The Sunday Duck Report: The cost of doing business

Because this is the Sunday Duck Report, I feel it’s important to begin with some honesty.

Two things:

1. I wasn’t at Oregon’s 84-0 win over Portland State on Friday night. Grandpa Jack Alger passed away. I was going to be cute and say “at the young age of 97,” but he’d been saying “it’s not worth living past 87” ever since they made him stop skiing.

He earned his old age.

Legend.

2. I did cringe when I first saw the final score.

It’s not a surprise that it was lopsided. Oregon outscored Portland State 267-33 across its previous four meetings, the Ducks came into Friday trying to shake that Oklahoma State loss and, well, there’s that whole $50 million roster vs. a $0 roster thing.

This was a paycheck game. A schedule filler. Collect your win, pass Go and advance to conference play.

But 84-0?

I admit, I first thought that was a bit excessive, especially when Oregon’s offense entered the fourth quarter with a 63-0 lead, then proceeded to tack on three more touchdowns — the same number the offense accounted for in four quarters in Stillwater.

Did the Ducks really need to score that last touchdown with 29 seconds to play?

Did Dan Lanning know that Oregon could have won 100-0 and it still wouldn’t register with the collective college football world with the real prove-it game against USC coming up Saturday?

Why did the Vikings, who averaged 1,639 fans per game last season in Hillsboro, have to get caught in the crossfire?

Bill Oram over at The Oregonian criticized Oregon for running up the score to a historic extent:

Anyone with even a trace of self-awareness would realize how unbelievably tone deaf it is to return home after one of the most humiliating outings in program history and act like you’ve accomplished something by pasting Portland State.

I get that. The Ducks could have shown more grace.

However, at some point, Portland State has to take blame for touching the stove when it knows it’s hot.

Tasteful or not, Oregon was always going to play this game this way. A $50 million roster comes with a lot of mouths to feed, and Lanning’s Ducks have played hard, late, in all five games they’ve faced FCS competition — though one of those, Idaho, wasn’t by choice.

In 2023, Oregon beat this Vikings team 81-7, with the Ducks scoring 14 points in the fourth quarter, capped by a Jayden Limar touchdown run with two minutes remaining.

Three years later, the talent discrepancy between the top and bottom of college football has only widened. This Oregon team could be better. This Portland State team could be worse.

There’s your 10-point swing.

Portland State knew what it was signing up for. Yes, the contract for this game was signed in 2019, back before the Ducks were NIL giants. But Portland State also lost 62-14 to Oregon in 2018, and its 69-0 loss in 2010 is basically 84-0 after inflation.

Portland State agreed that $590,000 per game was the going rate to keep getting embarrassed in its home state.

It needs the money — most FCS programs do — but Portland State depends on it because its biggest problem in 2026 is the same one it had in 2019: It’s hard to build much of anything when home games are in a different city.

Fans don’t want to go out there, and coaches know Hillsboro Stadium is the opposite of a closer when it comes to recruiting: Bruce Barnum, who was fired as Portland State’s coach last season, once told me they’d bring prospective players out to see the field only when specifically asked.

They will take them to Eugene, though, where the Vikings are happy to place their players under the lights for 55,000 to watch them take on a steamroller.

And at some point, maybe we have to look at who is putting those players out there to be flattened into the Autzen turf.

Because in college football, you get what you get paid for. And when these teams meet again in 2029, the game check gets bumped up another 10 grand.

This story is part of Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s new Sunday Duck Report. For the full report, subscribe to the free newsletter here.