Beavers lose 'a symbol and an icon'.

Byline: Bob Clark The Register-Guard

At the end, Dee Andros had the Ducks all lined up in a row.

`As a former Cougar and current Duck, I've got to tell you I loved Dee Andros,' said Bill Moos, the Oregon director of athletics.

`When I think of Oregon State, I think of Ralph Miller and Dee Andros,' UO basketball coach Ernie Kent said. `They were such legendary guys.'

`He was a unique individual,' said Dan Fouts, the former UO quarterback who went on to a Hall of Fame career in the NFL and now broadcasts college football for ABC. `To a man, his players loved playing for him and they love him to this day. That's more important than all the wins and losses, how you affect people's lives, and he certainly did.'

One after another, some of them adversaries of Andros on the football field, the past and present Ducks offered their praise and plaudits for the former Oregon State football coach and athletics director, who died Wednesday at the age of 79.

Don Stone, who played for the Ducks against Andros-coached teams and is now a vice principal at Marist High School, said Andros `was the guy who represented Oregon State football even today. What a great human being. He'll be sorely missed not just in Corvallis but in the college football world.'

As a football coach, Andros led OSU to nine wins in the 11 games he went against the Ducks. His Beavers won the first seven Civil Wars he coached in, and often the games were seen as a battle of cultures and philosophies.

`Eugene was so liberal, Corvallis was so conservative,' Fouts said. `We had the long hair and mustaches ...'

The Ducks passed the football and the Beavers ran it. If the rules seemed loose at Oregon, then great was the contrast with OSU under Andros, who learned discipline as a Marine preparing for the assault on Iwo Jima.

`He was the enemy and represented everything Oregon didn't,' Stone recalled.

Yet, as the years passed, Andros earned an almost beloved status among Ducks.

It was even Rich Brooks, one of Andros' assistants at OSU, who finally led the Oregon program back to respectability. When the Ducks hired Brooks, the current Kentucky coach said, Andros `congratulated me and wished me well, except for one game a year.'

Brooks said Andros, while resolute in his support of the Beavers, `was a believer in college athletics. In some sense, he always wished Oregon well, except for when (the Ducks) played Oregon State in anything.'

Fouts said his respect for Andros as an opposing coach turned to appreciation for the many times Andros aided the Ducks.

`That's what endeared him to Oregon fans, his willingness to participate in our fund raising as much as he did,' Fouts said. `There were many times he would be at an Oregon function to help us.'

If he was a challenge for the Ducks to defeat on the football field, it was even more difficult for Oregon to match Andros as a speaker.

Moos recalled a tour of the state in the late '90s in the week leading up to the Civil War game, when Andros filled in as Oregon State's lead speaker while the Beavers were between full-time athletics directors.

`We were the primary speakers at every spot, and I felt like the warmup band,' Moos said. `I couldn't even wait for my remarks to get over with so I could listen to Dee.

`He was one of the great motivators. You knew Dee put every ounce of energy he had into everything he did, and it was contagious. You wanted to do the same.'

`Everything he said came from the heart,' said Neal Zoumboukos, Oregon's assistant head coach, who worked at Oregon State when Andros was the athletics director. `There wasn't anything superficial about him.

`I think that's what made him so special, that he was such a great person in addition to being a great football coach.'

As a coach, Andros was legendary as a pregame speaker to get his team emotionally charged up before games. In his years as an Andros assistant, Brooks said, `I'd listen to him give those pregame speeches and I'd have tears in my eyes.'

Spurring that emotion was always seen as one of the biggest advantages Andros had in Civil War games, particularly in the five years he coached against Jerry Frei, who was forced out largely because UO boosters were frustrated by Oregon's lack of success against Andros.

`In a rivalry as intense as that, emotions can dictate the outcome of games,' Stone said. `Dee played more to that than Jerry did.'

Brooks last spoke to Andros a week ago. Moos had made sure all of the former Oregon athletics directors knew of Andros' failing health, and each then contacted Andros or his family.

`He couldn't really talk, but I just told him `you're a tough guy, battle through it,' ' Brooks said. `I don't think you're ever ready to tell somebody goodbye before he's gone, and I knew he was a battler. He told his daughter he was disappointed he couldn't go to the Washington game Saturday night.'