Heaven Can Wait, But Common Sense Can't

Disaster struck the Oregon Ducks on Saturday night. Star quarterback Jeremiah Masoli was implicated in a theft at a fraternity party. A couple of laptops and an expensive guitar were stolen, and he and another player, reserve wide receiver Garrett Embry, were fingered by one of the frat boys as the culprits. That same night a few blocks away kicker Rob Beard was beaten and critically injured in a street brawl. The details on each incident are sketchy, and twenty-year-old kids will find themselves in the occasional scrape, but it's disturbing to see a proud, successful team fall into such disreputable and destructive behavior. Here's an essay I wrote on the debacle, which I originally submitted to Rob Moseley's Oregon Duck football blog in the Eugene Register Guard:

There’s a movie I saw one time and it starred Warren Beatty. He played a quarterback who died and came back to life in the body of a spoiled rich industrialist, a gunslinger in the world of big business with a wife who hated him and a body gone slack. Everybody trying to make a name for himself is trying to gun him down. His assistant is sleeping with his wife.

Beatty has to lead a board meeting, and since he doesn’t have much experience in business he relates it to football. He looks around the table at his gathered minions and number crunchers and says, “Fellas, there’s one thing I want to know: are we having a winning season so far?”

The table of dark suits look puzzled so he places his hands in front of him chest high like he’s about to receive a shotgun snap and explains, “Because we’re you’re having a winning season, you don’t mess up. You don’t throw the girl out the motel room window. You don’t get drunk and get arrested for speeding. You take care of business and eat your protein shakes and win the next game.”

That wasn’t exactly how he said it, but that was the gist. I had too big a crush on Julie Christie and a pre-wattle Dyan Cannon to remember it exactly. Plus it was more than 25 years ago, and a lot has happened since then.

The point of this digressive tale is this: after the smoke stops burning all of our eyes from these hazy and foul-smelling incidents, regardless of the verdict of juries, Chip Kelly needs to sit down with the preseason-number-two-ranked Oregon Ducks and have a come-to-Jesus. He needs to give the Warren Beatty speech.

Fellas, we had a winning season. And we’re about to have the greatest season in Oregon Duck history. And when that happens, you don’t mess it up. You stay out of trouble. You stay out of the places where trouble happens. You stay close to your own and away from people who would try to trip you up. Travel in twos, and make sure one of you stays sober and keeps his head and has the sense to say, “Hey cuz, let’s get out of here.”

Maybe that’s exactly what happened on Saturday night. I’m more concerned about all the Saturday nights leading up to the ones where they start keeping score again. Please, Ducks. No more incidents, brawls, or allegedlies. We don’t want to wind up looking like the Florida States or Tennessees, or worse, some sheep-stealing, National Guardsmen-bashing idiots down the road.