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New blues rock video pays tribute to Oregon Ducks in honor of making the national championship game today. No credits on the video but we rcognize one Eugene musician, Paul Biondi on sax. Anybody else? UPDATE: We hear from Paul Biondi that The Revelators recorded this song at the new Ninkasi Studios in the Whiteaker. Musicians include John Swan, Biondi, Skip Jones, Byron Case and Rick Markstrom. Continue reading
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes did an interview with Duck quarterback Marcus Mariota before his Heisman win and before the Rose Bowl win that is sending Mariota and the Ducks to the National Championships against Ohio State. In the interview with FCA, of which he is a member, Mariota discusses his Christian faith and going "all in for Him." Continue reading
A good friend of mine in Seattle — an Eritrean immigrant who helped pen that country’s as yet unratified constitution — once pointed out that, should I really want to understand the collision of race and politics in the U.S., read the sports pages. I figured he was being coy, but the more I think about it, the more I comprehend sports as a microcosm of society, where all sorts of racial and social tensions play out, often in the subterranean codes of privilege, ability and competition. Continue reading
Sports are funny. If folks in this country cared half as much about the political process as they do about football, we’d all be living in some elegant utopia right now. Even casual sports fans can hold a civil, intelligent discussion about the pros and cons of the nickel defense, but bring up Obamacare and most of us degenerate into retrograde morons, hurling incoherent epithets at each other. Politics these days have become a nightmare, but football — it’s our religion. And that’s sad. Continue reading
What a difference a weekend makes in the fickle, fanatical world of college football, where the panic and pandemonium of winning and losing wreck havoc with all cool reckonings. It’s all so hard to grasp, much less parse and parlay. A single game can overthrow the whole shebang, sending the number-crunchers scrambling for a new paradigm. Not all that far back, for instance, the wily bookmakers in Vegas suddenly scooted the Oregon Ducks to odds-on favorites for a national title, deeming UO’s chances at 9-2 (22 percent), just above Alabama’s 5-1 (20 percent). Continue reading
Tradition has a scary mascot. Tradition wears three colors. Tradition practices at "half speed." Tradition milks the clock. Tradition punts on fourth down. Tradition eats turkey on Thanksgiving. TRADITION NEVER CHANGES. CHAMPIONS DO. Emblazened on the wall of the University of Oregon Moshofsky Center — the first indoor practice facility on the West Coast — this mantra calling for the complete abandonment of tradition could have been written about the Ducks uniforms. Continue reading
On Sept. 28, Falling Sky Pub is launching a battle to the finish line of not-so-epic proportions — 13.1 feet, to be exact. It's bound to be a disastrously funny experience, especially given the fact that they're "encouraging racers to drink beer before and after the race." From the press release: It should take about 2.4 seconds to finish line glory. If you break a sweat you’re doing it wrong! Why? Continue reading
A Copa das surpresas (“the [World] Cup of surprises”) was a phrase I remember hearing several times during the first weeks of the 2014 World Cup. Holland had crushed the 2010 World Cup champion, Spain, 5-1. Germany beat Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal, 4-0. Costa Rica went undefeated in its first three games to become the leader of one of the most difficult groups of the cup. Top-ranked teams like Spain, Italy, Portugal and England didn’t even make it to the round of 16. Continue reading
I consider myself a fairly transparent person, but there’s something I’ve been reluctant to share: I would not be upset or disappointed if the albiceleste (the Argentine team — nicknamed after the white and sky-blue stripes of their flag and jerseys) wins the World Cup. I was passionately supporting other teams but they’ve all been eliminated. Continue reading
To appreciate what this World Cup and the seleção canarinha (Brazil’s national team of soccer — nicknamed after a species of canary whose plumage is yellow, like the team’s jerseys) mean to Brazilians, I’ve been trying to diversify the social environments in which I watch the matches played by their national team. Continue reading