The Oregon Ducks football program is a college football team for the University of Oregon, located in the U.S. state of Oregon. The team competes at the NCAA Division I level in the FBS and is a member of the Big Ten Conference (B1G). Though now known as the Ducks, the team was commonly called the Webfoots until the mid-1960s.
The program first fielded a football team in 1894. Oregon plays its home games at the 54,000 seat Autzen Stadium in Eugene. The program has been one of the most successful programs in college football since the 2000s. Oregon has been known in recent years for their creative uniforms, helmets, and logo designs, facilitated by a close partnership with Nike, which was founded in Eugene, Oregon by then-student Phil Knight and his track coach, Bill Bowerman.
History
Early history (1894–1950)
Football was born at the University of Oregon after students attended the contest between Stanford and Multnomah on New Year's Day, 1894, at Multnomah Field in Portland. After the game they determined to field a team for the university. Unwilling to wait until the 1894 season in the fall, the students set about practicing in the winter and scheduled a game vs. Albany College on March 24, 1894, which they won 44–2. Cal Young was the team's coach, who had previous football experience from Bishop Scott Academy in Portland, and Frank Matthews the captain.
J.A. Church took over the coaching the 1894 team in the fall. Oregon finished the season with two additional losses and a tie, but went undefeated the following season, winning all four of its games under head coach Percy Benson. In 1899, the football team left the state for the first time, playing the California Golden Bears in Berkeley, California. Oregon's largest margin of victory came in 1910 when they defeated the University of Puget Sound 115–0.
Oregon changed coaches frequently during the early 20th century, going through sixteen different head coaches in nineteen seasons,List of Oregon Ducks head football coaches until Hugo Bezdek, who had coached the Webfeet to a 5–0–1 record in 1906, returned to Oregon from the University of Arkansas in 1913. Bezdek, Oregon's first truly professional coach, led the team from 1913 through 1917. A versatile motivator of athletes, during his tenure Bezdek was also the West Coast scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates. In the 1916 season, Oregon went undefeated with seven wins and one tie under Bezdek, shutting out all but two opponents. They opened the season against Willamette University, defeating them 97–0. The game against Washington ended in a scoreless tie. Oregon used ineligible players in two games and the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) title went to Washington, but Oregon was given the invitation to the 1917 Rose Bowl, then known as the Tournament East-West Football Game at Tournament Park due to the cost of a train ticket to Los Angeles being significantly less from Eugene than from Seattle. The Oregon football team defeated the heavily favored University of Pennsylvania Quakers 14–0, securing their first Rose Bowl victory. In 1918 Bezdek quit Oregon to become general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was succeeded by Shy Huntington, one of the heroes of the 1917 Rose Bowl.
Led by Charles A. Huntington and playing at newly constructed Hayward Field, which would be their home stadium in Eugene until 1967, the Webfeet again tied Washington for the Pacific Coast Conference title in 1919, winning the tiebreaker based on their 24–13 victory over the Huskies in Seattle. Oregon lost the 1920 Rose Bowl to Harvard University, 7–6. This would be the team's last bowl appearance until the 1948 Cotton Bowl. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Oregon made the first attempts to establish a nationally prominent football program by luring established Eastern coaches west, first John "Cap" McEwan in 1926 from Army, then Clarence "Doc" Spears from Minnesota in 1930. Both coaches achieved moderate success, but neither outlasted his contracted term: McEwan resigned amid a contract dispute, and Spears, hired under a five-year contract, left Oregon after two seasons to return to the Western Conference at Wisconsin. Prince G. "Prink" Callison, Oregon native, alumnus, former player and coach of the freshman team, took over from Spears in 1932. Behind standout back Mike Mikulak and a smothering defense (50 points allowed, five shutouts), Callison led the 1933 Webfeet to a 9–1 mark and Pacific Coast Conference co-championship, with the only loss to USC. This record would stand as the best in school history until 2001. After the homegrown Callison retired in 1937, Oregon again hired a working head coach, pulling Gerald "Tex" Oliver from Arizona. Oliver coached until World War II, when he took a leave of absence to serve as a naval officer; Oregon basketball coach John Warren served as interim head football coach in 1942, posting a 2–6 record, after which the school shut down the football program for the duration of the war. Oliver returned as head coach after the war, eventually posting a mediocre 23–28–3 cumulative record. His 71–7 loss at Texas in 1941 on the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor stands as the most points allowed by any Oregon team, and the second-largest margin of defeat. Oliver, in 1945, is the only coach to see his team lose twice to Oregon State in the same season. In October 1946, Oliver abruptly resigned as Oregon's head coach, expressing dissatisfaction with the level of support shown by the administration for the football program.
