking about football and
other things.
The next day he dropped by the patrol shack and we went for a couple of runs.
Later he was married to a lady who owned a ski shop in Steamboat Springs and he would stop by the Obermeyer booth at the annual ski shows and we would chat for a while. He died while skiing a few years ago.
So after all these years it is no longer a personal thing, but I am overjoyed when Oregon can beat a team from Texas in a Texas bowl game. As Klaus used to say, revenge is a dish best eaten old.
Nick
