On Friday, November 23, 2018, Oregon State University
football team will play the University of Oregon for the 122nd
time.
Oregon Agricultural College (as OSU was called then) began
playing collegiate football in 1893 when the school had only 204 students. Rules of play and eligibility were different
then so OAC could field a team which included several people who were not
current college students, such as a faculty member the son of the school
president and some students in the preparatory (high school) division.
The University of Oregon fielded a team the next year and
the rivalry began. It is the seventh oldest rivalry game and the oldest on the
west coast. Oregon State won the first
game 16-0. Over the decades, Oregon has won 64 games; Oregon State has won
47. Ten games ended in a tie, including
a 3-3 tie in 1914.
 |
| Oregon vs. Oregon State, 1914 |
The next year, OAC played its first game outside the western
United States, when the team traveled to the Midwest to play Michigan Agricultural
College (Michigan State). The Beavers won that game but not that year's one against the University of Oregon.
During the remainder of the circa 1920 era, Oregon State won
the 1917 game played in Portland and the 1923 and 1925 games played in
Eugene. The 1920 and 1921 games ended in
0-0 ties; Oregon won the remaining 5 games.
A series of mounted
footballs commemorate the 1925 season in which Oregon State compiled a 7-2
record.
In those years, the Oregon-Oregon State games was called the
Oregon Classic or the State Championship.
It wasn't dubbed the “civil war” until 1929.
During halftime of the “civil war” OAC students would form a
line, hands on shoulders of the person in front, and march in a serpentine
around the field while waving banners and cheering.
After a victory, fans would assemble and on a march down to
the Mary's River to watch Methodist minister J. R. N. Bell toss his top hat
into the Mary's River.
By
Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath,
Oregon
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