One of the best
■ Former Oregon coach Len
Casanova reflects on his Civil
War battles with Oregon State
By George Beres
For the Emerald
During the last 25 years of the 20th
century, Oregon dominated the series
against its archrivals, the Beavers,
from just up the road in Corvallis.
It wasn’t always that way, and no
body knows that better than the leg
endary coach of Oregon football,
Len Casanova.
At 96, Cas is the patriarch among
all major college coaches of the na
tion. More than extended age, it is
his reputation as one of the game’s
sharpest football minds, plus the fa
ther image he gave his players, that
places him high in the respect and
affection of fellow coaches. His
name will be forever etched in stone
in Oregon lore, and he is the name
sake of the Casanova Center.
This Casanova recollection is ex
cerpted from the 1995 book, “The
Year of the Duck,” which is now on
sale at the University Bookstore.
The book, filled with color photos
and features from Oregon’s ‘95 Rose
Bowl game against Penn State, also
has a section with black and white
shots from 1958, the last time before
‘95 that the Ducks made it to the
granddaddy of all bowl games. Cas’
team was a heavy underdog to
Coach Woody Hayes’ Ohio State
team, but it forced the Buckeyes to
resort to a 4th-quarter field goal to
pull out a hard-fought, 10-7 victory.
Cas remembers in “The Year Of
The Duck”
If anyone knows from experience
how tough it can be for the Ducks in
their traditional season-ending
game against Oregon State, it is
Casanova. For a man whose profes
sional life was highlighted by many
gridiron victories, Cas doesn’t look
back too happily on game encoun
ters he had with his most familiar
foe, the Beavers.
“In my 16 years coaching Oregon,
we were beaten by Oregon State more
than we won,” recalled Cas as the
Ducks prepared for the most crucial
Civil War Game they’ve ever played,
this Saturday in Corvallis. “It always
was a dogfight, always a battle.”
The kind of series this has been
between the Willamette Valley
neighbors is reflected by the fact
It always was a
dogfight, always a battle.
Len Casanova
former Oregon head coach
V
that even though the record in
Casanova’s day was 10-4-2 in favor
of the Beavers, Oregon had a 38
point edge in total points scored
during that span.
That’s because the four victories
under Cas were by 28, 20,29 and 17
points. Of Oregon’s 10 losses, none
was by more than eight points; six
were by five points or fewer.
Some of those losses still bring a
shake of the head and shrug of the
shoulders from Cas, even though he
doesn’t go through the agony that al
ways followed heartbreaking losses
in bis coaching days.
“Only four times in my coaching
career did I feel an official’s call de
cided the game," said Cas. “Would
n’t you know that two of them could
have been against Oregon State?”
Cas quickly learned about the spe
cial dimension of this intrastate rival
ry when he came to Eugene in 1951.
“That first year,” he said, “I had a
speaking engagement in Astoria,
and I drove through Corvallis on my
way there. 1 was late, and the fellow
in charge asked me which route I
had taken. When he heard I had
gone through Corvallis, he got a
shocked look on his face and asked,
‘How could an Oregon coach do a
thing like that?’”
The entire state, not just Oregon
and Oregon State grads, got involved
in the game, as Cas remembers.
"It is something like the World
Series in baseball,” said Cas, who
coached baseball in his high school
coaching days, when the son of the
great Tv Cobb was one of his play
ers. “People who don't follow all
that closely the rest of the time sud
denly become fans.”
Win or lose, Casanova's positive
image throughout the state was al
ways there. His one-time rival as
coach and athletics director, Dee
Andros of Oregon State, made that
point once while Dee still was at
the Beavers helm.
“I would get on the Ducks more,
hut then I mellowed a lot,” said An
dros. “I just was trying to get people
to think about me the way they
think of Len Casanova.”
As for Cas, he gladly would have
sacrificed a bit of “mellowness” in
exchange for some tight victories
against the Beavers. As he said
when the Ducks’ ‘95 Rose Bowl
coach, Rich Brooks, dominated the
Beavers without ever losing:
"Brooks helped make up a lot for
those narrow losses to the Beavers
we had in my day."
courtesy of George Beres
Oregon head coach Len Casanova (left) and his famed assistant, Johnny McKay,
celebrate in the mud after a 28-0 victory against Oregon State in 1955.
courtesy of George Beres
Coach Len Casanova instructs his Ducks on the sidelines in the 1958 Rose Bowl against
Ohio, where Oregon missed pulling off one of the great upsets in bowl history. j
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