A Disjointed Fan’s Worst Nightmare

One of college football's greatest venues...home to a personal nightmare?

Cold sweat, the room still dark, cat shuffling ’round the two pair of feet poking out the covers at the edge of the bed. This fan doesn’t usually dream in his sleep, but this nightmare vision seemed to be coming in more vividly as he awakened. The phone on the nightstand blinks with messages piped in through the night. 3:31 am, too damn early to be awake, yet the fan tosses away covers trying to cool his body and his raging mind.

A horrible scenario unfolds through that mind, in a place usually held as a pinnacle of football, a just reward for a season of positive performance. The sky hangs blue over Pasadena, over the six-figure crowd assembled in the Rose Bowl stadium. The parade has long passed, the millions of flowers on the floats already wilting by this point in the day.

Out of the tunnel come the teams. The fan starts to cheer as the first group comes out, those traditional red jerseys and white pants, big white helmets emblazoned with a W on the side. It is the team of his childhood, a team acquired as so many fans acquire their favorites — through his father. The fan was born in Wisconsin, though he never lived there long. It was his father, no alumnus yet imbued with a sense of state pride nonetheless, who had been immersed in Badger culture throughout his life. Displaced from the motherland, he passed it on to his son anyway… and at a point in history where the team was finally rising to sustained prominence.

Could a fan turn his back on his childhood team?

It’s a dream come true, the fourth Rose Bowl he’ll get to see with his childhood favorite. But then the nightmare melts into the fantasy, as the other team rolls in. They’re clad like storm troopers, all in white with sleek caged dark-green lids upon their skulls. The fan awakens in Eugene, realizing at 3:31 am that this is entirely possible.

He works at the University of Oregon, you see, and while just like his father he cannot claim the school as his alma mater… he’s nevertheless adopted it as his west-coast favorite. He’s seen more games at Autzen than Camp Randall. And his half-decade spent following the team, immersed in the epicenter of its fanaticism, has coincided with their rise from national curiosity to national powerhouse.

The fan shakes off the nightmare and goes to make a pot of coffee. But on championship Saturday, with one final regular-season test between perfection and consolation for one of his favorites, he knows the fantasy is already a reality. And with a Civil War battle looming in mere hours, an upset on the road could render the nightmare scene a reality.

In a disjointed, transitory, mobile society which has been at the crest of a century of increased nomadic movement within and beyond state and national borders, fanhood is no longer guaranteed to be a matter of locale. Most of us fans has discovered multiple rooting channels, a secondary (and often tertiary) team that has piqued and sustained our interest.

But as we find ourselves living in more locales, and absorb the local flavor of fanaticism in the bargain, we play a game of Russian roulette with our emotions. As we acquire more teams in our corner, the probability increases that we’ll see a showdown. When it comes in the regular season it is one thing…

… often one team will be up or the other down, and you know which to place your faith in before it starts. But this disjointed, split-loyalties lifestyle can’t always work like this.

If the 2010 Rose Bowl should pit James against Clay and Duck against Badger, where would loyalties land?

I first moved here almost five years ago, and the Badgers nearly faced the Ducks in the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Tournament. But Wisconsin’s upset ouster courtesy of UNLV sidestepped that risk, and I haven’t been confronted since with such a scenario.

But this time I could very well be faced with the utter ruin of my enjoyment of the Grandaddy of ‘em All. A loss to Oregon State in the Civil War would put the Ducks in Pasadena instead of Glendale; instead of having someone to root for in two BCS bowls, I’ll be forced to pick sides in a battle drained of its luster by my own proclivities.

Oregon brings one of the most explosive offenses in the nation to Reser Stadium this afternoon. RB LaMichael James leads the nation in rushing. QB Darron Thomas was an O’Brien semifinalist in his first year as a starter, bringing an aerial element that had been lacking since Dennis Dixon’s last season. And guys like WR Jeff Maehl and TE David Paulson provide reliable targets all over the field.

Oregon State comes in banged up, pride reeling, needing a win to reach bowl eligibility. RB Jacquizz Rodgers will be there, but his brother — electric do-everything WR James — hasn’t been here for the Beavers since mid-October. QB Ryan Katz, also a first-year starter, was the last starter at the FBS level to throw a pick, though he is inconsistent at times in his accuracy.

Rivalries are strange things. I’ve grown up with several greats. The Battle for Paul Bunyan’s Axe with Minnesota, the Heartland Trophy with Iowa, Wyoming’s Border War with Colorado State. Never before has a favorite team come into a rivalry game with such stakes on the line for me. May the nightmare scenario be skirted by a Ducks victory lest my New Year peal in hollow…