Nick Cody had a rose tucked into his face mask, another in his hand, and a giddy smile on his face.
But as the Hockinson High School graduate stood on the field Thursday as a newly crowned Pac-10 champion, a piece of his heart was back in the Autzen Stadium locker room.
“I have a small memento with a glass sphere that has his ashes in it,” said Cody, an offensive lineman for the University of Oregon. “My mom had those made for all of us. I bring it to all the games and I don’t let go until I get to the locker room.”
Cody is a 6-foot-5, 285-pound redshirt freshman. But as he has demonstrated through his days at Hockinson and now at Oregon, you never outgrow a father’s love.
“On my gloves, my shoes, everywhere, I have his name or ‘Dad’ or his initials with me,” he said.
Clifton Hugh Cody Jr. died of colon cancer in October 2006, when Nick was a junior in high school. Since then, his son has completed a standout high school career, signed with a premier Pac-10 program, and earned a trip to the Rose Bowl.
Cody, a reserve at guard and tackle, has played in nine games this season, making one start when injuries opened up a spot on the line. Now he is headed to Pasadena, Calif., to face Ohio State, a trip the Ducks clinched with a 37-33 victory Thursday over Oregon State.
All of which led Cody to stand on the field at Autzen Stadium while the postgame bedlam unfolded around him, awed by the magnitude of his team’s achievement.
“It was a moment I had never been through in my life,” Cody said. “You just want to embrace that moment; you just want to take it all in.”
And how would his father have reacted?
“I think he would have been speechless,” Cody said, “just like the rest of us. I know he would be smiling right now.”
For Cody and the rest of the Ducks, the journey began with a shocking faceplant in the season opener at Boise State. Which, in the redemptive world of sports, makes the rest of the season all the more enjoyable.
“We knew that’s not us,” Cody said of the opening-game loss. “To not get a first down in the first half, we knew that wouldn’t happen again.”
Since then, Oregon has gone 10-1, climbing the polls while earning the school’s first Rose Bowl berth in 15 years and its second in 52 years.
“That’s why I came here,” Cody said. “There’s an atmosphere down here in Eugene that’s unmatched, and I thought it would take us this far.”
Yet no matter how far Cody travels in his football career, memories of his father will always be near.
As Nick told The Columbian following his father’s death: “He always humbled me down whenever I was getting too cocky. But at the end, he told me how good I was. It was kind of surprising. My whole life, he reminded me I had so far to go. But recently, it was, ‘Hey, you’re almost there.’ “
With a trip to the Rose Bowl secure, maybe Clifton Hugh Cody Jr. would say his son has arrived.
Greg Jayne is Sports editor of The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4531, or by e-mail at greg.jayne@columbian.com. To read his blog, go to columbian.com/section/GregJayne
