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Plus: Softball to the Super Regionals and The Vedder Cup.
Rob Mullens penned a letter to Oregon fans 291 days ago.
“Today is a landmark day for the University of Oregon, as we officially join the Big Ten Conference with great pride and excitement,” Oregon’s athletic director wrote on Aug. 2. “This move continues our tremendous upward trajectory as a university and highlights the power of the Oregon brand. The Ducks have always been synonymous with innovation and a relentless pursuit of excellence, and joining the premier athletic conference in the nation is a testament to our unwavering commitment to these values.”
At the time, Oregon was two weeks away from beginning competition as a Big Ten member with the start of the women’s soccer season. Then came volleyball, football and everything else. The Big Ten promised Oregon bigger exposure. It was also supposedly promising a step up in competition.
So how did the Ducks fare in their first trip around the BIG sun?
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Following Oregon baseball’s weekend sweep of Iowa to claim the Big Ten’s regular season conference title, Oregon athletic teams have won regular season or conference tournament titles in:
Football (Regular season and Conference Championship)
Softball (Regular season)
Women’s Cross Country
Men’s Indoor Track & Field
Women’s Indoor Track & Field
Men’s Outdoor Track & Field
Women’s Golf
Baseball (Regular season, No. 1-seed in this week’s Big Ten Tournament)
Now, the Ducks weren’t perfect. That women’s soccer team won one conference match, the women’s lacrosse team went winless in league play, neither tennis team finished in the top-half of conference standings and, while the two basketball programs were better than they were the seasons before, Oregon’s Pac-12 dominance of the hardwood didn’t translate in its first year in the Big Ten.
Dana Altman’s Ducks went 12-8 in Big Ten play. Kelly Graves’ Ducks went 10-8.
There’s room for improvement.
But there’s also a few teams still finishing their seasons off with a flourish…
Things are Super at The Jane
Oregon softball is hosting a Super Regional this weekend.
And oh, did it take the challenging route to get there.
Consider this: In order for Jane Sanders Stadium to host this weekend’s upcoming round of the NCAA postseason, the Ducks needed someone to upset top-seed Texas A&M in the College Station Regional.
They also needed to make it out of the Eugene Regional, which looked easier said than done on Saturday afternoon after Stanford clubbed the Ducks 14-1 in six innings in the winner’s bracket semifinals.
Next came a 9-1 win over Weber State, followed by a redemptive 15-5 win over the Cardinal, which set up Sunday evening’s winner-take-all final with Oregon’s former Pac-12 rival.
And while Stanford took a 7-6 lead into the sixth inning, Dezianna Patmon wasn’t ready to go home. The Oregon senior led off the inning with a triple and scored the tying run on a Kai Luschar single. In the seventh, Patmon took the first pitch she saw and deposited it over the left-field wall for the three-run walk-off winner.
“I wasn’t hanging up the cleats today,” Patmon told reporters. “We’re not done.”
Here’s the great call from KWVA Saul Galvan:
Oregon hosts Liberty, who knocked off Texas A&M 6-5 Sunday evening, in the Super Regional round beginning on Friday.
Oh, Santi Moreno
When I spoke with Timbers assistant coach Dave van den Bergh last week while reporting my David Da Costa profile, he disagreed with the premise of a question I had for him.
I asked if he thought Da Costa’s presence “unlocked” players like Santiago Moreno in Portland’s offense.
“No,” Van den Bergh said. “I think Santi last year had established himself as one of the most important players on the team.”
Still, what we’ve seen so far in 2025 is a Moreno who’s ceded assists to being a much-needed finisher. After six goals and 14 assists in 2024, Moreno has four goals and two assists here in 2025 with two goals in Portland’s last three games, including the equalizer in Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Seattle — assisted by Da Costa.
Felipe Mora (5), Antony (4), Kevin Kelsy (4) and Moreno have scored four or more goals this season for the Timbers, who face San Jose tonight in the Open Cup Round of 16 before returning to league play on Saturday at Orlando.
The Vedder Cup
I’ll admit, I liked the official Vedder Cup better than I thought I was going to.
To be clear: I’ve been all about the Vedder Cup for more than a decade. The VC, for those uninformed, has long been the unofficial rivalry between the San Diego Padres and the Seattle Mariners.
The Pearl Jam front man went to high school in San Diego, his band became famous in Seattle, and both fan bases are at each other’s throats over who gets to claim the Better Man.
The bi-annual matchups between the two clubs who share a spring training stadium in Peoria, Arizona, has been a favorite for a few friends who are San Diego Padres fans and I, a Mariners fan, for years.
The 2030 Vedder Cup World Series is going to blow your minds.
Anywho, what made the Vedder Cup fun was some of the absurdity of it. It was an unofficial rivalry centered around a guy who is most definitely a Chicago Cubs fan.
And of course, since it’s sports in 2025, it was made official this year and monetized. The clubs made the announcement back in March, and, while I wanted to channel my inner grunge fan and hate the move because it became popular, I found myself following along with interest as the Mariners swept the Padres, while confusing the hell out of those oblivious to one of baseball’s truly great rivalries.
ATH gets the mute button
We can all remember the great moments of our childhood.
A short list for me:
1. The day Scott Road got paved, which made it feel like we had a two-mile race track for our Mongoose bikes connecting us to town.
2. The day Fred Meyer opened up in Palmer, meaning we didn’t have to drive all the way to Wasilla to cruise the electronics section.
3. The day we got a DVR.
For the better part of my youth, we had bunny ears and were lucky to get more than a few broadcast channels to come in clearly. NBC was crystal. Fox was like watching through a snowstorm.
But around 2002, my family upgraded to a satellite dish, and with that came a DVR.
And boy did I enjoy taking that generational leap. I’d fill the hard drive with episodes of Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Baseball Tonight — can’t miss Web Gems — and eventually, Around the Horn.
I’d get out of high school, go to hockey practice, come home and rewatch the ESPN studio show every day of the week. I loved the pacing. I loved the points gimmick and Tony Reali’s command of the room. But more than anything, I loved the portal to different newsrooms nationwide.
Those initial seasons of Around the Horn featured prominent sports columnists from newspapers across the country. It’s how I, a kid from Alaska, first became familiar with Bob Ryan, Bill Plaschke, Jackie MacMullan, J.A. Adande and so on. And more so than the constant arguing of Pardon the Interruption, ATH to me felt like watching a bunch of informed heavyweights spar. There were egos, regional biases, tempers — and then they all went back to their day jobs in their respective cities.
How cool would it be to work in that industry?
While I never made it on the show, I have been able to share a press box with a few of the show’s regulars during my career, which has been a highlight. And though I don’t still catch every episode of ATH like I did back in high school, I am pretty bummed that the show’s 23-year run is coming to an end this Friday.
There’s always melancholy when something you’ve been attached to ends. I’ve found myself thinking about that a fair amount lately, as friends have dropped out of the industry, staples such as Sports Illustrated are no longer what they once were and other things I’ve enjoyed, such as The Dan Patrick Show, are teeing off on their final holes.
What’s left to like out there?
But I started thinking about writing this bit on Around the Horn after listening to Tony Reali on Pablo Torre Finds Out — a podcast that blends conversation, curiosity, and investigative storytelling in a way that really hits the right notes for me these days.
I stumbled upon it about a year ago and haven’t missed an episode since.
— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor
