The border war
Richard Linde, Updated November 2003, November 2006 and October 2007

Because
people tell me that the border war
has its roots in the days of Gil Dobie (58-0-3) and because I'd heard
rumors of a strange, black monolith, I decided to
visit the Washington campus and gather information for this story, a story about a long-running feud.
The
monolith, Dobie and the Oregon/Washington rivalry? They are all connected and
intertwined I discovered.
Supposedly, on a cold autumn night when the moon
is full, a small rock or a blade of grass or a stick or some other loose
pediment--in the midst of Dobie's old digs --morphs into a monolith
and vanishes seconds later.
Camera
in hand and all alone on the venerable field one chilly night, I waited for the monolith
to appear. The moon was bright, the stars were out, and quite by chance, I saw
a shooting star; I wondered what the odds would be for its hitting our planet
intact--let alone me. About the same as the apparition's
appearance?
Needing a verve transplant, my heart felt as icy and
cold as kicker John Anderson must have felt, when, in the midst of a
torrential downpour, the Cardinal’s Tyrone Willingham called three timeouts to
“ice” the Doogie Howzer look-a-like in the last seconds of the first half.
I felt as frustrated as if I had been sitting in the hell
of Stanford Stadium and was about to leave when an uncommon chap
startled me; evidentially, he'd skulked in the shadows, eyeballing me with
inquisitiveness before slithering into view like an emaciated coyote. He
looked as pitiful, and I wondered what had become of his bindle stiff.
“Ya waitin’ for the monolith, Gunny? Come to attention.”
“Yes, Sir,” I replied ceremoniously, yielding to my days
in the Air Force. Don't mock him, Airman, lest you be sent to Fort Ord for
training in Air Base Defense on your way to Korea. His demeanor told me that
I'd have to humor him without being patronizing.
Tall,
precariously thin, wearing a woolen overcoat and felt hat, he certainly didn't
look like an ex-marine. His face was gaunt, chiseled by age, weathered, his voice low and gravelly. Mysteriously,
an eagle sat perched on his left shoulder, and as I reached out, it flew off
majestically,
interrupting the silence of the night.
“Ya know this is Denny Field, the home of Coach Gil
Dobie, don’t ya?”
Even the vapor from his mouth was wispy and hard to discern.
“Sir, I was about to leave.”
Why doesn't "Gravel Girty" clear his throat, I wondered?
"Hear 'em in the distance?"
"Who?"
"Coyle, Presley, Sutton. They're runnin' the Bunk
Play."
I shook my head from side to side.
“Let me show you the Dobie Bunk Play.”
“Ugh...really.”
“It’ll take but a minute, leatherneck.”
I decided to humor him, guessing he was harmless. He lit
a cigar, slowly feathering the smoke from his lips in wispy waves. “Want one,
lady?
I coughed, clearing my throat huskily, emitting low frequency
sound waves. "Ugh, no."
"Too bad. There's nothing better than the smell of a
cigar furrowed in wool, for it'll rekindle the spark in your lady's eyes.”
"You know..." my voice trailing off. I wanted
to tell him to get lost.
"Want a swig?" he asked, smiling through yellowed
teeth. He removed a flask from the inside of his overcoat. Taking the open flask, I
wiped the nozzle clean with the sleeve of my wool jacket, took a sip, handed
it back, and he took a full shot of its burning fluid. "To Whiskey Jim
and Saint Mary's," he laughed, before taking another fiery gulp.
"To Whiskey Jim and Washington is better said."
"So many Jims and James give me the jimjams. He
paused for effect, "Hence, Saint Mary's."
"That's good." I laughed politely, on the same
wavelength with the dork. It was going to be a long few minutes talking in
code with him.
"Take another swig, lad. There's nothing better than
the smell of whisky on wool in the wetted wood; their camaraderie makes life
better understood."
"Uh-uh."
This guy was as much into homilies as Tyrone Willingham. For a moment, I felt
a certain empathy coloring my mind from neurons programmed long ago during
my dad's days as a lay preacher.
We knelt down, and, under the light of the moon, he began to regurgitate the
Bunk Play,
drawing it up in the dirt using a stick. It reminded me of my sandlot football
days when we invented plays on the fly.
