With ‘That Team Out West,’ the Oregon Ducks are making a B1G statement

The Oregon Ducks are embarking on a new venture this fall, joining the Big Ten Conference as new members starting officially on Friday, August 2. No longer are they members of the Pac-12, or in a conference alongside teams like Oregon State, Washington State, and Stanford.

While the Big Ten may be new to the Ducks, it is far from a new conference. Standing since 1896, the Big Ten is the oldest conference in all of college football, and it is laden with traditions and rivalries everywhere you look.

In order for the Ducks to properly introduce themselves to new conference members, they have to properly inform themselves of these rivalries and traditions. So far, I think the University of Oregon has done a pretty adequate job of that.

On Thursday afternoon, the Ducks announced a new four-part documentary series titled “That Team Out West.” The Hard Knocks-style project will follow Oregon through fall camp and tell the stories of the players and coaches on and off the field.

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So what does this video project have to do with history and tradition in the Big Ten? It’s all in the name.

If you know the Big Ten, then you know that the most heated rivalry comes between Ohio State and Michigan . It has so much bad blood that Buckeyes fans won’t even call the Wolverines by name, instead referring to them as “That Team Up North.”

It appears that the Ducks are sending a warning to the rest of the conference, implying that they could very well be in that rivalry conversation going forward.

On this week’s episode of the Bleav in Oregon Podcast, myself and Jonathan Stewart talked to Scott Anderson, the Senior Associate Director of Video for the Ducks. He told us all about the project, and confirmed that Oregon is indeed trying to be “That Team Out West.”

“We wanted to hit on some of those Big Ten traditions, and we wanted to be a part of them,” Anderson said. “If you’re an Ohio State fan, we want you to hate us. That’s the goal, we want to be known as that.”

Photo Courtesy of Scott Anderson/University of Oregon

Photo Courtesy of Scott Anderson/University of Oregon

Photo Courtesy of Scott Anderson/University of Oregon

There were a number of options for naming this documentary series, but in the end, “That Team Out West” is the one that kept circling back into the conversation as the clear choice over the past few months.

“We had a list of names that we were thinking of all summer long, and then for the Rooted in Substance documentary , we did a couple of interviews and people were saying it without being prompted,” Anderson said. “Everyone that we interviewed said ‘That team out West,’ or some variation of that. So that’s when it clicked in our heads that like, ‘Okay, this is the name.'”

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Beyond the rivalry talk, calling yourself “That Team Out West” is bold as well, considering that the Ducks aren’t the only West Coast team joining the Big Ten. The USC Trojans , UCLA Bruins , and Washington Huskies are coming along as well.

But Oregon is dubbing themselves “That Team Out West,” whether other schools like it or not. In 2024, they are the premiere team out west to worry about.

“Whether it’s audacity or us just kind of acknowledging that ‘Hey, that’s how we feel,’ this year we are that team that is the premiere team out West,” Anderson said. “But we have work to do, and you’ll hear that in the show as well. Whatever the outside noise says doesn’t really matter.”

We’ll get a chance to see what that work looks like every Tuesday night throughout the month of August as episodes are released heading into the 2024 season. The first episode comes out on Tuesday, August 6.

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