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Tanner Faris didn’t just want to go to the University of Oregon — he wanted to belong. A homemade chain helped him find his place, his people and his own little legacy, that lives on in the Pit Crew.
When Tanner Faris was a teen on the precipice of adulthood, the then-Elmira High School student remembers having “the talk” with his dad.
“Hey,” Faris’ dad began, “what if I made you a Flavor Flav chain — but instead of a clock, it’s an O?”
Editor’s note: People are the heart of Lane County — which is why, each week, Lookout Eugene-Springfield will profile someone who is working behind the scenes to make our community better. If you have suggestions on others we should profile, send us an email
Name: Tanner Faris
Age: 32
Occupation: Middle school math teacher
Claim to fame: Oregon’s first wearer of the O-chain
Maybe it’s not the same talk some of Faris’ peers had in adolescence, but you have to understand: It was the 2000s. Washed-up hip-hop acts and their gaudy chain accessories were in. And so, too, were the University of Oregon Ducks, who were winning football games and looking cool doing it.
Oregon had just transitioned out of its diamond-plate shoulders era. Faris’ dad had a bunch of scrap aluminum in his workshop. And with Faris just about to leave for college at UO, there was no more sense in trying to avoid the inevitable:
Faris didn’t want to just be an Oregon fan during his time at UO. He wanted to be part of the action.
“I always wanted to be a Pit Crew guy,” Faris said. “I grew up seeing all their costumes and really looked up to the guys who’d wear like a coconut bra with the Os on it and a grass skirt.
“I knew I couldn’t be that guy.”
He could, however, become Oregon’s first “O-chain” guy.
That’s what had me sitting down with Faris last month in Eugene for a beer and nachos at The Bier Stein. Faris is 32 now. He teaches seventh-grade math at Kelly Middle School in Eugene and his days of donning that silver chain and oversized fedora are — mostly — behind him.
Faris started wearing the ensemble to games in 2010 as a senior in high school. As a freshman in 2011, he started getting noticed by members of the Pit Crew — the organization in charge of the student section at Oregon sporting events — and was often featured in broadcast B-roll. When Oregon made the Fiesta Bowl in 2013, a picture of Faris and his chain appeared in the game program. That spring, the Daily Emerald named him Oregon’s “Duck Fan of the Year.”
“I was just super stoked to get to be that guy I was hoping to be,” Faris said. “Being in the front and getting recognized.”
He just didn’t know how much of an impact it was going to have on the rest of his life.
See, Faris met his spouse, MJ, because they first noticed him as the chain guy with the funny hat from their spot in the Oregon band section.
He also met a few lifelong friends.
Before Faris left Oregon for a mission trip in Nicaragua in 2014, he spent months scouting the next Oregon fan to whom he would bequeath the chain. He found Portland’s Isaiah Truong.
“He had the ambition of being in front of everything all the time,” Faris said of his 2014 signing class. “Would show up five hours early. Truly a five-star recruit.
“He was the guy. He was the guy we needed.”
And so began a tradition.
“I didn’t even give it to him in person,” Faris said. “I left it in my room, Indiana Jones hat-and-whip style — along with the whiteboard we’d bring to basketball games to write awful things on and hold up.”
Faris said the Pit Crew is now on its seventh generation of O-chain wearers, and that he and a council — what he calls the “O-chain gang” — convene occasionally to discuss new prospects and relive some memories.
They also talk about how many darn O-chains there are in the stands now.
Like all good ideas, Faris’ was replicated. And he admits it caught him a little off guard to see diamond-plate O-chains being sold in the Duck Store.
That was fine, he said.
“It was a university trademark, and I had no skin in the game,” he said. “I just want people to know that it’s been passed on for this long. And it’s such an important thing to a few people.”
Plus, he had already gotten more than he could have ever imagined.
He and MJ now have two kids. The O-chain even made a cameo in Matt Kearney’s “I’m Coming Home” music video.
And while the seventh graders Faris teaches certainly don’t know who Flavor Flav is, his chain has shown some staying power.
“Anytime I see a kid wearing one at school on a spirit day, I’m like, ‘You won’t believe this,’” Faris said. “‘But my dad made the first one of those.’”
