Gregg Bell Unleashed: The Husky Nation Stretches Far and Wide
May 25, 2011
By Gregg Bell
UW Director of Writing
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PORTLAND, Ore. - Steve Sarkisian stood upstairs near a balcony among 10 men and one woman. They were of varying ages but of like clothing - purple - and of like minds. They all wanted to know every latest detail on the Huskies' football team.
Across the second floor of the theater, Lorenzo Romar laughed breezily with folks who wanted to know how his UW basketball team was going to possibly replace three seniors plus wondrous junior Isaiah Thomas next season. (His answer: The same way we replaced the supposedly irreplaceable Nate Robinson, Will Conroy, Brandon Roy, Jon Brockman and Quincy Pondexter before them).
Inside the restored, wooden-floored ballroom, Kevin McGuff explained how excited he was to begin making Washington a power again in women's college basketball.
The Huskies' three most prominent coaches weren't talking on the UW campus. They weren't in Seattle. Heck, they weren't even in Washington.
We were all in - gasp! - Oregon.
We were within 100 miles of not just one but two of the Huskies' chief conference rivals, the University of Oregon and Oregon State. Yet purple and gold flags flew outside the West End Theater in downtown Portland last week. The marquee read Go Huskies!
Really, it did. I saw it, right here in the Land of the Ducks and Beavers. In Oregon, the state in which the big, yellow O is seen on cars, houses and hand shapes, buildings, billboards and bodies, and Oregon State's trademark orange and black stretch as far as the eye can see.
I was waiting for eggs to get thrown out of passing cars at the building as I arrived. Instead, I found 115 loud and proud season-ticket holders and Tyee Club members flowing in undisturbed, happy even. UW attracted them inside on a glorious, 75-degree evening Thursday at a cost of $60 per plate to eat, drink Willamette Valley Pinot and hear about the exciting rise of Husky athletics.
It was the final of the four "Huskies Celebrating Huskies" meetings the coaches did this month with fans from Bremerton to Tacoma to Spokane - and to Oregon.
How cool is it purple and gold flies proudly here? Well, imagine Ohio State holding an event inside Michigan. Or Alabama crossing into Florida to hoot "Roll Tide!" a few hundred times.
I came to ask these people how they survive as Dawgs here, surrounded by Ducks and Beavers. I expected these were the only 115 such brave people in existence.
Turns out, Washington actually has a couple thousand on its mailing list with Portland-area addresses. That's right, there are many, many people in Oregon who donate their passion and their pennies to the Huskies.
And they aren't exactly closet fans down here, either. Some have paid a local non-profit to have the Morrison Bridge in downtown Portland glowing in Husky colors the week of the annual Oregon-Washington football game. The current cost of doing that is $650 and up, and Huskies paying it has made Ducks fans quack in rage.
"Every year I really look forward to when we go play Oregon and the bridge gets lit up in purple and gold. That fires me up!" Sarkisian bellowed.
The crowd loved that.
Many of the Huskies here in hostile territory are like Scott Thompson (Class of 1999) and Intel co-worker Ramsey Warren (Class of 2005), UW graduates who moved south to take jobs in Portland after graduation.
Thompson and Warren don't just hide out in Husky anonymity while living and working here.
Warren proudly showed me pictures of the purple-and-gold, Washington Huskies keyboard that is on his desk at his office in Beaverton,Ore. The pals also make regular treks 90 or so miles down Interstate 5 to Corvallis, when the Huskies are playing at Oregon State, and to Eugene when the Huskies are playing in Autzen Stadium or Matthew Knight Arena.
They arrive proudly wearing purple T-shirts. Not just plain, purple ones. Not even ones with mere gold, block W's or Huskies on them, either. Their homemade shirts have mocked the state's rampant motto "I love my Ducks!" with "I hate your Ducks!" Thompson and Warren have had others made for games in Eugene that have read "How many Rose Bowls have you won?" among other, slightly more um, colorful, messages.
"When they were in the national championship game (against Auburn in January), there was so much on the line for us Husky fans down here," said Warren, who drives a purple Honda Fit in this state.
"It's great that Auburn won, because the Ducks still haven't won a national championship. (Neither have the Beavers). We've won national championships. We've won Rose Bowls. I've seen the Huskies win the national title when I was growing up (in 1991, in the USA Today coaches' poll)."
Thompson doesn't drive a purple car. But that didn't stop Thompson from getting some Duck treatment when the passenger of a passing auto, also with Oregon plates, noticed him wearing Huskies gear on I-5 on his way to Seattle for a Oregon-Washington game a couple years ago.
"This 9-year-old girl was throwing dog biscuits at my car!" Thompson said, sounding as incredulous as if it had happened yesterday.
I even met brave souls here, such as Dominic Marshall, that were born and raised in Oregon then saw the light of opportunity, and followed it north to attend UW.
The two-hour program of dinner, coaches' talks and a question-and-answer period started with O.D. Vincent, UW's senior associate athletic director, telling these people: "You've got to be as thick-skinned and tough as any Husky fans anywhere."
When Romar climbed up on stage and took the microphone, the crowd roared again over their beef and fish.
"Man," Romar said, shaking his head at this so very un-Oregonian scene in Portland, "you guys are awesome."
Romar hit on something I learned on this night: Husky fans in Oregon seem more fervent to me than the ones in Spokane.
There's a theory as to why.
"Wazzu is a more friendly rival," said Warren, who actually calls to invade Portland's sports-talk radio shows, to rile up the hosts and other callers and interrupt all their Duck and Beaver talk with pro-Husky smack. "Sure, you don't like the Cougars. But you know a lot of them.
"You just hate Oregon."
Thompson says he gets by down here by talking about the Huskies' storied tradition.
But Sarkisian told this revved-up crowd not to bank on just tradition any more, that Washington's present is good and its future even better. He is one of the handful of coaches in the last half century of major college football to take a program from 0-12 to winning a bowl game in two seasons.
Sarkisian thanked NFL draftees Jake Locker, Mason Foster and their fellow, departing seniors for having been "to Hell and back" to get Washington righted these last two years.
"It's a fantastic time to be a Husky," the coach said. "Our future is very bright. I think this is the time we start taking the next step."
About Gregg Bell Gregg Bell is an award-winning sports writer who joined the University of Washington's staff in September 2010 as the Director of Writing. Previously, Bell served as the senior national sports writer in Seattle for The Associated Press. The native of Steubenville, Ohio, is a 1993 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He received a master's degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 2000.
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