In Boston they had The Curse of the Bambino and until Johnny Damon and David Ortiz made all those clutch hits in 2004 the fans endured an 86-year championship drought, one that all started with selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1918.
Sometimes it seems the Ducks are cursed in their championship chase. In 2007 the football squad looked so close until Dennis Dixon went down in a heap at a night game in Arizona. In 2014 Marcus Mariota won the Heisman Trophy, but the Ducks reached the playoffs without Ifo Ekpre-Olomu, Devon Allen or Darren Carrington.
In the 2019-20 season the Oregon women's basketball team is 31-2, ranked No. 3 in the country, paced by the three-headed monster of Sabrina Ionescu (the John Wooden Player of the Year,) Ruthy Hebard and Satou Sabally.
They win their last 20 games in a row, putting up 79, 88 and 89 points at the PAC-12 Championship while dumping No. 13 Arizona and No. 7 Stanford in the league tournament. They're poised for a championship run until March Madness is cancelled due to the Covid Pandemic, Ionescu watching helplessly with a mask over her face.
In last season's playoff loss to Indiana, Dante Moore is on the field with a fifth-team running back and the left tackle goes down with a torn ACL.
Then this weekend at Jane Sanders Stadium, the No. 14 Ducks lose 4-0 and 5-4 as ace pitcher Lyndsey Grein watches helplessly in the dugout with a patch over her left eye, eliminated in their home ballpark.
The Red Sox didn't end their curse until they came back from three games down to beat the Yankees in the ALCS. That's what it takes to end one, a refusal to lose, a determination to steamroll the very idea of a curse.
Training to build toughness is the way out of the seeming jinx
On Heceta Beach in Florence, Oregon, Wilson Love is putting the Oregon football team through a grueling off season workout designed to build both toughness and camaraderie. He instills the core values of the program, creating sweat equity along with connection and growth.
Always competing. #GoDucks pic.twitter.com/NYZVCBuKl8
— Oregon Football (@oregonfootball) May 16, 2026
He tells them, "Today we got stations. Everything is a challenge and a competition. One versus one. Win your one-on-one matchup."
"Beach. Mountains. It doesn't matter. You're always training." An early morning bus ride from Eugene to Florence and then it's football boot camp. The entire team is there.
They carry each other across the finish line. They crawl through the sand. They heave a giant medicine ball across the volleyball net. The entire team is there, divided into squads. Dante Moore roars after a winning point. They dig around obstacles, buying in to the competition and what it demands of them.
The gray team strains at the ropes. Poncho Laloulu dances in joy as the boom boxes blare out, "You can have it all."
This is how you defeat a curse. By refusing to acknowledge it has any validity, any power over you. The adversity of the past just makes a corps stronger. They embrace it. The unit has to think, now is our time. The misfortunes of the past have no power over us.
It's incredibly unfortunate that Sabrina didn't get to compete for that title, or Grein had to watch helplessly as her sisters fell a few innings short, innings she could have given them. Marcus scrambles out of the pocket but there is no one to catch the ball. When Oregon finally wins one, it will be for all of them.
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