Oliver was replaced by another working head coach, Jim Aiken of Nevada. Aiken had immediate success with the team he inherited, which like many post-war squads, was peppered with war veterans including Brad Ecklund, Jake Leicht and Norm Van Brocklin, and transfers George Bell, Woodley Lewis and John McKay.Spokesman-Review – Action in pictures of Idaho's valiant losing battle against Oregon – October 10, 1948 – p.3-sports Oregon's 1948 team went 9–1 in the regular season and tied with California for the PCC championship; the teams did not meet on the field that season and in a secret ballot by the conference presidents, Cal was awarded the 1949 Rose Bowl bid. In a bid to soothe hurt feelings, the conference broke tradition and allowed the Webfeet to play in a post-season contest other than the Rose Bowl. Oregon's Cotton Bowl game that season (a 21–13 loss to SMU with Doak Walker) was the team's only bowl appearance between the 1920 and 1958 Rose Bowls. Aiken could not maintain his success with younger players. By his fourth season, the Ducks were one of the nation's worst major college teams, posting a 1–9 record in 1950, still the lowest winning percentage in school history as of 2011. Aiken resigned amid allegations of recruiting and practice violations in early 1951.
Len Casanova era (1951–1966)
Once again, Oregon found a working major college coach to take over its program, hiring Len Casanova from the University of Pittsburgh after Aiken's resignation. Casanova gradually rebuilt the program, and eventually led the Ducks to a winning record in 1954. The Ducks played in the earliest nationally televised college football game in 1953, against Nebraska in Lincoln, winning 20–12.
In the 1957 season Oregon tied Oregon State for the conference title, but earned the Rose Bowl bid because of the conference no-repeat rule. The Webfeet lost 10–7 to the heavily favored and number one ranked Ohio State University in the 1958 Rose Bowl. Braven Dyer of the Los Angeles Times, who had picked Ohio State to win by a 48–14 score, said: "The score of 10–7 was a complete moral victory for the underdog Ducks from Eugene who had been doped to lose by three touchdowns. They lost, but at day's end there weren't many fans who were willing to concede that the better team had won." Vincent X. Flaherty, writing in the San Francisco Examiner, said: "Len Casanova undoubtedly performed the greatest coaching feat of the season for the Rose Bowl classic...there couldn't have been a bowl team anywhere in America yesterday that dazzled with more spectacular finesse."
Casanova led the Ducks to two more bowl appearances, in the Liberty Bowl (1960 vs Penn State) and the Sun Bowl (1963 vs Southern Methodist), before becoming the UO's second full-time athletic director in January 1967, replacing Leo Harris. Future Pro Football Hall of Fame members Mel Renfro and Dave Wilcox were players under his tutelage. Many of his assistant coaches such as George Seifert, John McKay, and John Robinson went on to have their own successful head coaching careers. His career record of 82–73–8 marked the highest number of wins recorded by a head coach at the university at that time. The Len Casanova Center, Oregon's athletic department headquarters near Autzen Stadium, is named in his honor.
Jerry Frei era (1967–1971) Casanova's move to the administration began a two-decade downturn in Oregon's fortunes. Longtime offensive line coach Jerry Frei succeeded him as head coach in 1967, when Oregon moved into the new Autzen Stadium. His teams were never selected for a bowl game and never won more than six games in a season. (Until the 1975 season, the Pac-8 (and Big Ten) had only one bowl team, for the Rose Bowl.) Although his Oregon career ended with a losing record, he coached several players who went on to NFL stardom, including Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts and All-Pro wide receiver Ahmad Rashad, known as halfback Bobby Moore as a Duck. In 1970, he coached the Ducks to an improbable comeback at UCLA, scoring twenty points in the final four minutes to win by a point, 41–40. However, Frei was unable to defeat arch-rival Oregon State (under Dee Andros) in the Civil War game, and after the 1971 loss, some influential boosters reportedly demanded that Frei make significant changes to his coaching staff. On January 18, 1972, Frei resigned as head coach, citing disagreements with university boosters and athletic director Norv Ritchey. Following his resignation, the student body president at the time, as well as others, numerous published letters to the editor of The Register-Guard voiced their support of Frei.
Dick Enright era (1972–1973) After an exhaustive search that included interviews with several established head coaches, Frei's offensive line coach, Dick Enright, was elevated to head coach for the 1972 season. Enright was the least experienced candidate for the position, having been a high school coach until 1970, and he struggled to maintain team discipline and consistent play. Enright famously tried to make an option quarterback out of Dan Fouts, who was not a runner. Although his 1972 team did beat Oregon State for the first time in nine seasons, Enright's teams only won six games in two seasons. After complaining to the media about what he considered sub-standard conditions of football facilities, he was fired after the 1973 season.
Don Read era (1974–1976) Enright was replaced by Don Read, his quarterback coach. Read was unable to field a competitive team in his first job as a major college head coach. Oregon's longest losing streak – 14 games – was set during Read's three-year term, which also saw the team's worst loss in history (66–0 at Washington in 1974). After the Ducks' home opener in 1975, a 5–0 loss to San Jose State, UO president William Boyd told a reporter he'd "rather be whipped in a public square than sit through a game like that." Read was fired, with one year left on his contract, after the 1976 season ended. His teams had gone 3–18 in conference play, were shut out seven times in three seasons, and owned just one win over a team with a winning record (17–3 over Colorado State in 1976).