So, you’re saying these Ducks have a chance?

How bad was it Saturday for Oklahoma State at Autzen Stadium?

Try the worst game in 118 years bad.

That’s right. Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House the last time the Cowboys lost this badly.

That was a 67-0 loss to in-state rival Oklahoma in 1907, the same year the Sooner State became, um, a state.

But the Oregon football team’s 69-3 drubbing of the Cowboys in front of 57,266 brings us to another question: 

How good are the Ducks?

With that in mind, I didn’t head from the press box to the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex to hear what Dan Lanning and hometown hero Bryce Boettcher and the rest of what is clearly a college football team with sky high potential had to say.

Nope.

I headed to the muggy white tent on the other side of Autzen, the one with the folding chairs that, for some reason, all had handicap signage on them.

I asked the Cowboys’ veteran head coach, Mike Gundy, himself.

“I think they’re pretty good,” he said. “I said this week that they’re a good team. There’s no reason to deny that they’re a good team. There’s nothing wrong with saying that teams you’re playing are good teams.”

The longtime Cowboys coach, now in his 21^st season leading his alma mater, caused a bit of a stir earlier in the week, when he hinted the Ducks were “$40 million” good, that the program had spent that much in NIL money last season alone, while Oklahoma State had spent about $7 million on name, image and likeness costs over the past three seasons.

The comment didn’t sit well with many, especially since the late T. Boone Pickens, the oilman and major Cowboys booster, wrote the program a check for $165 million 20 years ago and donated more than $300 million overall before his death in 2019.

Asked about that statement in the aftermath of his worst coaching loss ever, Gundy said:

“When I made that comment, I was complimenting Oregon for what they’ve done,” and acknowledged that “we’ve made commitments also.”

Lanning jabbed back a bit in the days before the game, saying he had no idea how much the Cowboys “got in their pockets over there.” (It’s probably more than the University of Tennessee at Martin, which OSU beat 27-7 at home last week at, yes, T. Boone Pickens Stadium.)

The Ducks played with a little extra Saturday. As the fourth quarter began, with what would be the final score already on the board, the giant “Mighty Oregon” video board in the east end zone showed a fan holding a sign with Gundy’s face. 

It read: “When you realize you shouldn’t have poked the Ducks.”

Gundy gave the Ducks plenty of credit, talking about their size on both sides of the ball, as well as their speed.

“There (are) times they just ran away from us,” he said. “We were there, and they just ran away from us.”

But in front of a handful of reporters, he mostly talked about how the rout was his fault.

“I didn’t do a good job of getting our players put in position,” Gundy said. “We were too complicated, in all three phases, trying to do too much on defense, trying to do too much on offense, and not being able to execute and be any good at anything.”

Oregon was simply in a different football universe than Oklahoma State, from scoring touchdowns on two of its first three plays, to scoring two more on back-to-back pick sixes by safety Peyton Woodyard and linebacker Jerry Mixon in the third quarter.

It was the most dominating win in UO history over a Power-4 foe. 

“Um, you know, they’re good,” the Cowboys’ sophomore tight end Josh Ford said. “They’re a good team.”

Asked what UO player made the biggest impression on him, Ford said:

“Well, every time I sat on the bench, I seemed to see a quarterback making plays,” he said of Dante Moore, who played another mostly flawless game in his second start for the No. 6-ranked Ducks. Moore completed 16 passes on 21 attempts for 266 yards and three touchdowns.

“I thought he was alright,” Ford quipped.

I asked Oklahoma State’s safety, Parker Robertson, how tough it was to play a top-10 team in a place like Autzen.

“It was tough,” said the senior from Rockwall, Texas. “It got pretty loud. That’s probably one of the loudest stadiums that I’ve been in.”

Maybe it was Autzen’s “Pringle-like” shape, Robertson wondered.

“I don’t know what it is, but it goes around, and it got pretty loud.”

But, again, how good is that team dressed in all green that you just played? 

“They’re pretty good,” Robertson said. “They’re really good.”

Good enough to finally win it all?

“They’ve got a chance,” he said. “Just like everybody else.”