Last year, I went to the USC vs. University of Oregon football game at Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon. At the beginning of the game, the announcer in the loud speaker at the game proclaimed that:

“It Never Rains at Autzen Stadium!”

As he said it, all of the fans yelled it along with him and began cheering loudly. I turned to my friend that I was at the game with and asked her what the deal was. I knew for a fact that Oregon is notorious for its heavy rains. In fact, I had watched an Oregon football game the weekend before on TV where it was a torrential downpour! My informant said that it’s just a part of what they do at football games.It’s a tradition, she said.

She told me that they’ve always done it, and that they even did it when her brother was at school there in the early 2000’s. “It’s not that it really doesn’t ever rain at Autzen Stadium”, she said, “it’s more about the symbolic meaning”. Something like, the Ducks never have a bad game at Autzen Stadium, or that they will always play well, she says.

My informant told me that there have been multiple occasions in her college career where they have blatantly said that while it was raining or pouring. She says that it’s just something that brings everybody together at the games; it get’s everybody fired up. “The players love it, the fans love it, it get’s us ready to go!”.

I believe that this tradition was likely started because of Oregon’s notorious rains and long rainy season. It was likely a way of intimidating opposing teams and players. Because usually that might be the only thing that opponents know about Oregon, I see it as the University’s method of saying “you don’t know anything about us, you don’t know what you’ve got coming for you in this game”. I also think it’s symbolic, like my informant stated, that the Ducks will never play a bad game there.