Roasted Duck (hey, it's the holiday season)

November 17, 2012

106 miles to the stadium

Stanford Cardinal at Oregon Ducks

5:00 kickoff

44 degrees, a slight breeze, and a small 90% chance of rain, but "once you walk in here, it's a warm feeling and you know, IT NEVER RAINS AT AUTZEN STADIUM!"

This season, my 83 year old grandmother who lives 3000 miles away from Oregon on Long Island and has never really cared about football, has become one huge Duck fan. She calls us before the games, during the games, and sometimes, 2-3 times after the games! This season, she has stayed up past 1 o'clock in the morning on numerous occasions to finish the games (please, someone make her an east coast voter!) because she loves her Ducks. She has talked strategy, injuries, and gut-feelings with Kimi week after week. All season her gut feeling has been strongly on the Ducks' side. Today, however, she admits, "I'm neh-vous, Liser, I'm neh-vous." Her New York accent in full effect - dropping "R's" where they should be and adding them where they shouldn't. Accent or not though, this isn't what we want to hear from Grandma. 

Not at all, for this is the holiday season, and we don't have our Christmas tree yet, do you? I know the perfect one to chop too.

Except it doesn't quite go that way does it?

Perhaps there is already a sense of this in the tailgater parking lot. There is confidence, excitement, laughter, sure, but there are also whispers of how big this game is and how nervous Duck fans are feeling about it. We're favored by 20 points in Vegas, but you get the feeling this game doesn't give a sh*t about Vegas. All we can do is hope the oddsmakers are right. That, and scream our brains out whenever Stanford has the ball. 

After a few beers and some delicious food, we head to the stadium a little earlier than usual for senior day. As we step out of our friends' RV, where I've spent the entire tailgate, I realize I didn't take any pictures. In fact, I don't even have my camera. I pull out my phone, but the party is already scattered and disassembled, so I take a few shots of the parking lot instead, thinking this is a far cry from the Ashton Eaton, LaMichael James, and Puddles pictures of the last few weeks. 

Let's hope the game is more exciting than these pics!

As it turns out, the game is everything you want in football. It's thrilling, exciting, unpredictable, and ultimately, it's needing more time. A last minute play by Stanford puts the game into overtime. Autzen is nuts. My grandmother would later talk about how loud we sounded on TV, and I would have a headache for the next 12 hours from the noise. Unfortunately though, the game ends with the wrong score on the scoreboard for Duck Nation.

17-14 Stanford.

We Ducks may have gotten roasted, but we ain't toasted! As I've mentioned, this is the holiday season. All we need is a few teams to gift us with some big wins next Saturday, and we're right back in it. So, go USC, go UCLA, go Florida State, and of course, as always, forever and a day,

GO DUCKS! 

BEAT THE RODENTS!

Enjoy your Civil War Week!

(and please, don't make me write a losing blog again). 

Thanks for following the Duck Tale.

See ya next week from Corvallis.