Brandin Cooks & Recruiting

What I am saying is that your lack of success is your own fault. That the Ducks are somehow your collective oppressors or that no one but Phil Knight put in any cash or effort into building the program is what is endlessly funny about the relationship between the two fan bases.

Thomas J. Autzen= a Beaver with a Ducks son, Thomas E. Autzen.

Rich Brooks= a Beaver not hired by OSU.

In 1950, Autzen started the charitable foundation that finally built the namesake stadium in 1967. That was a lot of foresight and a lot of donations to the foundation from varied sources over a long stretch of time. OSU could have planned something comparable but never did. Excuses are always easier to make than are cash donations.

OSU could have had the foresight to hire away Rich Brooks after the Fertig disaster and before the Avezzano calamity, but didn’t.

So do go on with your fine tradition of warmly accepting mediocrity, complete with a miserable world view, snug and smug in the blanket moral superiority that the rise of your potato salad benefactor was only made possible through the indirect, but still wholly illegal, exploitation of Latin American farm laborers.

It is well nigh impossible to make any more fun of your fans–at your collective expense–than you already do caricaturing yourselves on the internet and IRL.

You redefine pettiness every day.

Blah, blah, blah. That there is not a class of professional “activists” raising money from anti-capitalist pinheads–when they are not shaking down the very same corporations they purport to combat–going hammer and tong with Reser Fine Foods just underscores that company’s lack of a high profile.

A clique of overeducated twits, who’ve never worked a hard day in their lives, compiling sensationalistic lists for immediate press release in no way makes the exploitation or benefitting from illegal farm labor any more noble than profiting from the efforts of off shore workers who are employed by local subcontractors.

The entire issue boils down to who you’d like to wear your blinders for. Congrats on choosing factory processed refrigerated foodstuffs.

Oh, and congratulations are also in order regarding OSU’s ongoing Tier One dance with the devil known as Nike.

I’d like to take a moment and thank you for running this blog because Beaver Nation sorely needs the measured and critical perspective it provides.

I lived the old Ducks’ inferiority complex regarding Washington, which is almost completely exorcised these days. We collectively bitched about them less and less beginning in the late 80s, benchmarked them, rolled up our sleeves and started building a program to compete with them.

It feels indescribably good these days to be able to look their fans in the eye, or even look down upon them when they get snippy, and laugh, rather than spew the old timey religion of bitter invective about how they hold all of the cards and how life is so unfair.

Angry, I sincerely believe you are a fan who’d like to instill a collective “Let’s do this!” attitude within your fan base. Best of luck to you in your efforts because that quest commands my respect.

My fear for you is that there is far too many “bitter beavs,” who hate the Ducks more than they love their own team, and the complacent “happy not to be losing as much” fans who will both continue to be the albatross around the program’s neck.