“Dobie used it
against Oregon in 1911. Here’s how it goes. Instead of snapping the ball
to
quarterback Wee Coyle, Bevan Presley, the center, snaps it into his own stomach, and the two guards fall
down in front of him. Coyle takes off his leather helmet, pretends it’s a football,
tucks it under one arm and bolts around end. After counting to 3, Presley
turns and hands the ball off to the end, Wayne Sutton, who scampers in the
opposite direction from Coyle and scores a touchdown. All eleven Oregon
players chase Coyle. For a moment, no one knew what happened. Dobie
won the game 29-3.”
“I see,” I mused, stroking my chin, trying to look
like the kid in the Dell Computer ad, wanting to mock the condescending SOB.
He refused to flinch, his eyes ablaze. "Ye
mean by your gesture that 'They setten steven for to meet To playen at the
dice'? Nay, the world does not work that way. 'God does not play
dice.'"
My head whirled, as if jolted by the blue
screen of death. How did he know about “Steven,” the pitchman for Dell?
This out-of-touch dork was as quick a study as Leo La Porte. And his
profundities were as irritating as a bumper sticker with "Neuweasel"
on it.
He paused then went on. "Ye see, Gunny, once they take the bait, the play is really over. The
Ducks will never forget it. Back in 1911, Dobie planted the seed for the
hatred that flourishes today. It's in your DNA." His voice had gotten so
raspy it sounded like a rotating fan chewing up paper.
Then he chanted this verse,
"'Tis preordained,
All in the brain;
Dawkins in clover,
Not Satinover;
Find the date,
That rhymes with hate."
Laughing hysterically, he disappeared into a mist
that began to envelop and darken the lonely field.
Quickly, I grasped the meaning of his message. "What about quantum theory," I yelled out. The
wretch was
deep-thinking, if not pithy, I thought.
For a moment, I wondered? Dobie's apparition? No, it couldn’t be; he
wouldn't have given a fig about free will, quantum theory and the effects of a
monolith on one's mind. I was still trying to comprehend Jeffrey Satinover's book, "The
Quantum Brain." And this guy had thrown a wrench into my understanding of
it all. Holy grapes, I was back to Richard Dawkins.
If that wasn't Dobie,
a lot of Dobie's clones must be parsing Denny Field nocturnally, while paying
singular homage to Elvis look-alikes. Everyone thinks he's a coach nowadays--or an Elvis.
The look-alike's pipes mimicked a visiting quarterback's larynx, one
garbled by too many trips to Husky Stadium.
One thing for sure, the rivalry between Washington and Oregon
fans may be one of the most bitter in college football—the Bunk Play having fomented
the feud.
Okay, so there is no free will.
I began to put two and two together, the monolith along with the Bunk Play.
Ah, yes, the meaning
of it all became clear, what the Dobie impersonator was saying. Functioning like
Stanley Kubrick’s black monolith in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Dobie's Bunk
Play planted the seeds for the rivalry between the Ducks and Dawgs, creating both bitterness and joy in
fans’ minds. After all, Gloomy Gil Dobie was a cantankerous gent, a hell
raiser from the past. Although Washington president Henry Suzzallo fired him,
the prescient Dobie seemingly knew he would have the last laugh by designing a
controversial play for a game that would eventually become part of an intense
series. It would forever endear him with Husky fans, adding to its hostile
import.
The rivalry: a
date that rhymes with hate.
I began to research
the rivalry more, delving into the archives of the old Pacific Coast
Conference, looking for a date that rhymed with hate, looking for the date
when the border war began.
Yes, he meant 1948.
As the series between
the Huskies and Ducks evolved, the first shot in the feud occurred in
1948, when California and Oregon tied for the Pacific Coast Conference
crown. As in Kubrick’s movie, 2001, the man-apes began “to swing with their
bone-tools, now using them as weapons to threaten the nearest other
tribe of rival proto-humans.”
I now was on a roll.
To determine the Rose Bowl representative, a vote of the
conference schools was taken to break the tie between Cal and Oregon. It was
assumed that the four California schools would vote for California and that
the six northwest schools would vote for Oregon. Washington voted for
California and encouraged Montana to go along with its vote. California went
to the Rose Bowl, only to lose to Northwestern 20-14. Norm Van Brocklin, one of the greatest quarterbacks and coaches in NFL history,
quarterbacked the Ducks that year, and Oregon fans, the older ones, feel it's
a darned shame
he never got to play in the Rose Bowl.
