Time to Rename ‘The Rivalry’

Image courtesy of Oregon State Athletics

I saw a tweet Friday about the women’s soccer game vs. Oregon, and the first two words of the tweet were “The Rivalry.” 

It reminded me that it’s been over two years since the universities agreed to move on from the name “Civil War.” To my knowledge, there’s been no attempt to give the matchup a new name. Instead, both schools seem content to continue calling it “The Rivalry,” in one of the lamest moves ever.

College sports are about passion. They make us FEEL. For most of us, when recapping the best and/or worst days of our lives, the list will include things like 9/11, a wedding, the births/deaths of family members, and the time Ken Simonton scored a touchdown in overtime against the Ducks. It seems silly and insignificant, but it’s not. 

My first roommate in college and I didn’t have much in common. He was an engineering major with a plan for what he wanted to do in life, I was a forestry major that had no plan (other than I knew after about three weeks that I didn’t want to spend my days in a rainy forest). He was a private school kid from a small town and eight siblings, I was a public school kid from Portland with one brother and divorced parents. The one thing we had in common was a love for the Beavers, and from there we developed a friendship that has lasted 25 years. Sports matter.

Image courtesy of Oregon State Athletics

A little background on the matchup between the Beavers and the Ducks. The series started in 1894, back when the names of many buildings on campus belonged to actual living people. Though the nickname of “The Civil War” would not come in to common use until the 1930s, the rivalry was intense almost from the get-go. There was no 1911 game because of a fan altercation after the 1910 game that got out of hand. The story goes that Oregon leaked stories to the statewide press of Beaver fan hooliganism, and OSU (then known as OAC) ended the athletic relationship with the school from Eugene over what a 2008 Oregonian article referred to as “a perceived pattern of conceit and disrespect from the University of Oregon.” It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. 

By 1937, the Civil War name was commonplace, and the rivalry continued to escalate on and off the field. After a Beaver victory, some 2,000 fans caravanned down to Eugene to proverbially spike the football in the faces of the Oregon students. Unsurprisingly, the Ducks didn’t take too kindly to this and began to pelt the taunting Beavers with tomatoes. (Did everyone in the 1930’s just carry tomatoes on their person, in case they needed to boo someone?) Things deteriorated from there, some Beaver students were thrown into the millrace, others were stripped naked and forced to repaint the “O” on Skinner’s Butte. 

By now you’re probably thinking that Oregon was always the aggressor, always the ones taking things too far. Well, my friends, I’m here to tell you that we Beavs were no angels in this rivalry either. Following some Oregon students infiltrating our campus and prematurely lighting our homecoming bonfire, they were held hostage, forced to do housework in fraternities, and then walked through campus looking like this:

That’s a noose around his neck! And a rifle in his hand! 

So yeah, we take things too far too.

For the better part of the last 50 or so years though, the rivalry seemed to have smoothed out. In my lifetime, I can’t remember any sort of extreme fan violence or anything stemming from playing the Ducks. Sure I’ve been called a few unsavory things in Eugene a few times and I’ve witnessed Beaver fans letting a little air out of the tires of a car with Oregon bumper stickers, but nothing that made me think “maybe this is getting out of hand.” 

‘The Civil War’ was a perfect name for the rivalry and how the residents of Oregon viewed it. One of my grandfathers went to Oregon, the other was a Beaver. If you didn’t have a relative that went to the opposing school, you certainly had a neighbor or high school friend who did. The game turns friends and families into enemies, if only for a week, and usually all in good fun. 

I won’t get into the reasons for renaming the rivalry, you can read the official statement from the university for that. 2020 was certainly an emotional time for everyone for a variety of reasons. I’m also not going to call on us to resurrect the name - that makes very little sense to me either. 

But it needs to be called SOMETHING. Almost all rivalry games have a name. Some are boring: The Border War, The Big Game, The Territorial Cup, etc. Some names just pay homage to the state or something state related: The Apple Cup, The Red River Shootout, and so on. There are battles for objects, like Paul Bunyan’s Axe or a jeweled shillelagh. There are names like the Backyard Brawl or Bedlam. They’re all awesome, and they all add to the excitement around the rivalry.

So we need a name. There’s precedent for replacing a problematic name. Florida and Georgia have been trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to replace the name “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” for almost 20 years. They now refer to the game as the “War for the Oar” and battle for the Okefenokee Oar, a 12-foot oar carved from a 1,000 year old felled cypress tree from the Okefenokee Swamp. That’s cool! We have a platypus trophy, which is also cool in its weirdness, but nobody seems to want to embrace it. Evidently it’s been passed between alumni associations for the last several years, though you wouldn’t know it without looking that up. I’ve never seen it on the field or anything.

So it’s time to come up with a name and embrace it. No more of this generic blandness. If it comes out in 20 years or 50 years that whatever is decided upon is now offensive or hurtful to a certain group of people, then change it again, but give name it something.

Some Options:

• The Oregon Classic. This was the original name before Civil War became commonplace

• The Platypus Cup. Everyone knows that a platypus is not half duck-half beaver. But damned if it doesn’t look like it is. It’s such a weird animal and so unique to our two mascots that it makes sense in spite of its quirkiness

• Internal Conflict. Like Civil War, but without the connotations.

• Something related to trees. The state has a lot of trees.

• Valley Vitriol. I don’t like it, but some people might.

• Battle for the Pioneer. Winning team gets a replica of the Oregon Pioneer, the statue atop the Capitol.

It’s probably too late to get a name for this season, but we need to start putting pressure on Oregon and Oregon State to come up with something by 2023. Who’s with me?