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QuickTake:
Mike Bellotti has seen the highs and lows of Oregon-Oregon State. With the rivalry about to go on pause, the former Ducks coach looks back on foggy nights, statement wins and Phil Knight’s legacy.
“It’s just sad,” Mike Bellotti told me over the phone.
The college football hall of famer coached against Oregon State 14 times in his career as Oregon’s head coach from 1995 through 2008.
He won eight times. He lost six times. In each, the now 74-year-old understood that his Ducks were playing for more than just a regular-season win.
“I learned in the Rich Brooks School of how important it was,” Bellotti said.
But things are different now. The game that used to be called the Civil War, the game that used to be played after Thanksgiving, the game that featured two conference rivals — that game is withering away.
The Ducks are 3-0 and in the Big Ten. The Beavers are 0-3 and in what’s left of the Pac-12. The firing of OSU coach Trent Bray has been called for by The Oregonian’s sports columnist. The spread for Saturday is 35.5 points. And it’s the last meeting between the two teams until at least 2027.
Bellotti doesn’t like anything that’s happened to his onetime rival. But when I asked how Oregon coach Dan Lanning should approach such a lopsided game, he was reminded of a conversation he once had with Phil Knight, now 87.
“Just win, baby,” Bellotti said the Nike co-founder told him.
I caught up with the longtime Oregon coach to talk about the state of the rivalry, his favorite memories from the game, jerseys and how Oregon has positioned itself for a post-Knight world.
(This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)
Tyson Alger: I was just having lunch with Josh Wilcox over at the Longbranch in Monroe. I think it’s a place you’ve been before …
Mike Bellotti: Yeah, a couple of times. I can’t remember if we’d only stop if we won, or if we’d stop every time, but I do think we won more than we lost, so it was good.
How are you feeling going into the last scheduled game between Oregon and Oregon State?
I feel sad. I’ve said they should play every year. It’s just like, you have Cal/Stanford, USC/UCLA — it’s an in-state rival. And I’m not just saying this because it seems like Oregon might win each time. It’s just for the camaraderie of the state rivalry and everyone getting a chance to hoot and holler and cheer for their favorite.
But it’s also a game that should be on TV and publicized. It should be a sellout crowd, and from the perspective of a coach, you should always want that type of importance and excitement around your games.
How did you view your responsibility as, if you will, a steward of the rivalry? Was it something that you felt like you needed to put extra juice into? Or was it just good enough to let it do its thing?
It pretty much took care of itself. When I got here, Rich Brooks was very adamant about the importance of the rivalry. He came from Oregon State, so he made it his mission in life to win that football game — not that it wasn’t mine. I recognized that, as your in-state rival, it is the game of all games because people are going to talk about it for the next year. If you win, you’re happy. If you lose, you’re not happy. And your fans are going to look at it the same way.
And a lot of times, as we got better and better, and Oregon State did not, but they found ways, many times, to come back and get better. I mean, under Coach Erickson and Coach Riley, they were great teams, so the rivalry held its own. I mean, oftentimes it was for a lot of marbles and for some conference championships and bowl games and important things of that type. You didn’t have to sell that much, as it pretty much sold itself.
A lot of times, some of the younger players we’d have to indoctrinate and just give them a sense of what it’s meant to people over the years, but most of the time it was fairly important — either for both teams or for our own personal goals as a team and what we wanted to accomplish.
Is there a particular game/speech/moment from your time in the series that stands out for you right now?
I think the games that I remember are the Fog Bowl in Autzen Stadium when we lost Kellen Clemens and we had the young quarterbacks — Brady Leaf and Dennis Dixon — alternating. And then my last Civil War was in 2008, we won 65 to something, but it was more, just, we had some amazing plays in that game, just amazing individual efforts.
Jeremiah Johnson had a run in the first half where he went for about 80 yards and a touchdown and broke four or five tackles and tiptoed the sideline and it was just an amazing, miraculous run. I think we had an interception returned for a touchdown. It was just one of those things where everything seemed to go right.
I don’t think fog is going to be an issue on Saturday …
That is true. Usually it was at the end of the year, and it was bad weather. Typically, it was going to rain, no matter where you were, and it was going to be cold. It was going to be hard to throw the ball, which I won’t say hampered us more than them, but it certainly did when they were running the wishbone.
Do you see any light for Oregon State?
The first thing they need to do, and it has little to do with the coach, but if you don’t have an NIL collective that can compete with others across the nation — it seems like they got a good quarterback out of the transfer portal this year — but it takes that at many positions to enable you to compete. I know Coach Bray, I know of him, I’ve known him for quite a while. I think he’s a very solid coach. Whether he’s the right guy for the job, I don’t know, but it’s way too early and I don’t know that there are the resources either available or to put towards football that you need to be competitive.
I think the same thing has happened with Washington State — and even Boise State this year doesn’t seem to be as good as they have been. I just feel really bad. I just think that both Oregon State and Washington State were very great, competitive football programs when I was in the Pac-10 or Pac-12, and they were recognized across the nation and known as somebody you didn’t want to play. They could jump up and bite you. And that’s probably not going to be the case and it’s unfortunate. I think people were just trying to survive, and then when UCLA and USC jumped — and it’s obviously not worked out that well for UCLA — but it’s just something where they got caught in the crossfire.
You played a large part in getting Phil Knight fully invested in Oregon after the 1996 Cotton Bowl. What does it mean to you when you see that UO is honoring Knight with its uniforms on Saturday and where does your mind go when you think about what he’s done to help get Oregon to its current spot?
It’s just that it’s all been incremental steps and Phil would do whatever he was allowed to do, legally, by rules. And now there are no rules — basically – so he can do whatever he wants. He’s done a great job of helping set up that Division Street NIL collective and helping run it. And it’s less about his money than his leadership and his organizational skills and his oversight. I think people think he’s just pouring all of his money into it but he just gave $2 billion to the OHSU cancer center.
I think people are just trying to pay him back for everything he’s done over the years to support all of athletics, whether it be at Oregon or elsewhere. Because, you know, he’s in his mid-to-late 80s and I think it’s time to start giving things back to him. Obviously, he wants to win a national championship. Everybody in Oregon wants to win it. And they’re all working together and are doing a great job to give Oregon the chance to compete with anybody.
How do you think Oregon has positioned itself for the post-Phil era?
I would guess there have already been some talks with him and Penny about their helping for perpetuity and getting some things put down in writing that they will support certain things. I’m certain that it also is going to depend on his feeling that they’re all working together and heading down the same course of action. But you know, he’s been involved so actively for so many years now, I’m sure he’s had some talks and had some thoughts, and that he and his family have talked with the Oregon administration and whoever they need to talk to to sort of work out some of those details.
Got a Phil memory you can share?
There’s so many, but I remember — I don’t know if it was before a big game or we were starting a season and we were ranked pretty high — and I said, “You know, I hate going into this being such a big favorite,” and he said, “Mike, it’s really easy. Just win, baby.”
Another one that would always make me laugh, some of my friends — other coaches — would give me s— and basically say, “Phil Knight, he’s the best owner in college football.” And I really couldn’t deny that. I just say he does a great job.
