Only one thing could make John Dick more excited about Monday’s national title game pitting his beloved Oregon Ducks against the Ohio State Buckeyes. He wishes his dad were alive to see it. In 1939, Dick’s father was Oregon’s leading scorer when the Ducks defeated Ohio State in the first NCAA tournament title game. Dick believes his father would have enjoyed the coincidence of Oregon and Ohio State meeting again in the title game of the first college football playoff. “I’m sad that my dad’s not here to see it,” Dick said. “We went to the title game where Oregon lost to Cam Newton and Auburn [in 2011]. He would have made it to this one somehow too if he were still alive. I think the Ohio State thing would have really tickled him. He would have really loved that.” The elder John Dick was the last surviving starter from Oregon’s 1939 “Tall Firs” basketball team when he died at age 92 in Sept. 2011. Were he still alive today, he might indeed chuckle at the familiar matchup on Monday night … and at how little else the two title games share in common. The hastily planned inaugural NCAA tournament was such an unknown that media coverage was scant, ticket sales were slow and some teams even turned down invitations because they preferred to rest after a long season. The inaugural college football playoff has been such a rousing success that the two semifinals were the most-watched shows in U.S. cable TV history and Monday’s title game might eclipse them both. To further illustrate the dissimilarities between the two Oregon-Ohio State championship games, below is an infographic comparing and contrasting the two…
Continue Reading: Oregon and Ohio State first met for a championship 76 years ago
