How it came to be that Autzen Stadium is going Bananas

Mike Duncan knew of the Savannah Bananas, but it wasn’t until last summer that the red-hot quirky traveling band of baseball entertainers came into his focus.

The Bananas had just reached out to Oregon to gauge the university’s interest in serving as a venue for the team’s 2026 tour. And Duncan — UO’s senior associate athletic director for facilities, events and operations — just so happened to be in Philadelphia, where the Bananas were set to play.

He was one of an estimated 90,000 people to take in the Bananas’ two games that weekend, and it was eye-opening.

It wasn’t just the dancing umpires, games won by points instead of runs, fans catching foul balls counting as outs, or the vaunted “Golden Batter” rule, which allows a team to send any hitter to the plate once per game, regardless of where they are in the order. He also recognized a formula the Harlem Globetrotters perfected nearly a century ago: a traveling sports spectacle capable of filling otherwise empty stadiums.

For Duncan, the show provided a glimpse of what Autzen Stadium could become during the months it otherwise sits empty.

“I got a firsthand look and that was really the beginning of the conversation,” Duncan said. “It’s a really exciting thing that is going to bring a whole bunch of people from all over the place to Eugene who haven’t been to Eugene and Autzen Stadium. The exposure is different than football.”

For one, Autzen Stadium isn’t generally on ESPN one summer afternoon and ABC the next, like it will be this weekend. Nor is it filled two days in a row, as it will be when the Savannah Bananas and Party Animals play sold-out games — at 5 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday.

The Bananas have been north of Eugene, in Seattle. They sold out T-Mobile Park two nights in a row in 2025. Banana Ball has been south of Eugene, in Sacramento, with the franchise’s Party Animals and Texas Tailgaters packing Sutter Health Park in March.

They’ve even played a college football stadium: 102,000 fans at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field saw the Bananas fall to the Tailgaters, 4-3, last month.

It’s a proven draw — Banana Ball sold more than 2.2 million tickets across 113 shows in 41 cities in 2025. Duncan said the organization was keen to land in the Oregon market.

Tickets for both Saturday and Sunday are sold out — a disappointment for those not wanting to scrape through the secondary market, but likely a boon for Eugene.

After a recent two-game stint at Kenan Memorial Stadium in Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina announced more than $17.1 million in direct economic impact for Chapel Hill and the surrounding areas, as well as more than $1 million in profit for the UNC athletic department.

With soaring athletic department costs — UO’s budget for fiscal year 2026 is $193.6 million — schools around the country are looking for ways to add revenue wherever they can.

For UO, a stadium capable of holding nearly 60,000 people that sits empty for six months out of the year is being viewed as an opportunity.

This weekend’s games will mark just the second nonfootball professional sporting event ever held at the stadium, which was opened in 1967. (Oregon hosted an exhibition soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and FC Internazionale in 2016.)

Next month, alt-country superstar Zach Bryan will become the first stadium touring act to play Autzen since Garth Brooks in 2019.

“We’ve always wanted to utilize the Autzen footprint or Matthew Knight Arena for outside events,” UO Athletic Director Rob Mullens said, “but 100%, in the new environment, resources are a competitive advantage, and we can use any of our facilities to create additional resources that allow us to compete in this day and age.”

It is baseball season, which presents a unique challenge for a football-centric athletic department that does its best work in the fall. First: Autzen Stadium is not a baseball venue, which is why Duncan was in Chapel Hill for that Bananas series earlier this year. The game he saw in Philadelphia was in a baseball stadium, and he needed to see how this would look on a football field.

“The dimensions were a little different,” Duncan said. “It wasn’t much different other than that.”

Home plate will reside in the southwest corner of the Autzen end zone, with a tantalizing short porch for right-handed hitters out in left field. The rest of the field is where things get — forgive us — bananas. The left-field wall covers the entire north sideline, creating a deep center field reminiscent of the horseshoe shape at the old Polo Grounds.

Two-sport star Bryce Boettcher — who is our prediction for a guest appearance this weekend — might be comfortable out there. For everyone else, it might take some time to get used to.

The event itself will be an adjustment for UO’s event staff. Yes, they sell out Autzen Stadium six weekends every fall. But they never sell it out, then turn around and do it all over again the next day.

It’s a longer day, too. With the pregame festivities the Bananas have planned, Duncan said the gates are opening five hours before the scheduled start. It’s 90 minutes before kickoff for football, with a crowd that doesn’t generally begin filling the stands until 30 minutes prior.

“One of the things I noticed in Philadelphia that really surprised me: There were an awful lot of people in the bowl of the stadium, and it was 60 minutes before the first pitch,” he said. “Everybody is in there because a lot is going on.”

Then the chaos really begins.

Thankfully, the Bananas have produced a full explainer of the 11 rules that differentiate Banana Ball from conventional baseball, including:

• Whichever team scores more runs in an inning gets a point, and whoever has the most points after the two-hour time limit wins.
• Batters can steal first base.
• And, a personal favorite: No bunting. “Because bunting sucks,” says Jesse Cole, founder of the Savannah Bananas.

It’s different, and the added choreographed dances and songs might have some baseball purists feeling like the old scouts in the room in “Moneyball.” But the Bananas haven’t cared much about tradition as they’ve sold out stadiums and become one of the hottest brands in sports.

Maybe that’s why it has become such a hot ticket to see them play in a football stadium where the Ducks have done the same.

“It’s a great fit,” Mullens said. “We’ve always been willing to be first, to think of things differently, whether that’s the color ‘Volt’ or Liquid Metal helmets or you name it, Jesse’s done that for a long time with what his organization is doing, and creating so much fun.”