Trying to add a payment method? You can do this on the 
This week: Kenny Wheaton would have scored, an introduction to watching hockey, Oregon’s offensive line and an answer to that one question about how we all got here.
Welcome to the first edition of The I-5 Corridor mailbag.
Let’s jump right into it.
Which UO/OSU athletes would have been the biggest NIL earners of all time? I think a lot of folks would assume Marcus Mariota or Sabrina Ionescu for the Ducks, but I don’t think you would have been able to cut to a commercial break during games without seeing Troy Dye. — Alec Everson.
Hello, my name is Kenny Wheaton, and when I’m looking to score a big meal, I always make sure to Pick™ Track Town Pizza….
Ok, so maybe that doesn’t quite sing, but “The Pick” still stands as one of the most memorable plays in Oregon history 27 years later.
Wheaton would have cleaned up.
For one, the former Oregon defensive back had name recognition in an era when it was tougher to get it. Jerry Allen screaming “Kenny Wheaton is going to score! Kenny Wheaton is going to score!” was the 1990s equivalent of trending on Twitter.
You’ve heard that call hundreds of times. You know exactly how it sounds. Kenny Wheaton always scores, and he also would have sold the hell out of some car insurance — or at least pocketed some cash for autograph sessions.
Haloti Ngata, with his first-team All-American status and 338-pound frame, probably could have sold some trucks — or breakfasts. Vernon Adams could point you in the right direction for a last-minute math tutor, and before Ionescu showed up, former softball ace Cheridan Hawkins had a multiyear stranglehold on being the face of women’s sports in Eugene. And, well, Joey Harrington was on a billboard outside of Madison Square Garden.
Can you imagine Chad Ochocinco in Corvallis?
But really, there is only one true answer for this. And that’s former Oregon tight end Johnny Mundt, the son of California Walnut farmers. The walnut market is an estimated $1.8 billion industry in the U.S., according to some very recent Googling. Mundt, aka Johnny Walnut, could have been the face of that.
I have a question that Aiden might be able to respond to as well, if possible. Recently Oregon’s best kickers have been walk-ons. Why do you think Oregon has struggled so much to recruit a scholarship kicker, and likewise why have they been able to find success with walk-ons? — Tyler
This probably will be a better question for Aidan, and we’re going to shoot to have him do a mailbag of his own here in a couple weeks. So stay tuned there.
But I do have some thoughts.
I don’t know if Oregon’s really the school I’d think of if I was an aspiring kicker. Chip Kelly started the trend of going for it on fourth down more often than not, and even when the Ducks had a kicker of Schneider’s caliber he was criminally underused. Coming off a 2015 season in which he converted 22 of his 24 field goal attempts, Schneider had just 12 attempts in 2016, with five of those coming in the same game. And let’s not get started on Oregon’s occasional refusal to kick extra points during that era.
Since then, the Ducks have recruited well on paper. Adam Stack was the No. 13 kicker in his class and Camden Lewis the No. 4 in his. And, of course, that led to a combined 16 makes in 28 attempts and a few more gray hairs on Mario Cristobal’s head.
Maybe you could say the Ducks need to revisit how they’re assessing the higher ranked guys, but they did give Henry Katleman an opportunity. And like Schneider seven years before him, he’s running with it. Great mustache, too.
Tyson, this is a little bit of a stretch but … given your hockey background and as someone who would like to follow the Kraken, what should I be paying attention to when watching these games as someone with VERY little knowledge of the game? How can I easily educate myself on what I’m watching? Thanks! — Corey.
Get to a game. It doesn’t even have to be a Kraken game. Make it a Winterhawks one. If you’re new to the sport and trying to get a feel for it, there’s no “Aha!” moment quite like seeing hockey in person for the first time when compared to watching it on TV. It just seems to click. The speed. The physicality. The constant flow of changing lines. Just being around seasoned hockey fans and picking up on the moments that get them excited, you’ll pick it up quick.
Catching a game in a bar isn’t a bad idea, either.
Something to invest in: Keep tabs on line construction. Each team is made up of four lines, and it’ll be fascinating to see how a brand new team like the Kraken go about pairing their players together. Chemistry is key in hockey, and when you have it early it can do wonders. Just look at Las Vegas.
