University Of Oregon

Newport Beach residents Bob and Beverly Lewis, owners of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Silver Charm, have donated $10 million to their alma mater, the University of Oregon. The gift will set up the Robert and Beverly Lewis Neurosciences Center and help the university launch its interdisciplinary Brain, Biology, Machine initiative. The couple own a beer distributorship in Pomona and Lancaster. The Lewises met at Oregon in the late 1940s.

This isn't a myth or a theory or conjecture or a hypothesis -- it's the inconvenient truth. Five of Chip Kelly's six losses as Oregon's head football coach have come when his opponent has had more than a week to prepare for the Ducks' rapid-waddle offense. "It's an annoying little fact, isn't it?" Oregon guard Carson York said last week in advance of the Rose Bowl on Monday. The exception was USC's victory in November at Eugene, a week after the Trojans' home win over Washington.

Did you read where the University of Oregon has erected a 12-story mural ballyhooing its football team on the side of L.A.'s Hotel Figueroa, just a couple of miles north of USC? In warfare, such an enemy incursion would be called a "Trojan horse." But considering Oregon's mascot, I guess it would be more accurate to term it a "Trojan duck."

USC seeks to end a five-game slide in the state of Oregon. The Ducks are trying to return to the Bowl Championship Series title game. Staff writer Gary Klein examines the game's issues and matchups: -- Leading men With Stanford's Andrew Luck having failed to solve the Oregon Ducks, USC quarterback Matt Barkley has an opportunity to show that he is worthy of Heisman Trophy discussion. Barkley has passed for 29 touchdowns and had six passes intercepted, but he won't have all of his weapons at full strength against the Ducks.

Silila Malepeai is one big Duck--5-foot-11, 265 pounds. But, on Thursday afternoon, he turned into one big chicken. Malepeai was one of three Oregon Ducks football players judging a duck-calling contest at Universal Studios when Rocky, a real duck, suddenly bolted off the chair next to him. A startled Malepeai immediately got off his seat. Asked later about his nerves, the senior nose tackle didn't duck the issue: "I didn't want the duck to go wild on me," he said.

Yet another reporter comes to ask questions, so Joey Harrington interrupts his lunch, answering patiently while sneaking bites from a sandwich. Everyone wants to know about the poster. Even Harrington finds it hard to believe. The University of Oregon quarterback smiles as he recalls how athletic department officials approached him with the idea of draping his picture on the side of a building in New York City. It would be big, they said. Really big. He thought they were joking.

Southland Builder Donates $10 Million: Los Angeles developer Charles H. Lundquist made the gift to his alma mater, the University of Oregon at Eugene, to support educational and research projects at its business school. Lundquist is chairman of Continental Development Corp., which has developed projects near Los Angeles International Airport and other parts of Southern California.

University of Oregon Coach Rich Brooks was given the additional job of athletic director at the school. Brooks will receive an additional $20,000 annually in revenue generated by the university-owned Oregon Sports Network. His current compensation package is $196,030, including a base salary of $97,850. Brooks replaces Bill Byrne, who becomes athletic director at Nebraska on Nov. 1.

The NCAA put the Oregon football program on probation for two years Wednesday for violations involving the recruitment of College of the Canyons running back J.J. Arrington in January 2003. Oregon reported the violations and agreed with the sanctions. The Ducks do not lose any scholarships and remain eligible for bowl games, the NCAA said. "We're trying to win the right way, and we're not going to cheat," Coach Mike Bellotti said. "I feel very bad about this because it happened under my watch."

Three Oregon State players settle under the basket, awaiting the rebound. Suddenly, a yellow-and-green blur flies past them, grabs the ball off the rim and slams it through the hoop. The crowd responds. "Luuuuuuuuke." Richard Lucas, University of Oregon center, hustles up court in time to deflect a pass, forcing a turnover. A moment later, he has the ball along the baseline, steps in and jams another one home. "Luuuuuuuuke."

Tony Seminary never expected to experience Pasadena in January after enduring Boise in September. Yet there the Oregon football fan was Friday afternoon at the Rose Bowl, a T-shirt with quarterback Jeremiah Masoli's No. 8 on his back and a plastic duck call draped from his neck. "To be here today from that," Seminary said, referring to the Ducks' 19-8 loss to Boise State in their season opener, "I would have never guessed." Seminary was so disgusted with the Ducks' listless play against the Broncos -- not to mention the infamous postgame punch by running back LeGarrette Blount -- that he e-mailed Oregon Coach Chip Kelly and jokingly attached an invoice for his travel expenses.

