Why Oregon Fans and Media Should Take The Blame For The Rose Bowl Loss

If Oregon wants to take the next step in terms of national prestige, fans and media will have to act like we belong with the traditional powers like Ohio State, Florida and Notre Dame.

The reason these powers have been able to maintain excellence is because the fans, the media, the players and coaches are very critical of themselves and involved in how to make improvements. And those teams listen.

First, Notre Dame, really? A school whose following actually makes it harder for them to succeed. Way to back up your point.

Next, how hasn’t rational critique happened? Pretty much everything that covered the game was critical of the teams performance. There were definite problems. But this type of article simply feeds the morons who get irrationally angry about a football team, and who can not look at what actually happened on the field. Are we supposed to have columnists calling for Chip Kelly’s head?

We need rational and healthy critique of the team, and we need to push for excellence. But that’s not what you’re calling for. You’re calling for Ducks to be not happy with the results, no matter the circumstances.

The Ducks exceeded expectations this year (which was one of your criteria earlier in this article, but whatever). So what are we supposed to do, talk about how this season was a failure?

We as fans and the media need to start treating the team like grown men and not just kids who need to hear repeated encouragement.

“Nice try, sport, you’ll get ‘em next time” only goes so far.

This makes no sense either. First, who is saying that, and what do you proposed different. Should we verbally assault Masoli and Blount for not having good games?

The bottom line is that this season was a resounding success. As MCD brought up before, a good comparison to this year for Oregon would be Alabama last year. What was their reaction after losing to Utah? They moved on pretty quickly, and look towards next season, while learning lessons from the loss. Hmm, isn’t that exactly what most Oregon fans are doing?

Basically, the tone of the article is just one of grasping: grasping for control over a situation that you can’t control. We as fans can’t control the football team, no matter how much we yell and scream and whatever else. I love talking about football, and will talk about it til I’m blue in the face. But calling for Oregon fans to act childish and petty like some other fanbases do is ridiculous, and in the end, counterproductive.

I’m not even going to give it any legitimacy with a further response.

Duck fans were more interested in tailgating in sunny, palm tree-speckled Pasadena, basking in the experience and taking pictures of the beautiful, overlooking San Gabriel Mountains, than trying to destroy their vocal cords by the second quarter per usual.

Seriously? I drove 13 hours from Oregon. Damn right I am going to enjoy tailgating, this was an experience of a lifetime, and it was fucking awesome. The next day I could not talk till Sacramento, and you are telling me I am responsible. eff you buddy. This seriously pisses me off.

I’ll let the rest of you and the blank space below speak for my review of the content.

I feel like diehardoaklandfan22 was sick of his posts getting no comments on this site. mission accomplished.

You can call them spoiled, sure, but they put pressure on the team to deliver. And for the most part, they do. No team wants to deal with an unhappy fan base or media telling them what they did wrong, especially one that can fill a 110,000 seat stadium and connect with ears all over the country.

We as fans and the media need to start treating the team like grown men and not just kids who need to hear repeated encouragement.

“Nice try, sport, you’ll get ‘em next time” only goes so far.

Just out of curiosity, why would us giving or not giving some vague sort of “encouragement” do anything different at all? Do you think Chip Kelly reads the paper every day, counts the number of fires lit under his ass, and decides to win or lose accordingly?

Mostly, I just don’t understand your point. You make these vague, grandiose claims that we (the fans) can help the team win, but I don’t understand how. Autzen is always sold out and is always loud. I wasn’t personally at the Rose Bowl, but I’ve heard that noise wasn’t in short supply there, either. What more are we supposed to do? Why would it help to “demand excellence,” and what exactly would the action be, other than these vague platitudes?

At the end of the day, nothing — nothing — that Chip Kelly has ever done would cause me to believe that he gives a shit about what the media says. This “pressure” to which you refer is a complete non-factor. I believe that he coached to the best of his ability, and I believe the players played to the best of their ability. We got beat. It’s that simple. We’ll try again some other time. But it’s just a tough sell that dissatisfaction on a massive scale would have had an effect of some sort.

I wouldn’t want a team that was subject to the whimsy of fan satisfaction and media hype. I want a team that will try their hardest to win every game every time. I believe I have that.

The coverage of Oregon’s loss in the Rose Bowl just got complicated.

It’s taken a while for me to write anything this week.

It’s part shock, part anger, and a whole lot of mourning. I needed time to complete the five stages of grief, regroup, collect my thoughts and write something more meaningful than a “this FanPost really sucked” rant.