Hey Tyson! Adam from Anchorage, AK here. What are you seeing as far as the offensive lines’ makeup this season? Is it looking to be majorly different from 2020? Or will it look pretty similar?
It’s going to look pretty darn similar, but it’s going to be a heck of a lot better. Why? Depth and experience. Oregon replaced all five of its 2019 starters last season, and the primary combination of George Moore, Ryan Walk, Alex Forsyth, T.J. Bass and Malaesala Aumavae-Laulu did….fine. The Ducks ranked in middle of the Pac-12 in metrics like quarterback pressures (31 percent of drop backs, per Pro Football Focus), sacks per game (1.57) and a 23.2 percent rate of failing to gain yardage on running plays. That same five is projected to start again in 2021, now with a normal offseason weight program and 15 spring practices under their belts. They alone will be better, but I also am encouraged by the development of the second unit. The Ducks have an injection of young talent with Kingsley Suamataia and Jackson Powers-Johnson, but also have veterans like Dawson Jaramillo, now in his fourth year with the Ducks, now ready to contribute.
Cyrus from Brooklyn, but Denver is my home (for now). What inspired you to leave The Athletic and blaze your own path to create The I-5 Corridor? Have you always wanted a place for your content to be somewhere you could call your own or did the journalism industry lead you to look for other alternatives?
The best job I ever ha…
The best job my dad says I ever had came when I was in high school. I mowed greens at Palmer Golf Course. The day started at 4 a.m., I was done by 2 p.m. and I’d usually try and get a couple free holes in after work if I had enough energy. Dad, of course, always had the energy of a man taking advantage of the generous “family of employees” policy. I’ve never seen someone so disappointed to learn their son chose college.
Anyway, I’d daydream on that Husqvarna. You do a lot of that in Alaska. I wanted to go to college to become a sports writer, but when you grow up in a small town surrounded by mountains and farms and rivers thousands of miles away from the nearest professional sports team, all of that felt just so far away.
Bleacher Report was just becoming popular, and at the time its schtick was amateur sports writing. They let anyone submit writing and assumed the cream would rise to the top. So I’d sit there on that mower passing time thinking of writing stories for Bleacher Report. I’d grow an audience with my exceptional story judgement and writing skills, I’d think to myself. I’d make it.
Now, keep in mind, I was 17. And I’ve recently had to turn Facebook memories off because, I’ll tell you what, nobody should have access to what I was writing when I was 17. I also never actually submitted anything because, well, I can be a bit lazy.
But this is all a really big windup to say, yes, I’ve always kind of wanted to do something on my own — or at least dictate what I get to write about.
But I can’t exactly say that’s where my head was at when I left The Athletic.
The Athletic was an amazing opportunity and platform far greater than I ever realistically thought about those days on the golf course. But it’s a rapidly growing company, and among other things I just felt the local aspect that made it so unique — your favorite sports writers in every city! — was being pushed aside for a more national approach. The Athletic likes to tout that it doesn’t care about page views, but the amount of metrics pressure we were put under for other things — like subscriptions generated — essentially created the same effect. So there was already some growing frustration, then the pandemic came, then my editor — the fantastic Mike Huguenin — got laid off, then I got bounced around a bit between a few more editors and ultimately after a really tough year I decided that it just wasn’t the right place for me to succeed. It’s great for some people. Wasn’t the right fit for me. That’s OK.
But it did two important things for me:
1. It gave me a platform to tell stories and grow my audience.
2. It showed that people are willing to pay for my writing.
The Oregon market is competitive. The Oregonian is paywalled. The Register-Guard is paywalled. Duck Territory and ScoopDuck are paywalled. All of those places have multiple reporters on the beat. The Athletic didn’t spend a whole lot of time promoting our work on a local level. They just told us to go out and write good stories and people would come. And they did. Which makes me optimistic that it can happen again here on a local level.
Hey Tyson – Good see you up and running, your stories are always well thought, well written and well done. Looking forward to this season and seeing what ya got, hopefully a Husky fan is welcome. — Scott from Palmer, Alaska.
Thanks for that, Scott. So happy to have you here. Things are going to look pretty green on this site, but last I checked Washington is just off I-5. And while this isn’t going to make some people happy here, UW has, easily, my favorite stadium setup in the Pac-12.
— Tyson
