The right book came today, given how bad I feel about Oregon’s loss to UCLA

Today it was a pleasure to watch a college football team located here in Oregon play a game with skill, excitement, poise, energy, teamwork, and great coaching. That was the Oregon State University team, which crushed San Diego State 66-14, making their record 4-2.

The University of Oregon, on the other hand, which came in ranked #13 in the country, played pitifully at home in a 17-15 loss to UCLA, making their record 3-2.

I used to be much more of a Ducks fan than a Beavers fan. My fandom now has flipped, given how good I felt watching Oregon State play and how bad I felt watching Oregon play.

The only positive news I can take from Oregon’s loss is that now I’ve got an example to keep in mind of what a book that arrived from Amazon today calls the opposite of happiness. Great timing.

Here’s how the front flap description starts out:

Every age has its illusions. Our is that happiness is the natural human condition. George Lowenstein, one of the field’s most creative scholars, argues the opposite: that our lives are inextricably shaped by the darker emotions we spend so much time trying to avoid.

Well, thanks to the Oregon football debacle today, my life has gotten some additional shaping, for sure. I’d been looking forward to the UCLA game for several weeks (Oregon had a bye week) after the Ducks’ inspiring victory over USC even though their starting quarterback, Dante Moore, was (literally) knocked out of the game with a serious concussion on a cheap hit by a USC player.

Moore’s backup, Dylan Raiola, played great. So I figured he’d do equally well, if not better, today — given that Raiola had two weeks of practice as the presumptive starting quarterback against UCLA.

Nope. Raiola looked terrible. Oregonian columnist Bill Oram said in a post-game column (Huskers is a reference to Nebraska, the team where Raiola was the quarterback prior to transferring to Oregon):

Raiola was an unmitigated disaster and his performance likely had some Huskers fans nodding sympathetically. It wasn’t just the numbers that were bad, though they were horrid. The final damage: 6-of-19 for 43 yards and two interceptions. But Raiola was off target all day. He missed open receivers and basic checks. He was lucky to escape with only two interceptions and that none were returned for touchdowns. He was benched going into the fourth quarter after he threw a back-footed feather that was easily intercepted for the Ducks’ fifth of six turnovers.

Oregon’s defense was solid. Their kicking game also. But in addition to Raiola, the offense and coaching were really bad. The first awful decision by head coach Dan Lanning was to go for a 2-point conversion in the opening minutes of the game after Oregon had scored following the recovery of an absurd fumble by the UCLA quarterback (the ball simply slipped out of his hand as he was preparing to throw a pass).

So rather than the score being 7-3 in favor of Oregon, it was 6-3, since the 2-point conversion failed. Even worse, this meant that Oregon had to go for another 2-point conversion when the Ducks scored a touchdown with 2:15 left in the fourth quarter, making the score 17-15. Which also failed.

Thus if Lanning had simply decided to kick the damn extra point at the beginning of the game, the score late in the fourth quarter would have been 17-16, and another extra point kick would have tied the game.

Sure, maybe UCLA would have scored in the final two minutes to win the game. The Oregon defense was playing well, though. Oregon was playing at home with the crowd behind them. If the game had gone to overtime, the Ducks would have had a decent chance of coming out on top.

But Lanning played it cute. As he has done too often in his time as head coach at Oregon. I painfully recall the Washington game several years ago when Lanning passed up short field goal attempts, choosing to go for it on fourth down. That cost Oregon the game. In this game, the Ducks were running the ball well in a drive that quickly got to the UCLA red zone, inside the 20 yard line.

Lanning, or his incompetent offensive coordinator, or both of them, then inexplicably decided to attempt a “wildcat” formation where a running back (I think it was) took a direct snap and attempted a botched handoff that resulted in an Oregon turnover. Sportswriter Dan Canzano wrote in his substack post about the game today:

• Dan Lanning’s decision to go for two points in the first quarter loomed large on Saturday. It was a mistake. The Ducks had just recovered a fumble for a TD. They had momentum and the lead, but failed to convert on the try. It left the score at 6-3 instead of 7-3 in the first quarter.

• Lanning said the coaching staff saw a look it liked and decided to go for two there. I always like the look of “7” on the scoreboard vs. “6.”

• That extra point would matter a few hours later in the fourth quarter, when it was 17-15 instead of 17-16 after UO’s final TD. The team’s second two-point try — this one to tie the game — came from a penalty-shortened distance. Oregon’s two-point run attempt was stuffed short of the goal line.

So once again, poor coaching played a big role in a crucial Oregon loss. On the other hand, John Canzano said about the Oregon State game:

The announcers of the Oregon State game said they thought Oregon State had a better chance of making the College Football Playoff than Oregon does. I agree. Oregon has to defeat Ohio State to have a chance of making the playoff. Oregon State just needs to defeat Boise State in the Pac-12 conference championship. Seems doable, the way the Beavers are playing.