Ducks vs. Arizona – should we be nervous?

Reprinted with permission from a son-to-mother email about tonight’s football game between the Universities of Oregon and Arizona, broadcast live nationwide on ESPN starting at 6 p.m.

I don’t know how nervous we should be tonight. Here’s a quick summary:

We should be nervous:

– Arizona has a good big-play pass offense and know how to score.
– Their coach is a defensive thinker and might come up with some good stuff.
– It’s a road PAC-10 game, and we haven’t had one of those against a decent team yet.
– Arizona clobbered us last year, and two years ago (the Kellen Clemens 10-2 season) we barely escaped from Tuscon with a win.
– Are the Ducks REALLY the second best team in the country, are we REALLY going to play for the national title, I mean, REALLY?

We shouldn’t be nervous:

– Arizona lost to New Mexico.
– Arizona is 4-6.
– We can win on the road in big, meaningful games this year (see Michigan).
– Dennis Dixon is good at football.
– Jonathan Stewart is good at running from one end of the field to the other without getting tackled to the ground, which is advantageous in the game of football.
– It’s on national TV, it’s off a bye (and Mike Bellotti is 12-1 after a bye with the Ducks), we will be focused.
– If we can’t beat Arizona, we would have gotten clobbered against LSU anyway and that would have been sad.

And there you have it. I’m nervous. I keep telling myself this is not your last year’s Ducks team. But I realize how preposterous it is that l’il ol’ Oregon could play for the National Championship. And then I think hey, l’il ol’ Maxwell’s mom is running for City Council, and some people think she has a shot at it. Amazing stuff happens.