PASADENA, Calif. — Coach Dan Lanning and athletic director Rob Mullens get into golf carts as players and staff shuffle out of the Oregon State football locker room and collect prepared meals.
Both are silent. Lanning just finished a 10-minute postgame press conference with seniors Dillon Gabriel and Jeff Bassa. They both jumped off the back of the cart and into the bowels of the Rose Bowl.
The emotions from the Ducks’ 41-21 loss to Ohio State are still fresh. The usually cheerful, sometimes goofy Gabriel looked depressed, changing alone in his locker while a somber-looking Tez Johnson nearby answered final questions from the media.
The rest of Oregon’s locker room was mostly cleared out, except for the stragglers who were still showering or packing their bags. Terrence Ferguson looked back with his head down when his career at Oregon ended. Lanning had already given his postgame speech to a team he said he “loved” for the season that came to an unexpectedly bitter end, and walked across the center of the room without saying anything else.
As the curtain was pulled back and the full story told, the juxtaposition between the emotional and narratively compelling highs of Oregon’s historic season and the sharp, sudden sting of the final act became jarring. .
The Ducks touted their culture and connections ahead of the complex and contentious 12-team College Football Playoff. They had few moments of real doubt throughout a season in which they won the Big Ten championship in their first year in the conference and posted a 13-0 record, including wins over Michigan and Wisconsin on the road.
If fans watched the in-house “Ducks vs. Them” docuseries every week, they saw a team that believed in their ability to go all the way and were given ample reason to believe along with them.
But such is the cruelty and uncertainty of the sport. The 2024 Ducks aren’t the only great team in program history to fail to achieve their stated goals. It had to feel like destiny for Marcus Mariota until Ezekiel Elliott and the Buckeyes dominated Oregon. And LaMichael James and Darron Thomas continued to run as Michael Dyer rolled over the defender. Jeremiah Smith closed the door on the Ducks on Wednesday during his meteoric rise.
Oregon is not unique when it comes to dealing with unforgiving people. Even established dynasties of other programs have a long list of “what ifs.” But the Ducks have had little time for joy or reflection this season, focusing on the process, so the idea of having to go through all of this again must feel like an immeasurable weight. So is clearing that elusive final hurdle of a first national championship.
As Oregonian sports columnist Bill Oram pointed out, the Ducks will reload. Next season, there will probably be more talent than this season, with a dark horse Heisman candidate in Dante Moore taking over as QB. But they have to go through all of this all over again and avoid getting buzzsawed into playoff time like they did this year. Achieving championship glory has as much to do with luck and circumstance as it does with talent and belief.
And that’s it for seniors like Gabriel, Johnson and Ferguson. They are left with the same burden as every graduate in Oregon’s modern history. It’s about passing the ball to the next generation and telling them to score.
There is an increasingly unstable external environment standing between other powerful programs and their proverbial end zone.
The changing room is empty now. It will be filled again with talent and speech and faith.
But what is the purpose?
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— Ryan Clark covers the Oregon Ducks and the Big Ten Conference. Listen to the Ducks Confidential podcast or subscribe to the Ducks Roundup newsletter.
