Oregon
Oregon launched national title hopes at the Big House in 2007. Can it finish the job in 2024?
The last time Oregon visited Michigan Stadium, the Ducks were playing their second game under a new offensive coordinator, a hotshot from New Hampshire named Chip Kelly.
When they arrived at the Big House, the Ducks had to make sure the place was still standing. A week earlier, Michigan suffered one of the biggest upsets in college football history, an earth-shaking loss against an upstart FCS team named Appalachian State.
Mike Bellotti, Oregon’s coach, wasn’t happy about it. He figured the Wolverines would be seething after such a stunning defeat, and Appalachian State ran a version of the spread offense that was becoming Oregon’s signature weapon, meaning the Ducks wouldn’t have the element of surprise.
“I was very concerned, because obviously when a team like Michigan loses to a team like Appalachian State, it’s going to piss some people off,” Bellotti said. “It’s going to get them all riled up. They obviously had something to prove, and I was afraid we were going to be the target of it.”
What happened that day in 2007 was the end of one era crashing into the beginning of another.
The Ducks took over the Big House for their own coming-out party, a 39-7 win that showed the world what Oregon’s offense could do against a Big Ten power. Oregon’s game plan was a tour de force, complete with a Statue of Liberty play, a fake Statue of Liberty and a highlight reel that propelled quarterback Dennis Dixon into the Heisman Trophy race. Soon, teams around the country — including Michigan — would be running versions of the up-tempo spread offense that Oregon perfected.
Seventeen years later, Oregon is returning to the Big House as the No. 1 team in the polls and the Big Ten frontrunner. The Ducks look different now, though Saturday’s uniforms will be an homage to those worn by Dixon, Jonathan Stewart and other stars of their era. College football looks different, too. As teams find their footing in the era of the 12-team College Football Playoff era, no program is off to a better start than Oregon.
In their first season in the Big Ten, the Ducks have a chance to accomplish something that’s happened only once in the past decade. The last Big Ten team to beat Michigan and Ohio State in the same season was Michigan State in 2015. Oregon beat the Buckeyes 32-31 earlier three weeks ago and enters Saturday’s game as more than a two-touchdown favorite against the Wolverines, who have looked vulnerable during their 5-3 start.
Last 10 teams to beat both Michigan, OSU
Any worries that the Ducks would be worn down by the Big Ten schedule or awed by the league’s traditional powers have faded into the background. They still have to survive the gales of November, but they’ve shown no signs of taking on water.
“I see a really good football team, a complete football team that executes at a high level,” Michigan coach Sherrone Moore said. “We’ve got to go execute to win.”
Conference realignment has been a mixed bag for programs from the old Pac-12. USC and UCLA are a combined 3-8 in the Big Ten. Colorado is 4-1 in the Big 12, while Arizona and Utah are a combined 2-8. Cal and Stanford are a combined 1-8 in the ACC.
Rob Mullens, now in his 15th year as Oregon’s athletic director, credited coach Dan Lanning for steering the program smoothly through the transition. Lanning followed two coaches, Willie Taggart and Mario Cristobal, who left Oregon for jobs in their home state of Florida — Taggart after one season for Florida State, Cristobal after four for Miami. The perception of Oregon as a stepping-stone job proved tough to shake.
Lanning, now 30-5 in his third season, has embraced Oregon as a destination. When Alabama was searching for Nick Saban’s successor, Lanning quickly spiked the speculation by releasing a video with the line, “The grass is damn green in Eugene.” It’s only gotten greener since then, as Oregon’s move to the Big Ten brought stability, exposure and guaranteed revenue streams that were lacking in the tumultuous final months of the Pac-12.
“The exposure, the reach, the connection that happens with that is great, not only for Oregon football, but for all of Oregon athletics,” Mullens said, noting that Saturday’s game on CBS will be the seventh consecutive network TV appearance for the Ducks. “We’re getting more traffic in the visitors’ center, more clicks on the website, more people taking a deeper look.”
Oregon beat Ohio State 32-31 on Oct. 12 and is 5-0 in Big Ten play. (Ali Gradischer / Getty Images)
When Ohio State played at Autzen Stadium earlier this season, the game aired in prime time on NBC and ESPN’s “College GameDay” set the scene. Oregon had record season ticket sales in part because of that game, and Eugene’s airport set a record for departing flights the next day, Mullens said.
“It was a chamber of commerce weekend,” Mullens said. “‘GameDay’ was here, national television crowd, a record crowd at Autzen Stadium. It was fun to have the game that everybody anticipated, two teams battling right down to the end.”
The Ducks beat Ohio State for the second time in the four years, this time with Kelly, their former head coach, back in the Autzen Stadium press box calling plays for the Buckeyes. It was a thrilling win, but the days of Oregon trying to measure itself against other elite programs are mostly gone.
When Oregon moved to No. 1 in the AP rankings for the first time since 2012, Lanning responded with a brisk, “Who cares?” Perhaps there was a time when Oregon had to prove it could go toe-to-toe with programs like Ohio State and Michigan, but since Lanning arrived, there’s been no need.
“I just don’t think we’ve ever measured ourselves based on what other people think,” Lanning said. “That doesn’t necessarily change. We have our own internal goals and our plan of what we want to be. At the beginning of every year, everybody asked me what success looks like. To me, it looks like us playing our best football at the end of the season.”
Lanning will be coaching his first game at Michigan Stadium on Saturday, just as Bellotti was in 2007. Bellotti remembers telling his players the dimensions of the field to remind them that it was the same size as any other. The Ducks covered every inch of that turf while piling up 624 yards, the second-highest total ever allowed by the Wolverines.
“It just was one of those games where everything worked,” Bellotti said. “It was the quietest 110,000 people I’ve ever been in front of.”
