Oregon Opens Up Deluge on Tennessee

The Oregon Ducks traveled across three timezones and put on a Steve Spurrier-style beatdown on the Tennessee Volunteers. In a blistering 45-0 run that began late in the second quarter and extended into the fourth, Oregon scored on offense, defense and special teams. By the time thebloodletting ended, the Volunteers had gone from a 13-3 second quarter lead to a 48-13 beatdown. What had been a packed house crowd of over 102,000 that endured a 70-minute lightning delay ended with a smattering of Vol fans and lots of Oregon Duck fans who had traveled across the country to watch their team dominate.

For Tennessee, it provided a fitting epilogue for the worst 36 hours, potentially, in major men's athletics history. Friday afternoon, head basketball coach Bruce Pearl admitted that he lied to NCAA investigators in a press conference that was designed to drown out all criticism thanks to the onrush of major college football games the next day. By 11:30 p.m. Eastern, the Vols were swamped and a once proud program had fallen to 14-14 in its past 28 games with September losses in three consecutive seasons to three different Pac-10 teams. Ultimately, we learned two things on Saturday night in Knoxville, Tenn.: Oregon is good and Tennessee is not very good. Whether Oregon is great and Tennessee is awful remains to be seen, but for one night Oregon looked like national title contenders and Tennessee looked like it would struggle mightily in the SEC.


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Julie Berry K. D. Aubert Karen Carreno Karolína Kurková Kasey Chambers