Last December, on the eve of the BCS National Championship Game involving the champions of the Pac-10 and Southeastern Conferences, those of us who hold Auburn in special disdain offered our assistance in educating the Oregon faithful on the evils of the Plainsmen. Now, with the Georgia Bulldogs preparing to face the Washington Huskies for the first time in the NCAA Tournament, fortune has afforded fans of the Ducks the opportunity to return the favor. David Piper of our SB Nation sister site Addicted to Quack graciously agreed to educate the Bulldog faithful about the reasons we should hate the Huskies, even if only for one night. My thanks go out to David for the exegesis that follows, which is accompanied by a relatively mild adult language advisory.
Greetings Dawg Sports,
Oregon is on a little hiatus from the NCAA Tournament while our new coach gets his house in order. However, that doesn’t mean Duck fans don’t have March Madness dreams. We dream big, Georgia fans, and our dreams lie with you. For you get to observe one of the greatest holidays in all of college sports.
Happy Happy I Hate Washington Day. Here is your itinerary of events (you’ll have to adjust these for your team, as I’m sure you won’t advocate shooting Dawgs, etc. But it gives you a general idea).
Yes. Two happies. I’ll explain in a bit. First off, though, a primer. Why exactly should you hate Washington? After all, they are your canine brethren, and here you have avian acquaintances you barely know telling you why you should hate them. Sure, there is a lot of meaning for us. Geography plays a part in it. History plays a part in it (Although I cannot think of another rivalry in college football where one elite team had destroyed a completely irrelevant and downtrodden team for decades, only to have the roles completely reverse themselves). Those factors could never be replicated for you. So lets get to the salient facts:
In the northwest, it rains a lot. Probably eight months out of the year. Most of us tend to be kind of pale. Know how to spot a fusky (yes, they will be referred to as this from now on) fan? When it’s the middle of December, and you see a middle aged woman with a fake and bake, a bleach blond mop, and enough botox to kill most species of small mammals? Fusky fan. Guaranteed.
The arrogance wafting out of Seattle is nauseating (they are superior to all of us, they invented Starbucks, you know). Should you be travelling to the tournament, or, by some happenstance, should know a fusky fan, talk to one. You will be reminded incessantly about Rose Bowls of yore. A half of a national championship (ALERT: many fusky fans will claim as many as four of these national championships. No legitimate source will give them more than a split in 1991, but that doesn’t stop them from claiming obscure championships from 1960, 1984, and 1990. Other Pac-10 fans laugh at these claims, yet the banners continue to fly at Husky Stadium).
You would think that a seven year bowl drought, a complete dismantling of their program, and the only 0-12 season in Pac-10 history would eat at their arrogance a bit. Not a chance. They believe that God has ordained them leaders of the Pac-10, that Jake Locker was Jesus himself, and that the next national championship is just around the corner, likely to be next year (which for them is probably true, as when they don’t win it, they’ll likely claim it anyway).
Well, that’s all good an well, you say. But you live in Georgia. You never actually have to deal with fusky fans. And they can’t possibly be more nauseating than Auburn/Tennessee/Florida/Alabama fans? If only you got to know them, you would change that tune. But I digress. Let me give you some more immediate reasons to hate them.
Lets talk Washington basketball.
It was the storyline all offseason, and really all preseason as well. "Washington will go undefeated in the Pac-10." "This is the most talented Pac-10 hoops squad in years." The Huskies finished third in a down Pac-10. They finished 11-7 in the conference. They lost to the 7th, 8th, and 9th place teams. So much for undefeated season.
Of course, most of Washington’s Pac-10 season was overshadowed by an investigation into basketball player Venoy Overton in which Overton, a 22 year old senior, got two sixteen year old girls wasted then proceeded to have sex with them. Of course, as is longstanding tradition in Seattle, Overton wasn’t charged with any serious crime, ultimately getting a furnishing alcohol to a minor charge, for which he was finally suspended for the Pac-10 Tournament (though still allowed to go on the all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles).
This tradition of letting UW student athletes run roughshod over Seattle is well chronicled in the spectacular book Scoreboard, Baby, which chronicles the 2000 UW Rose Bowl team, and how twelve players from that team were arrested in a single calendar year, an awesome run that certainly allows UW to retroactively claim the Fulmer Cup for that season (if they don’t already have a banner for that flying in Husky Stadium. The Seattle Times, years later, finally did an expose on that team (which led to the book), and you can read the highlights in that excellent series: the tight end who raped another student, the linebacker who shot his drug dealer, the starting safety who was arrested in each and every one of his five years at UW for beating his wife. Overton’s token punishment shows that little has changed in Seattle over that time. Maybe the most disgusting is the shunning of a player who tried to use his scholarship to, you know, actually get an education.
This is a pathetic program, and a pathetic fanbase, one that is more than deserving of your contempt. There is an old bumper sticker that can still be found on many cars in Eugene that reads, "Support a Husky Free Northwest." In football, we have largely made that dream a reality, reducing fusky football to the irrelevance they so richly deserve. However, the invasive species that is their basketball squad extends toward the southeast, and you have been given the task of eradicating them from this tournament. Happy Happy I Hate Washington Day. One happy because its always fun to hate Washington. The second because, in order to make Happy I Hate Washington Day truly happy, you have to beat the sons of bitches.
Our tournament dreams lie with you. For one night, an entire state on the Pacific will be the most rabid of Georgia Bulldog fans.
Go Ducks! Go Bulldogs!
My thanks go out to David for his detailed exegesis of why we should hold Friday’s newfound rivals in disdain. (For the sake of full disclosure, I probably should note the following: a good friend of mine from high school attended the University of Washington in the early 1990s, and I still have the Huskies cap he sent me for Christmas 1991, which I wore during the 1992 Rose Bowl; I’m not one to throw stones regarding player arrests, although at least those of our guys who did anything involving any meaningful moral culpability are now off the team; and there are some who recall Georgia Tech’s eight-game winning streak over Georgia in the 1950s who might claim that our in-state rivalry has involved a reversal of fortunes as extreme as that seen in the Oregon-Washington rivalry in the last two decades. Also, I didn’t change a word of what David wrote, but consider any appropriate uses of "allegedly" inserted above.)
I was pleased to be able to root for David’s team in January, and I am glad he will be able to root for mine this March . . . although I hope he has better results. Be sure to stay tuned to Addicted to Quack for more moral support in the war against Washington!
Go ‘Dawgs!