The war escalated on the football field, when Oregon beat
Washington 63-6 in 1951 and Washington beat Oregon 49-0 a year later.
Then in 1956, after he was fired, Washington Coach John
Cherberg went on television and revealed that Washington football players were
being paid by a downtown “slush fund," called the Washington Advertising
Association. Cherberg's revelation led to a
two-year probation for Washington in 1956. It was determined that 27
Washington players received an average of $135 per month, instead of the
allowed $75. The PCC banned post-season competition for all of its athletic
teams. A domino effect followed in Los Angeles, when UCLA and USC were placed
on probation for slush fund irregularities.
More acrimony occurred
in 1958, leading to the formation of the AAWU. Yes, fifty-eight rhymes with
hate.
In part, the harshness of the
punishments led to the dissolution of the PCC and the formation of the AAWU
(1959-1968), which excluded the so-called "cow colleges" (WSC and
OSC) along with Oregon and Idaho. Note that Montana left the old PCC in
1950.
The fact that all
of Washington’s athletic teams
were placed on probation, rather than just the football team, was the center
of contention. Although most of the conference members voted for the
sanctions, Orlando Hollis, dean of the Oregon law school was the chief prosecutor
in cases against UCLA, USC, California and Washington. He was particularly
disdainful of the corrupting climate of southern California, and he was a
target of the local media in Los Angeles and Seattle.
During the border
war’s long history, some noticeable incidents have occurred:
-
In 1962,
Washington fans, who had rushed onto the field, tackled Oregon's Larry
Hill who was attempting to catch a pass in the end zone to win the game.
[Smith].
-
In 1996, former Washington coach Rick Neuheisel, who coached Colorado at the time, called for a fake punt against
the Ducks in the Cotton Bowl, with the Buffs leading 38-6. Ducks fans won't
forget that one.
-
Oregon beat
Washington 58-0 in 1973 and Washington beat Oregon 66-0 a year later.
- Bobby Moore (Ahmad Rashad), from Tacoma,
allegedly went to Oregon, in part, because a relative of his (Donny Moore,
1965, ‘66) was dismissed from Jim Owens' football team. This further
inflamed the rivalry. According to Oregon’s official website, the Seattle
Times ranks Bobby Moore as Washington State’s fourth greatest running back
of all time. Ironically, the Seattle Times ranks Oregon’s Jonathan Stewart,
out of Lacey, as the state’s fifth greatest running back of all time.
Stewart, who enrolled at Oregon in 2005, could have been soured on UW, in
part, by the clouding miasma of the NCAA investigation of 2003, which
eventually cost the NCAA $2.5 million in a lawsuit settlement it made with former UW
coach Rick Neuheisel. UW fans wonder if the snitch, who anonymously refers
to himself as Peter Wright and who emailed the NCAA about Neuheisel’s
auction activities, was an Oregon fan.
- Husky fans believe that Oregon turned Washington in
for the quiet-day rules' violations that occurred in 1999 when Rick Neuheisel
took over as head coach. [Smith].
- And then there is the Bellotti factor. After the
quiet-day visits in 1999, Gary Barnett and several other coaches, as reported by the
press, signed a letter "protesting what the punishment might be for
Washington." Barnett was quoted as saying they "petitioned the NCAA
to make this punishment fit the crime, because it won't. They'll get their
hands slapped and they'll be reinstated. That's just the way it's done. I just
think that's ridiculous." Later, two of the coaches reportedly signing
the letter denied doing so. The press had mistakenly reported that Mike Bellotti,
Oregon's coach, was one of the coaches signing the letter. The fact that he didn’t
sign it doesn’t
mollify Husky fans; the whole thing was unfair in their minds.
-
In addition to throwing dog biscuits at them, Duck
fans threw cups of urine and dog feces on Husky players at
Autzen Stadium two years ago, this according to a Husky staff member. [Smith].
-
With potential Washington recruits in the house at the Oregon/Oregon State
football game (Eugene, 2001), a video clip of Rick Neuheisel was juxtaposed
with a scene from the movie "Airplane" that showed a woman vomiting.
It was shown six times on the Jumbotron. Of course, the partisan crowd whooped it
up each time. The
Oregon athletic director apologized for the incident. [Seattle Times].
