A few days before the Oregon Ducks would clash with the Auburn Tigers I was chatting with a former colleague and proud Duck.
He saw the game as high-scoring, with the Ducks squeaking out a win.
Not so fast, my friend.
Now the truth is, I couldn’t win a football bet if I knew the results in advance, but a Ducks victory just wasn’t adding up to me.
As a Florida Gator alum and follower of the Southeastern Conference (where Auburn plays), it was difficult for me to see how Oregon could win. Auburn was just too big, too strong, too talented. That 50-point average the Ducks scored during the season? Fuhgeddaboudit. Auburn would shut them down, period.
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To take our Web poll on the Ducks, click here.
Frankly, the match-up reminded me of that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Picture the Ducks as the guy being all cool with his saber twirling, looking a lot like fancy-dancy Nastia Liukin in gymnastics. Picture Auburn as Indiana Jones. Auburn players would be impressed — for a moment — then they’d get bored. The gun comes out and …
Game over.
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A few hours before the game, I read John Canzano’s column in The Oregonian. Canzano had had it with all of that Southern drawl the Auburn fans left wafting in the desert air.
Canzano — in Arizona to cover the game — was sooooo looking forward to the Ducks’ stomping all over the Tigers. And with no hesitation he wrote the Ducks would win.
I didn’t have a dog in this fight, but my brain kept telling me, “This is SEC football. And college football is religion in them Southern parts.”
So I couldn’t resist sending him a quick e-mail before the game began.
“Good luck with that.”
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Give the Duck fans credit. They love their team. Plus, there’s something quite nice about college football not being a religion here. There’s simply too much other stuff to enjoy in the Pacific Northwest.
And give the Ducks’ football team credit. They are very, very good. But if the Ducks want to win it all next year?
Don’t rely on all your trickoration. Easy on the gymnastics. Get some players who can bring a hammer to a fistfight.
Speaking of hammers …
Holy cannoli, our story on pensions for governmental workers created quite the stir. Some readers hated it. Others loved it.
Took a bit of a hammering myself.
As it should be.
Spoke to a woman on the phone who asked me if I was given some speeding ticket I didn’t deserve. She said I appeared to have a “fervor” for the topic.
I told the woman, a governmental employee, it just wasn’t the case.
The media have always had an adversarial role with the government. We are its watchdogs.
And if the media have made a mistake in government pension coverage, it’s that we didn’t examine it earlier.
During good times, what government workers made has flown under the radar, but because so much government money goes toward payroll, it has come under much more scrutiny now.
And it’s happening all over the country, not just here.
I understand that public workers don’t like it much, but it’s just silly to suggest that we are bringing the topic to light because we don’t like public employees or because we like picking on them.
“Follow the money” has always been a media mandate. Nothing more complicated than that.
Lou Brancaccio is The Columbian’s editor. Reach him at 360-735-4505 or lou.brancaccio@columbian.com.
