OREGON SITUATION REVEALS HORRIBLE TRUTH ABOUT HUSKY FANS

I'm probably wrong about this as I've been told a million times by smarter guys with Insider knowledge, but from what I see and hear, the vast majority of folks who still consider themselves Husky fanatical enough to cough-up the bucks each year to attend live football events at Montlake, don't know or care about the Internet habit of obsessing over anything Oregon, much less a mob of cheating ducks........ and let's not ignore those suddenly Husky hating Beavers. I just spent a long weekend on the Oregon Coast and can say that duck and Beaver smack has lost most of it's relevance. Huskies are now solidly cast in the Pacific NW as cupcakes probably not as fearsome as sodbusters.

I can't speak for any Dawgs other than my crew of traditional Husky Football loving fanatics made-up primarily of my immediate family and a few hanging-on close friends. Let's step back and give this some alternate thinking. Compared to what we had in 1991-92 and most of the preceding seasons in the 1980's, our favorite football program has been thoroughly trashed. With only a very few exceptions such as the Whammy In Miami and the 2000 Rose Bowl season, our football program had been in continual decline for 16 years(1993-2008) prior to the Sark rebuilding which may or may not now be losing steam.

By the end of Husky Football's collapse, attendance had fallen from 72-74,000 to 40-45,000 while season ticket sales were reduced by around 25,000 with no promise that sales wouldn't continue to decline. UW student interest had gone apathetic. I can testify that at the end of the 2007 season, my adult children all of whom had grown up going to Husky Football games all the way back to the 1970's and the Sonny Sixkiller years were finished, burned-out, wanted no more of the Purple and Gold and frankly, I was ready to quit after 45 years as a season ticket buyer (32 Tyee).

What kept us in the game? Surely by the end of the 2007 season, it wasn't our rivalry with Oregon or hatred of duck football or that of any other school. For my part, it was the pleas of my grandsons to "Grandpa, please keep the Husky tickets going until we can take over!" that made it impossible for me to not continue the family tradition even in the face of Dr. Snakeoil's ultimate insult of retaining Tyrone thru the 2008 season solely for the purpose of painting his 0-12 masterpiece. That insult was Emmert's parting shot and yes, my distain for the former UW president and his 2 1/2 predecessors, Huntsman, McCormick, and Gerberding leaves no room in my Dawg's heart for hatred of Oregon, OSU, or WSU.

As I've said before, the mediocrity of Sark and his near .500 football so far has at least had the affect of revitalizing some Husky Pride and Fever. You youngsters might wonder how mediocrity in football coaching can have such a positive affect, but I've been there before when Jim Owens decided to mostly skate along and just get by being occasionally competitive following his early Rose Bowl glory years. I find it difficult to believe that there could be any UW leadership remaining on campus who might still prefer such mediocrity in our football program's performance and I hope this is born out at least in part by the recent changes in coaching staff and of course,....... the far too long belated stadium renovation.

Bottom-line, Husky Football has fallen too far and been down on the bottom too long for us to be obsessing about duck football or even slug football. We still don't have either offensive or defensive lines, which were the core of Husky Football back when we were good. The 9 going on 10 game losing streak, thanks to a pack of losers given the power to dismantle Husky Football, is too long now to ever be turned around fully in my lifetime and from where we're at now and need to go, who can give a pile of Dawg shit about it anyhow?