The Ducks go back to Wisconsin: On Camp Randall, Caller ID, Gatorade and bees

Kenny Farr remembers Oregon’s last trip to Camp Randall for two reasons.

Kenny Farr remembers Oregon’s last trip to Camp Randall for two reasons.

The first dates him a bit. See, it was back in 2000, when Oregon’s current equipment director was a student manager for the Ducks. This was back before cellphones, back before TikTok, back when kids had to get a bit creative for their own fun.

And as he arrived to the University of Wisconsin stadium, Farr couldn’t wait to pick up the phone in the locker room and start dialing his friends back at their Eugene apartment in Chase Village.

“We thought it was crazy because on the Caller ID it said, ‘University of Wisconsin,’” Farr said. “I remember getting home and scrolling through it and being able to see it pop up.”

Wild times, Farr said. And when I talked with him back in September about the Big Ten travel schedule, he said the next story — the one about the bench, the Gatorade, the bees and Bellotti — was even wilder.

The Ducks had just arrived for their Friday walk-through at Camp Randall, a stadium they were visiting for the first time since a 22-19 loss to the Badgers in 1978. The 2000 Oregon squad had just beat Nevada in Week 1, came into Madison with junior-year Joey Harrington at quarterback, Maurice Morris at running back and a whole lot of optimism.

But as the Ducks took to their sideline, coach Mike Bellotti noticed a swarm of bees buzzing around the team’s bench.

Someone, before the Ducks had arrived, had doused the pine in Gatorade.

And someone was going to have to take care of it.

Bellotti surveyed the sideline.

He saw players.

That wouldn’t work.

He saw coaches.

Definitely not.

He saw Farr.

“You see him scanning, and then he gets to me and my buddy Allen,” Farr said. “And he goes, ‘You two…move the benches.’ And we’re like, ‘Damn, man. That’s where you learn where you’re at on the Totem pole.’

“So we moved the benches.”

Farr escaped unscathed, though the Ducks couldn’t quite sting the No. 5 Badgers in a 27-23 loss. He returns to Madison 24 years later this week, this time with the No. 1 team in the country and a bit higher up the pole — just in case the place is buzzing.

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor