Reflections on Humility and Perspective

Duck fans are swimming in a still pond of confidence right now. It's been a heady last few years. We clubbed the Beavers two years in a row, knocking them out of the Rose Bowl twice. 65-38 is the jibe that ends all arguments. It has a sound you never get tired of. 65-38. We made the Granddaddy and won ten games twice. The offense racked up 5500 yards and 38 points a game, with regular appearances in the top ten.

Then last week the Ducks hammered hapless New Mexico 72-0. Some fans chortled, what's the record for shutouts in a season?

I don’t know what the record is, but in 1939 General Bob Neyland’s Tennessee Volunteer squad shut out their opponents for the entire regular season, in all 17 games in a row.

We can all anticipate a Duck victory and loudly proclaim our confidence of one, but we would be sadly misguided if we failed to recognize the achievements and tradition of today’s opponent. The Vols have won six national championships and appeared in 46 bowl games. They’ve won the SEC title 13 times.

That’s a legacy that deserves respect. We can only hope Oregon can achieve a portion of that kind of success in our lifetimes, or that we as fans carry ourselves with the kind of pride and dignified cordiality the Vols fans have extended to us over the last week.

There’s an extent to which Oregon fans have switched places with the Husky fans of the ‘80s and ‘90s. We’ve become a little arrogant and smug. We assume it will last forever, that the Ducks’ recent success is some kind of birthright or entitlement. Success is earned, and learned, and so is class.

Of course no one from the Vols' 1939 team has eligibility. Neither does anyone from the 1998-99 national champions, or any of the other five titles Tennessee has won. Neither do the Volunteers’ 20 College Football Hall of Famers.

My point is simply we ought to reflect a moment on where that program has been, because it is where we want to go, and it wasn’t that long ago our own program was in a decidedly different place, a 0-0 tie and lopsided paycheck games and the laughingstock of college football. We used to lose football games 66-0 and 50-21. It wasn’t that long ago we were hoping to avoid three touchdown losses rather than thinking we’d win by three scores on the road.

Now that we’ve achieved some success, we ought to learn to win with a little grace. And we ought to have some sense of how little success it is.