The Cleverly Inane

Oregon football is having a down year, much like those I remember most well from my adolescence and college years in Eugene in the last century.

Oregon has been decent for the past 20-years, since "The Pick," which is, in football years, not that long ago.  There's lore behind it, which I won't get into.

The losing bothers the ignorant, though it hasn't much to do with anything important.

It's driving some Oregon fans over the edge, even though it was entirely predictable based on the proven logic of the cyclical in sports.  Programs rise and fall, like empires in general. They rise again and fall--like a lullaby.

The head coach is taking most of the heat, but the truth is there's plenty of blame to go around for Oregon's dip.

A larger point is that there are plenty of dip-sticks in Oregon's fan base now, just as there are surrounding every major college program these days.

In my day there was nothing to cheer about with Oregon football, except for the pure pleasure of being in the stadium and watching a college football game--no record of achievement to mourn in passing, just solid ineptitude year after year.

So there was never any cause to go crazy about current events, mounting losses, the end of football history!

Kinda like politics yesterday and today, there's a record of nastiness on the books.

A while back a national writer whose name escapes me, perhaps George Schroeder of USA Today, compared Oregon's program to a Ferrari, the sleek, expensive auto.

That was "clever"--if typically overblown--sports writing, but now people have taken to claiming the car has crashed. It's become a cliche, of course, an easy metaphor to extend to the inane.

Here's a post from a Duck fan at the CBS 247 Sports affiliate, Duck Territory, wherein the contributor sees it about like I do:

Super necessary thread. I also hope someone uses the car analogy again for the 1500th time. It's super clever.

But....if we are using the car analogy let's at least be accurate. He was given the keys to a Ferrari and drove that Ferrari as fast he could for two years. The third year the Ferrari got damaged in a wreck and none of his mechanics had the right parts to get the car back on the road immediately, but once the part came in he was back driving that Ferrari as fast it would go, right up until that damn part failed again. In his fourth year of owning the car he hired some new mechanics hoping he could keep the Ferrari on the road, well the parts keep breaking and the most important part, the one that kept breaking last year, is on recall so he had to get a refurbished part and it just doesn't provide the same ride. 

It turns out he wasn't being a very good car owner though and and wasn't taking it in for regular maintenance or using the right fuel. The front end is now shot, and the rear differential is out of balance.

Now the car is broken down and will be expensive to fix.

Anybody sick of the car analogy yet?

Good job "Duckwad" at Oregon 247!


TS