This was such a great season and it so see it go down this way was more crushing than watching the season finale of “Friends” in 2004 or seeing someone about to get hit by a car knowing you can do nothing to save them.

After spending the last few days figuring out the good, the bad and the ugly (mostly ugly) that happened in this FanPost, I have come up with an explanation for why so many AtQ readers had such a rocky start to 2010.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with anything on the page.

Here goes.

Writing a coherent article is a skill. And unfortunately, skills don’t hatch over night.

AtQ fans have only recently gotten a taste of coherent writing. In fact, most longtime readers have suffered through far more lazy FanPosts than “A Duck Fan’s History of Suffering”, as evidenced by the respective number of comments.

At this stage, coherent writing is sort of a novelty for AtQ readers. It’s new, it’s fun, trendy even, but it’s not expected.

Look at the Oregonian. Every single year, readers of the Oregonian pick up the paper expecting no less than a coherent narrative in every article. They demand excellence.

The goal for a fan site is always to exceed expectations. Venting anger ad dressing it up as a call to action is one thing, but for the Oregonian readers, platitudes are not enough. They expect logic.

You can call them spoiled, sure, but they put pressure on the writers to deliver. And for the most part, they do. No blog or publication wants to deal with an unhappy readership telling them what they did wrong, especially one that has literally thousands of readers across the state.

Their readers all expect every article to attempt to make sense, every page, every issue. It’s contagious.

Why do publishers fire writers? Because they lose the trust of the keyboard and in return, they stop expecting to churn out something more than a loosely assorted bag of letters. Mindset is half the battle.

The Oregonian’s tradition of quality writing is over a century-and-a-half long, with five Pulitzers to prove it.

In fact, their tradition is so strong that fans started an uproar when the Oregonian hired John Canzano.

Addicted to Quack on the other hand, is all about the now. AtQ are cutting edge in just about everything: the newest Tako Tuesdays, Media Wednesdays, Morning Quack Fixes, SBNation layout, the list goes on.

There’s not much history or tradition (aside from The Juju) outside of the past few years.

And like the new SBNation layout, great writing isn’t something the fans and media can get tired of like a pair of week-old Nike cleats.

After we (yes, I feel like am a part of the AtQ readership) read this FanPost, you have no idea how many times I heard “Well, it was just fun scrolling through it.”

That attitude, more so than talent, spelling or grammar, is the biggest reason why we still don’t have a Pulitzer.

AtQ readers were more interested in clicking on the various links, basking in the experience and finding Takimoto’s “Tiny Spandex Shorts!!!!” posts, than trying to destroy their keyboards by the second paragraph per usual.

Commenters were busy readying their replies about how the grammar is nice and and they sure kissed a shit-storm for not being here when this was posted.

Just like most writers who screw up in big articles because they change their style of prose, we as readers should take the blame for change our style in this FanPost.

“Win the Day,” isn’t that Chip Kelly’s mantra? It felt more like, win the sentence and whatever happens next happens.

January 7th had to be the quietest (aside from the day after Boise State) AtQ FanPost that I have ever been to.

But this is ok. I can’t expect us to get it right away. Like Aristotle said, we learn by doing.

Now that we have been on the big stage, the crucial transformation is learning from our mistakes. This experience needs to teach us what to expect and how to act for next year, when we’re right back in the Rose Bowl.

We need to build a winning tradition, one where “just having content” isn’t enough. And this takes time. It needs to be instilled from birth (for readers) and through talent (for posters), read everyday on iPhones and seen everyday on the SBNation home page.

If Addicted to Quack wants to take the next step in terms of national prestige, readers and media will have to act like we belong with the traditional powers like the Oregonian, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The reason these powers have been able to maintain excellence is because the readers, the media, the writers and editors are very critical of themselves and involved in how to make improvements. And those publications listen.

If The Oregonian had written a half-assed orgy of anger and confusion, the media and readers alike would be calling for John Canzano’s head. Yeah, he’s done a great job for the paper, but that doesn’t mean anything unless you read what you wrote after you have written it.

The powerhouse papers are victims of their own success, but that is a positive. It shows they care.

As it stands right now, AtQ is just the little engine that could, waiting for its chance to finally join the popular group.

We as readers need to start treating the team like grown men and not just kids who need to hear repeated encouragement.

“I thought the grammar in this fan post was pretty good,” only goes so far.

After a crappy FanPost like this one, we can’t pat ourselves on the back and say it was a good try, we need to find the reasons why the post sucked and improve immediately.

It’s up to us for AtQ to get there. We need to demand excellence, and if they know what’s best for themselves, they’ll listen.

It starts now.