Ohio State put the clamps on Oregon's run-and-fun offense throughout Friday's Rose Bowl, but there was one player the Buckeyes never got a handle on -- Kenjon Barner , a redshirt freshman from Riverside Notre Dame High. Barner ran for 64 yards in seven carries, caught a 13-yard pass, returned a punt for 28 yards and took back four kickoffs for 122 yards, including a long of 39 yards. Barner was a star running back in high school, but Oregon recruited him as a defensive back.

Frankly Scarlet (and gray), that was beautiful. The play of your young, Vince-like quarterback, the schemes you drew up, the time-consuming marches down the field, the marching band -- you pitched the perfect game plan. The two-tone hues on the mountains, as the sun set over the Arroyo Seco, even resembled Ohio State's uniforms. Woody, were you up there? Friday's 26-17 victory over Oregon in the 96th Rose Bowl was everything Columbus could have conjured. It was vindication after three straight major bowl losses.

Oregon is in the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1995. Ohio State returns to the Arroyo Seco for the first time since 1997. Times staff writer Gary Klein looks at some of the game's key issues and matchups when the Pacific 10 Conference champion Ducks play the Big Ten Conference champion Buckeyes. Movers and shakers Oregon quarterback Jeremiah Masoli mans the controls of a spread-option offense that operates at a quick pace before and after the snap. Masoli has completed 59% of his passes for 15 touchdowns, with five interceptions.

Casey Matthews will have no trouble finding his way to the Rose Bowl this morning. "It seems like everyone in my family has played in it but me," said the junior linebacker for Oregon. It seems like everyone in his family has won there, too. His father Clay, uncle Bruce and brother Clay III all did that for USC. So Casey had some questions to answer when he showed up at Oregon. "People looked at me and just said, 'Oh, you're branching off.' But I just wanted to set my own legacy," he said.

Jeremiah Masoli is the kind of quarterback college football loves and the National Football League recommends to the Toronto Argonauts. Oregon's junior quarterback is everything the pro guys hate: 5 feet 11 and as fast as he is tall. He sometimes throws off his wrong foot and has developed this fantastic/terrible habit of plowing people over. "Running through somebody, there's no better feeling than that," Masoli said Tuesday. Until you run into Ray Lewis. Masoli's massive hair, held up by a rubber band, is first-round material -- it makes him look 6-3. From the neck down, though, he's probably a free-agent invite to training camp.

Because of my deep family ties to the University of Oregon and my long-held sense of Eugene as an open-minded and tolerant place, the ugly, bigoted way that some Ducks fans behaved during the men's basketball home game last week against UCLA was an embarrassment. That feeling, and my outrage, deepened when a school spokesman said after the game that little could have been done to keep unruly fans from yelling whatever they pleased.

A college student has pleaded guilty to illegally distributing thousands of pirated software programs, movies and pieces of music from his Web site, giving the government its first Internet piracy conviction under a 1997 law. Jeffrey Levy, 22, was charged in February with violating the federal No Electronic Theft Act after investigators found the material had been distributed through equipment at his apartment in Eugene. The senior at the University of Oregon entered his plea in U.S.

Friday's Rose Bowl shapes up as a clash of styles, with Oregon's free-wheeling offense, which averaged nearly 38 points a game, taking on Ohio State's stingy defense, which gave up an average of only 12 points. But there's an even bigger contrast between the teams' practice fields, which are just a few hundred yards apart at the Home Depot Center in Carson. While Buckeyes Coach Jim Tressel runs a tight ship, allowing few visitors to watch his team drill, Ducks Coach Chip Kelly invited nearly four dozen children from a local Boys & Girls Club to Oregon's workout on Monday.

We hate Oregon . . . we're cheering for Oregon? It doesn't happen often -- maybe once every 113 years -- that you find Beavers glued to the radio praying their archrivals can pull out a victory in Arizona. But that's what happened Saturday night, after Oregon State defeated Washington State, 42-10. In Tucson, Oregon and Arizona were engaging in a fairly meaningful game. "Everyone's got the phone, right?" Oregon State Coach Mike Riley recounted Tuesday during the weekly Pacific 10 Conference football coaches' conference call.