2005 Oregon Ducks Football Team
In 2005, Oregon had success behind senior quarterback Kellen Clemens and a new spread offense. During a game at Arizona, Clemens suffered a broken ankle. At that point Oregon was 8-1 (their only loss was to #1 ranked USC 45-13, the loss was vacated in 2010), and still in the hunt for a BCS game. Oregon won their final three games and their success led them into contention for a bid to the Fiesta Bowl. The Ducks finished the regular season with a 10-1 record, their best finish since their Joey Harrington-led, Fiesta Bowl-winning 2001-2002 team. They finished 5th overall in the BCS ranking system, which would in many years have been high enough to earn them a bid to a BCS Bowl. In 2005, however, there were no at-large bids available to Oregon. Ohio State finished just ahead of the Ducks, in 4th place, guaranteeing them one of the at-large berths (although they had an inferior 10-2 record). Notre Dame finished 6th in the BCS, also securing a BCS bid due to a pre-existing clause in the BCS contract. Many college football fans were outraged that two teams with worse records were selected over the Ducks. Moreover, for the second consecutive year, the Pac-10 conference had a team that finished with a one-loss season snubbed by the BCS (the Cal Bears finished 10-1 in 2004). It was later demonstrated that Oregon drew the highest bowl ratings in college football, calling the argument that TV ratings hurt the Ducks' BCS chances into question. The situation (and others like it in recent years) has led to more calls for a playoff system to replace the BCS, which has received widespread criticism from college football fans. Instead of a BCS game, they were assigned to the 2005 Holiday Bowl versus the Oklahoma Sooners. Playing without their starting quarterback, Kellen Clemens, and combined with a strong showing from the Sooners, the Ducks fell in a close game, 17-14, finishing the season tied for the second-best in school history with a 10-1 overall record (the Southern Cal game was deemed vacated by violations in 2010).
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Famous quotes containing the words football team, oregon, ducks, football and/or team:
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“In another year I’ll have enough money saved. Then I’m gonna go back to my hometown in Oregon and I’m gonna build a house for my mother and myself. And join the country club and take up golf. And I’ll meet the proper man with the proper position. And I’ll make a proper wife who can run a proper home and raise proper children. And I’ll be happy, because when you’re proper, you’re safe.”
—Daniel Taradash (b. 1913)
“For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“...I’m not money hungry.... People who are rich want to be richer, but what’s the difference? You can’t take it with you. The toys get different, that’s all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It’s all relative.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)