-
Washington DE Donny Mateaki attended the "Vomit"
game, as an intensely pursued
recruit out of Hawaii.
"Coaches call you, and they
bad-mouth the other coach," Mateaki told a local television station. "I
almost didn't take my trip to Washington because I went to Colorado and
Oregon, and all they did was bad-mouth Neuheisel."
"The complaint against Oregon as an
institution was fine. The implication that its coach, Mike Bellotti, was
only recruiting players after Washington identified them, that Bellotti
did something wrong in getting Albert Toeaina and Chris Solomona away
from the Huskies at the last minute seems inappropriate," Blaine Newnham
of the Seattle Times wrote. "No college football coach has enough
credibility to obliquely criticize others."
Also, see our spoof on the recruiting wars that took place in 2001/2002, "A
day at Castle Pacifica."
See the article describing our experience at Autzen Stadium, "A
din of inequity."
-
Preceding the 2003 game, stories in the local press made mention
of the Huskies’ prolonged, 30-minute celebration after they had thrashed the
Ducks 42-14 at Autzen Stadium in 2002.
Visages of that raucous party haunted Oregon’s players and coaches all
week, according to a mini-hurly-burly raised in the press.
During the week, there were quotes from several Oregon players. "It wasn't
... how would I say this?" QB Kellen Clemens said. "I don't know. We will use
it as motivation. It wasn't something that showed a whole lot of class."
Oblivious to the proverbial bulletin board material, Oregon free safety Keith Lewis
took some swipes at a number of Huskies and essentially guaranteed his team
would be dancing on Husky Stadium's midfield "W" at the end of the game. Reiterating his comments
about QB Cody Pickett from the past season, Lewis said, "Anybody can have one good season. Cody
Pickett was overrated, bottom line, in my opinion." He went on to say that no
one knew about Charles Frederick until after his game with OSU and, in the
past, he had called UW's WR Reggie Williams slow.
Along with Lewis, Oregon coach Mike Bellotti added
his two-cents during week, saying he thought the Huskies' behavior in last
season's game was in "very poor taste."
After
the 2003 game, which the UW won 42-10, Husky players danced on their
midfield "W."
Many shots have been fired
during the border war, and it’s not over. Washington leads the
series, 58-36-5; Oregon has won the last three games. Duck fans feel they
are on a roll, thanks to the NCAA imbroglio involving former UW coach Rick
Neuheisel that has enervated Huskies' recruiting. Their improved football
facilities provided mainly by donor Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike,
reflects their optimistic approach to football -- as do their avant-garde
uniforms, dare we say.
Fans may never see who wins the border war; it could be a
war without an end. Is there no hope for mankind?
An afterthought. Why am I always running into guys like that beanpole
with the cigar? Please lock me up when I dress up like Dobie and roam Denny
Field late at night looking for a blasted monolith. In the meantime, I'll try Satinover
again.
Acknowledgement:
"Steven" in the Dell computer ads is played by a 21-year old
college student, Benjamin Curtis. The reprobate's line about "steven"
is taken from Chaucer.
Factoid:
John Anderson made the kick, giving UW a 10-6 lead at halftime.
Washington beat Stanford, 31-28, in a quest that led them to a win over
Purdue in the 2001 Rose Bowl.
A plaque for Gil Dobie
The story in our link is dedicated to the
memory of William "Wee" Coyle, who played quarterback for Gil Dobie from
1908 until 1912. He is no longer frightened of his coach. It is said they
have been seen walking across Denny Field on moonlit nights, arm-in-arm,
always smiling, always laughing, always upbeat. "Run it for me, kid, just
one more time. Come on, kid, just one more time, one more time for Gloomy
Gil." It is said that Coyle tucks his leather helmet into his stomach and
runs the Dobie-Bunk Play…over and over and over. Dobie can't get enough of
it, never wanting it to end. As a cloud covers the moon, the mystical
twosome slowly fades from view. There'll be another night to practice the
bunk play--for it is a friendship made in heaven.
References:
[Smith]. Smith, Shelley, "Oregon-Washington: 'We
know they hate us,'" 20 April 2001. Special to ESPN.com.
[Seattle Times]. Withers, Bud, "
Neuheisel
upset at recruiting tactics of some, like Oregon and UCLA," The
Seattle Times, 7 February 2002.