CORKY: A big ‘splash’ to open the college football season

No one has seen it happen, but the myth persists.

Birds, they say, have circled the bright blue football field at Boise State and — mistaking it for water — crashed where they had planned to splash.

A cow once strayed from a nearby pasture, tried to graze on the artificial turf and mooed indigo.

Two years ago, seriously, Bronco football coach Chris Petersen claimed he found a dead duck on the bizarro blue carpet.

But the Oregon Ducks aren’t falling for such fowl play.

They are, nonetheless, underducks in tomorrow’s season opener at Boise State (7:15 p.m. Green Valley time, on ESPN).

It should be a sensational college football kickoff.

Boise State is ranked No. 14 nationally. Oregon, No. 16.

Last year on Oregon’s home rug — it’s nice and normal and green — Boise State defeated the Ducks, 37-32.

But Oregon was without Justin Roper, who opened the season at quarterback. In fact, the Ducks went through three quarterbacks and Jeremiah Masoli, who started against Boise State, was knocked out of the game early with an injury.

The Ducks rebounded to finish 10-3, including a 42-31 win over Oklahoma State in the Holiday Bowl.

Boise State, 12-0 in the regular season, was snookered out of a BCS bowl, a recurring problem for the Idaho powerhouse, then lost to Texas Christian, 17-16, in the Poinsettia Bowl.

Both the Holiday and Poinsettia bowls were played in San Diego, a week apart.

Petersen, in his third year as Boise State coach, is a former assistant at Oregon.

The Ducks are coached by Chip Kelly, who replaced Mike Bellotti when Mike became Oregon’s athletic director. Kelly had been offensive coordinator, so the transition should be smooth.

Masoli recovered from his injury in the loss to Boise State, started 10 games for the Ducks and had a superb season. He engineered a 55-45 win over Arizona last season in Eugene, and a 54-20 rout of Arizona State in Tempe.

Kellen Moore, a sophomore, directs the Bronco offense. As one of the best freshmen in the nation last season, the left-handed Moore passed for 3,486 yards and 25 touchdowns, leading Boise State to the Western Athletic Conference championship.

“It’s two nationally ranked teams playing in a nationally televised game,” Kelly told Ron Bellamy of the Eugene Register Guard. “Our players get excited to play in this kind of game and so does the coaching staff.”

Wouldn’t Kelly prefer an easier way, though, to make his debut as head coach of the Ducks?

“You don’t want to play Johnson State or Adams State,” he said. “You want to go up against a tremendous football team, which Boise State is.”

Petersen expects a tough battle tomorrow night.

“Not only do we face a team with great coaches and great players,” the boss of the Broncos said, “we know they’ll have some things we haven’t seen.”

One thing they haven’t seen is the latest change in the Oregon uniform design. The Ducks have added gray helmets and pants to their vast wardrobe this year, to go with “wings” on their shoulder pads, stripes and zig-zags and other brilliant ideas from Nike, whose co-founder, Phil Knight, is a UO grad and No. 1 Duck fan.

Of his first game in charge of the multi-colored gaggle of Ducks from Eugene, Kelly said: “We hope it’s an unbelievable atmosphere.”

Well, he can count on an unbelievable — some would say regrettable — blue football field.

And viewers in Green Valley can count on a special treat:

The best match-up in memory to launch the college gridiron season.

Former Tucson Citizen columnist Corky Simpson writes a weekly commentary for the Green Valley News.