Tag: Facebook

I Love My Ducks: SPREAD THE WORD!

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If you’re not familiar with the Oregon Ducks and their fans, you will be after watching this.

Earlier this week, a brilliant group of Oregon students created a video called “I Love My Ducks,” in which they proclaim their love for the Oregon Ducks football team. (Watch the video here; I’m working on embedding it into the post, but there seem to be some problems with Yahoo! Videos on WordPress blogs.)

“I smell roses,” they say, referring to the Ducks’ chances of making it to the Rose Bowl.

Things are not so rosy, however, when it comes to dealing with the Oregon Athletic Department.

The video features our school’s mascot, Puddles the Duck. Puddles is licensed by Disney, and while I’ll admit that I don’t know every detail of the copyright restrictions, the AD pulled the video from YouTube because they were afraid of a call from Disney. They were worried that Disney would be upset that this unassuming group of students would get them in trouble, simply for using the Duck in the video.

What better publicity for your school than to have three typical college guys creating original raps about their intense love of the team. They’re showing off the Oregon logo throughout the video, they’re in front of Autzen Stadium…basically everything about this video screams free publicity.

But all because of Puddles, this video is deemed unworthy by the Athletic Department. It’s too bad they’re keeping the video from attracting fans to their games, bringing traffic to their website and putting more money in their wallets.

Here’s how you can spread the word about this great video:

• Post the video on your Facebook page.
• Tweet the link. (Even better, tell ESPN College GameDay to play the video on Saturday, when they feature the Oregon v. Arizona game.)
• Comment on blogs that posted about the video, like Deadspin, The UO Sports Dude, Communication Rhodes, and this blog.
• Become a fan of Supwitchugirl on Facebook; that’s the group that created the video.

Feel free to comment on this post if you love the Ducks and/or this video and if you know of another way to efficiently spread the word about it.

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Taking Charge

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*UPDATE*: LeGarrette Blount has been suspended for the rest of the football season, and deservedly so.  Read about it here: http://bit.ly/jBnN8.

Some people may think that Oregon Duck fans should automatically be ashamed of their team because of the team’s obscene number of possible uniform combinations.

But thanks to running back LeGarrette Blount, Duck fans have a legitimate reason for embarrassment.  As if the game wasn’t devastating enough (the Ducks didn’t have a single first down in the entire first half), Blount had to go act like a baby after the game.  Watch the video and be horrified (I don’t get why this guy added the Apollo Creed quote at the end, but the rest of the video is good quality):

I know this is not going to be read by huge amounts of people (hey, Hope!), but I want to apologize on behalf of my school.  I’m not sure what the school will do to punish Blount, but if he’s thrown off the team, he deserves it.  Ever since Blount’s punch was thrown, we Duck fans have been publicly displaying our disgust on Facebook.  It’s ridiculous, and we can only hope that our season can be salvaged and that we are forgiven by the rest of the football world.

This punch will probably be analyzed to death in the coming days.  Lots of sports commentators will have lots of questions, but mine is: Where was Oregon head coach Chip Kelly in all of this?  Chip, I know it was your first game as head coach and that you had to endure a tough loss, but you’ve got to get the guy under control.

Boise State’s head coach, Chris Petersen, will emerge as the hero here.  His player, Byron Hout, said something to Blount that prompted him to thrown the punch, and Petersen immediately pulled Hout aside and dealt with him.  Whatever he was saying, he was saying it vehemently.  Chris Petersen took charge.

Without making this a grand, flourishing post about the need for more effective leadership in the world today, I do want to say one thing: everybody’s watching.  How many times do you think that punch has been viewed since it was thrown?  How many people are talking about it this very second?  It made “Oregon” the number one trending Twitter topic for a time last night.

Today, everybody’s watching everything.  Our lives may not be the opening segment of SportsCenter, but people are still affected by what we say, do and think.  I’m sure glad that some of the things I have said to or thought about others did not become viral YouTube videos mere hours after they were spoken or thought.

This was not said to make you feel like a terrible person.  I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer.  It just made me think.  Here’s to hoping next Saturday brings some redemption for the Ducks.