Trash Talkin’ TJ is back for Oregon and he’s not happy

Dear Sirs,

I was disheartened to learn that our gallant gentlemen were bested on the field by the interlopers from the Commonwealth’s capital city. I as always encourage you to be not dismayed. Every morning I arise and immediate submerge my feet in a bucket of cold water as a means to jolt the body and invigorate the mind for the work of the day ahead. Perhaps this unfortunate result is the cold water that will steel our young men for the arduous road ahead.

Speaking of this arduous road, I must strenuously object to the foolhardy nature of the next contest upon the football squad’s schedule. Gentlemen, it is one thing to travel far afield from the Commonwealth of Virginia in search of worthy foes, but to send an entire company of University men by horse-drawn wagon beyond the farthest reaches of the Louisiana Purchase and into the Oregon Territory? Why, it is unconscionable.

I can scarcely fathom what this Oregon State University must look like, a mere sixty-five miles from the shores of the western ocean. Have they masonry buildings yet? Have glass blowers transported their craft over the mighty Rocky Mountains, or do these frontiersmen still keep the rain from entering their log cabins with animal pelts?

How can our students be expected to compete with any modicum of strategy if their minds are wholly preoccupied with the ever present concern for their physical safety? Oregon is the wilderness, good sirs. Who will be present to observe this athletic contest? A company of bears and elk I would deduce, since any man in this country must devote every waking hour to avoiding starvation. Have precautions been taken to ensure that our students will not fall prey to the regressive ways of the Northwest Territory? I surmise that the crossroad of Eugene is merely populated by a small inn operated by the Eugene family, and our fair lads will be forced to find shelter in the untamed wilds of western Oregon. This is indeed a truly bizarre undertaking.

In researching this dubious endeavor, I even discovered considerable evidence that these Oregon men have abandoned the Christian god of our fair nation, and have taken up worship of the long abandoned Greek goddess Nike. While I most certainly applaud the continued study of Greek as an essential topic for the men of the University to explore, this is beyond all reason.

I would have demanded that this quixotic venture be cancelled directly, but in order to be present for tomorrow’s contest, the men of our university must have left for the Pacific country no later than the third week of May. Let us all pray that they perform admirably upon the athletic fields in the wilderness in which we have assigned them to foray, and that they return east of the Rocky Mountains with all due haste, lest they be trapped in the desolate western country by the first snowfall.

With concern, I remain,

Thomas Jefferson