GO DEEPER
Big Ten beware: Oregon is readier than ever to make a splash
That year, Michigan rebounded from its 0-2 start to finish 9-4 in Lloyd Carr’s final season. Oregon started 8-1 before losing Dixon to a torn ACL, then handed the reins to Kelly in 2009. The Ducks played for national championships in 2010 and 2014, experienced a brief dip in the transition from Mark Helfrich to Taggart and have been on a steady climb ever since.
Beating Michigan in the Big House wouldn’t be the milestone that it was 17 years ago, but Michigan is still the winner of three consecutive conference titles and the reigning national champion. The road to Big Ten championships goes through places like Ann Arbor, Columbus, Madison and State College. Now it goes through Eugene, too.
There was no single moment that put Oregon on a path to becoming a heavyweight in the Big Ten, but the last trip to Michigan Stadium was a big step along the way.
“We were recognized as somebody to be dealt with, an equal foe to the Big Ten,” Bellotti said. “The Michigan game was certainly one that got us more notoriety, because we went into the Big House and put it on ’em.”
(Top photo of Dennis Dixon: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
Farm groups oppose Oregon recycling fees with ‘no public oversight’
Published 8:00 am Friday, June 12, 2026
Agriculture groups claim an Oregon program meant to increase recycling of product packaging is eating into farm profits and want state regulators to suspend its enforcement.
Lawmakers passed the state’s “Recycling Modernization Act” in 2021 but it only became effective last year and critics argue its implementation has been “lackluster.”
Certain growers and other product producers are required to raise money through fees to ensure their packaging materials are recycled under the program.
But the Oregon Farm Bureau and the Oregonians for Food and Shelter agribusiness group argue the fees are set by a “third-party entity” using a “confidential, proprietary methodology” with “no government accountability.”
“There’s no public oversight over who is getting charged how much, or what the overall budget should be,” said Katie Murray, executive director of Oregonians for Food and Shelter. “It’s not how our members should be paying into a regulatory program.”
A designated “producer responsibility organization” — the Circular Action Alliance nonprofit — sets the fee formula, which lacks transparency and doesn’t protect farmers from “arbitrary or unrecoverable costs,” according to the agriculture groups.
A representative of the Circular Action Alliance was not available for comment as of press time.
Farmers who pack their own crops, such as berries, are subject to the fees directly, but they also may end up paying more for inputs, such as pesticides, whose manufacturers are also subject to the fees, Murray said.
“Growers are going to get hit from multiple directions for multiple stacked-up fees from this program,” she said.
Proponents of the Recycling Modernization Act, which passed as Senate Bill 582 five years ago, argued that it’s an extension of the same approach that Oregon uses for recycling cans and bottles, which also initially faced resistance but has since been widely embraced.
“Polls show that our constituents support recycling and are not happy with the current status,” said former Sen. Lee Beyer, D-Springfield. “They don’t like the idea of their recycling going into the dump. This bill begins to address those concerns.”
The program’s opponents counter that farmers oftentimes already contribute to recycling efforts, such as with clamshell containers for berries that incorporate recycled materials, so the fees are duplicative of those efforts.
“The fees could exceed what the average berry farmer earns in a year, putting some farms at risk of closure and driving up food costs for Oregon families,” said Lauren Kuenzi, government and political affairs director for the Oregon Farm Bureau, during a legislative hearing earlier this year.
Farm groups asked lawmakers to exempt certain packaging for berries and meat from the fees earlier this year, which was opposed by the program’s supporters, who argued it would saddle other manufacturers with higher costs.
That proposed exemption, House Bill 4030, was approved by the House Climate, Energy and Environment Committee but ended up dying in the House Rules Committee earlier this year.
Meanwhile, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors filed a lawsuit against the program last year and in February won an injunction blocking Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality from enforcing the program against its members.
A federal judge approved that preliminary injunction after finding the lawsuit raised “serious questions” about the merits of the plaintiff’s arguments and determining there’s a “likelihood of irreparable injury” from the program.
A five-day trial in the case is scheduled for July 13, so critics want Oregon regulators to “pause” its enforcement more broadly at least until the matter of the program’s legality is cleared up.
“Place the program on hold until the courts can make a ruling,” Murray said.
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Nearly half of Oregon counties are now in emergency drought status as the state adds a high-tech tool to its firefighting arsenal.
The Oregon Department of Forestry says the new multi-mission aircraft could help crews find fires before they grow out of control.
The aircraft is packed with artificial intelligence, thermal imaging and night vision, and uses advanced mapping software to detect heat and track new fire starts.
When lightning strikes in remote parts of Oregon, officials say the race to find a fire begins immediately. The plane then flies in behind the storm, scanning the landscape for hot spots and early signs of fire.
“It’s a new tool in the toolbox to help us identify, detect and get firefighters to new fire starts around the state as quickly as possible,” said Kyle Williams, ODF’s deputy director of fire operations.
Williams said the aircraft can pick up heat from new fires even before flames are visible.
“And minutes matter. Seconds matter,” Williams said. “This plane is cutting those minutes and seconds down significantly.”
That information goes straight to crews on the ground, helping them prioritize the most dangerous fires.
Officials say rapid response is key to keeping new fires from spreading before they get out of control.
The aircraft replaces a plane that has been in service for more than 40 years and is part of a $13.23 million investment funded through state bonds and contributions from forest landowners.
Officials say the project has been in the works since 2018.
Fire officials add dry conditions are already developing in parts of the state, raising concerns about a challenging summer fire season.
“The fire starts that do happen are going to require rapid response,” Williams said. “This is going to help us with aggressive initial attack.”
Officials say the goal is simple — find fires fast, keep them small and protect Oregon communities before the next big fire takes off.
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