Guess I had to start with the power ballad, didn’t I, even though I can’t stand Jimmy Fallon. To skip his intro, go right to 1:30 in the video. Supposedly a coin flip decided whether it would be Oregon or the Hated Tigers commemorated. I don’t believe it. I’m certain it was an artistic choice, one I would have made in their stead: You can rhyme our mascot’s name with “fuck.” “Tiger,” meanwhile, only really rhymes with “Geiger,” which would make for some real lyrical gymnastics. Maybe we would have heard a song about some sort of nuclear disaster involving the Hated Tigers. I would have appreciated that, I think.

Public affairs:

• Dollars: The Emerald says the cost of Oregon sports is going up. One curious sentence: “Many experts argue that the immense growth of the athletics program in the last decade has enabled the University to survive as an institution.” Really? Who? Presumably, he means the sports business professor he quotes in the next paragraph, but in the paragraph after that, he exposes that statement as 100 percent bullshit: sports didn’t drive enrollment increases, problems in California did, and the UO lagged behind other institutions with worse sports teams. So why say it in the first place? (Emerald)
• Photo ops: One thing Oregon Football’s success has unquestionably done for the UO is make it attractive for opportunistic politicians hungry to associate themselves with something popular. Witness the great and the good of Portland taking an opportunity at Wednesday’s City Council meeting to crowd into the frame with Richard Lariviere, who doesn’t even wear visors, win days, lock shit down, or fake punts. The picture would have included Randy Leonard, I think, i.e. the commissioner who once fought a little war with the UO over a sign (Oregonian).
• Flights: The airport will be crowded Saturday (Register-Guard)
• ASUO: The arms of the ASUO have conspired in the passage of a resolution calling for, it seems, more power for the ASUO in OUS restructuring decisions (Commentator, Emerald)
• Speeches: A former Obama lackey will give one at the UO’s Portland campus (Oregonian, Willamette Week)
• Bikes: The UO Bike program has $10,000 worth of new ones, and either loaning them out for a shorter span than the others, or changing around to make all of the program’s loans shorter. It’s not 1 million percent clear (Emerald, Emerald photo blog).
• Scene: Mnmlism! ACDC cover she-band!
• The Stars: Predict an Oregon Football victory. One thing I didn’t know: “Oregon is ruled by Saturn” (Register-Guard).

Opinion:

• Letters: Guard readers pooh-pooh the interests of cat owners and those who drive without headlights. An Albany Democrat-Herald reader is happy about Oregon Football’s successes.
• Editorials: The Emerald, unsurprisingly considering three members of its editorial board are copy editors, criticizes the state’s spell-check proviso for tests. “Don’t you feel better knowing that your dad cares about you, instead of him professing his adoration of his hand-carved ‘Wildlife of the West’ collectable figurines?” it asks. No. I don’t. I wish my dad had buffalo figurines. The Guard criticizes Team Red plans to repeal Team Blue’s health care plan and is confused by the slowness of incoming Oregon cheese John Kitzhaber’s appointments.
• The Guard’s Mark Baker ends up in the wrong Glendale in a cheerful little article (Register-Guard).
• The Guard’s Bob Welch informs us we can’t yet buy McArthur Court seats and tells us a few Glendale, Ariz., things (Register-Guard)
• The Emerald’s Philadelphia Eagles fan Tyree Harris is after Tucker Carlson (Emerald).
• The Emerald’s Heather Ah San asks what’s up with that Nicolas Cage fellow. Its Ryan Imondi is unimpressed by the new Jamie Foxx album (Emerald).
• Someone writing in to the Guard says Oregon’s environmental bureaucracy is outdated (Register-Guard).
• Reasons the UO thinks you should give it money today: So rocking was Trafton B.’s winter break that he’s not even sure he can ingest coffee safely anymore, but he’s looking forward to this term (UO’s online begging bowl).

Sports:

• The Guard’s George Schroeder really hates thunderbolt-slinging, zephyr-heeled fraud god Cam Newton. Hates him more than anyone should hate anyone else because of college football. (Register-Guard)
• The Emerald’s Lucas Clark is nervous about thunderbolt-slinging, zephyr-heeled fraud god Cam Newton, considering he thinks good quarterbacks might be Oregon Football’s undoing (Emerald).
• Oregon Football: isn’t pooping its pants over how much bigger and scarier thunderbolt-slinging, zephyr-heeled fraud god Cam Newton is than its defense (Oregonian); a furtive Nick Aliotti insists he doesn’t know what he’s doing and feels like a “red-headed stepchild.” Classic mind games (Register-Guard); will try blitzing (Register-Guard); is kind of blase about play-action (Portland Tribune); is the subject of a wager between county officials in Lane County and Lane County, where Auburn, Ala., is located, and it will benefit animals (WANI); requires semi-trucks to transport its bags (KVAL); tickets are being auctioned for FOOD for Lane County (KVAL); has three players with Thousand Oaks, Calif., connections (Thousand Oaks Acorn)
• Oregon Basketball (W): reflects on the time it has spent at McArthur Court; is trying to do better (Emerald).
• Oregon Bastketball (M): is smaller than the Hated Huskies (Register-Guard)

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 6th, 2011 at 11:30 by Alex Tomchak Scott and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.