Christian Caple and Tyson Alger on the finale of the last great Pac-12 rivalry.

Home-and-Home is a regular conversation between Christian Caple of On Montlake and Tyson Alger of The I-5 Corridor. With more than two decades of combined experience covering football in the Northwest, join On Montlake and The I-5 Corridor for their unique views on the Ducks, Huskies and Pac-12 football.

CAPLE: This is quite the way for Washington and Oregon to bid farewell to the Pac-12, Tyson, with their first top-10 meeting ever. There’s an alternate universe where these programs stuck around and took turns hoisting the conference championship trophy on Apple TV+, but we instead live in the world where they’ll join hands and skip together into the Big Ten next summer.

With regard to the current season, I feel like this is the future we once envisioned when Jimmy Lake and Mario Cristobal were in charge, pre-2021: two programs stocked with talent, both capable of winning the North division title in any given year, and who hated each other very, very much.

Of course, these schools’ respective fans still hate each other, even if Kalen DeBoer and Dan Lanning won’t provide nearly the amount of off-field fodder as their predecessors. 

With UW and Oregon aligned during realignment, this weekend should be a good reminder that these programs aren’t actually supposed to get along, yeah?

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Tyson Alger covered the Ducks for The Oregonian and The Athletic before branching out on his own to create and run The I-5 Corridor. He brings more than a decade of experience on the University of Oregon sports beat. He has covered everything from Marcus Mariota’s Heisman Trophy-winning season to the Ducks’ first year in the Big 10.