I Really Want To Root For Oregon This New Years...

...you know, have a team from my Pacific Northwest win the first-ever college football playoffs and finally humble the arrogant SEC.  But then, arrogant sadly describes Oregon too, doesn't it.

But even laying aside for now the character failings of the Duck's obnoxious fan base, part of why I'm finding it difficult to root for Oregon this year is because their grad student Union had to straight-up go on strike this month in order to win a compensation package that is still even worse than mine.  Considering the literal millions that Nike pours into Oregon's athletics each year, that shabby treatment of the grad students who do the actual teaching is utterly unconscionable. 

And University of Oregon is supposed to be one of the good guys!  Right?  Eugene in most folks' imaginations is grouped together with, say, Berkley, or Greenwich Village, as one of those havens for ultra-leftist thought (Eugene had not one but two separate Occupy encampments back in 2011).  If even they have student labor problems and horridly misplaced spending priorities, then what of the rest of us?

I fear that if Oregon finally defeats the SEC this year, it will only because they will have become an SEC team in all but name, which would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed.   Combined with the repressed concussion reports and fake-classes scandals and excused sexual assault and general de-emphasis on academics, each year makes it more and more difficult for me to watch college football in good conscience.