Just buy it

Former UCLA football coach Bob Toledo once called Phil Knight, Nike CEO and Oregon alumnus, "the best owner in college football."

Aside from the fact that his likeness is engraved outside the new $3.2 million locker room in the Casanova Center, I really don't have a problem with this. I realize it takes a lot of money, gimmicks, trick plays and corporate sponsorship to make Oregon attractive to even a second-rate athlete.

Oregon Athletic Director Bill Moos has been quoted as saying young people today look at the bells and whistles when deciding on a college, and even a Husky fan can admit Oregon is loud.

The road uniforms -- inspired by highway workers' reflective vests -- the steroid Duck mascot, the three 60-inch plasma TVs in the split-level locker room that opened this summer, the secret is out: Oregon is desperate for attention and acceptance.

The Ducks have wanted the Huskies to notice them since 1989, when the subsequent streak of five straight losses left them feeling like a mallard in an oil spill, too slow to catch up. But we didn't care about them until they won in Eugene in 1994 on freshman Kenny Wheaton's 97-yard interception return. Oregon went to the Rose Bowl after "the pick," as locals call it; and the trip was its first in 37 years.

I have a hard time determining just why Oregon hated Washington, while we maintained our indifference. It had to be the metropolitan university, perceived as aloof -- getting all the Californians the Ducks never could. Big acts in Eugene come to the McDonald Theater -- in Seattle, it's the Paramount Theatre.

Now here we are, draped in scandal while the Oregon athletic department installed Internet connections in the football lockers -- which I'm sure they are using for Google searches and term papers, by the way.

Oregon has been on the cover of Sports Illustrated twice since 2001, and the UW is ripped by its own local papers. Oregon has players on Times Square buildings and band uniforms with helmets -- if Oregon were a TV show, it would be on Fox.

In short, Oregon is a self-conscious public-relations factory that is a joke to everyone but itself. I reserved these comments for a while, not wanting to sink to sea level where the Ducks reside, but I am senior now. I have waited three years to get the wise-quackers back in Seattle, where we put 72,000 in the stadium and say funk a luxury box.

The Ducks are not the Cougars, with whom we learned to peacefully co-exist except one week a year. Wazzu is like a little brother, and it knows its role. Oregon is a non-traditional rival built on pure hatred, and it's time the Husky nation shed the polite manners and met Oregon in the trenches.

The high road is under construction.

Oregon is fabricated, and I saw this last year when I did a headfirst slide on the new Oakley-inspired "O" at midfield of Autzen Stadium alongside my roommate, Bryant Worthing. This week, Oregon coach Mike Belotti called the Washington celebration after the 42-14 Husky win "in bad taste," but I still don't think any Duck has put two and two together on this issue. Not even the math majors.

Our fans were the only people left in the stadium for at least the final seven minutes. The Green Machine packed up and left its tree house exposed. So what were we supposed to do, quietly file to the exits?

Next time, defend your territory rather than tucking your tail feathers.

That is what's different about being a Dawg: I never leave games early, even if Nevada is beating us. Pride is something no one can take from us, and I have learned you have to show that pride when you are 4-4 or 8-0, not simply on commercial airtime and ESPN GameDay specials.

So keep marketing the Green and Gold, buy more billboards, sell with bells and whistles what could never be sold on its own. Do anything possible to make Eugene more appealing, and hide the fact that it is an hour and a half drive from nowhere. Hate the Huskies for being all the things that test scores prevented you from being.

Buy the newest, spiciest and most outrageous facilities in America and you will still be the University of Oregon -- a school with inferiority so complex it requires a manual. So you won a Pac-10 title, huh? The Huskies have won a conference title and been to the Rose Bowl in each of the past nine decades.

Washington is the genuine article -- win, lose or NCAA investigation, we stand behind our squad because we earned the moniker of Husky fan.

Oregon, like with everything else, just bought it.