Bob Welch: Father, mother re-experience son's magic.

Byline: Bob Welch The Register-Guard

Just like the previous year, when he had brought his 18-year son Riley to Autzen Stadium for the first time, Stuart McDowell of Pacific Grove, Calif., sat in the same seat Saturday as Oregon beat Washington State: Section 28, Row 49, Seat 20.

Only this time, Riley McDowell wasn't in Seat 19. Which is why Stuart thought his wife - and Riley's mom - Caren needed to be there.

Needed to eat at the same Track Town Pizza place on Franklin Boulevard Friday night where Stuart and their Duck-loving son had eaten a year ago before the 2006 UCLA game, on the same second-weekend-in-October as this one.

"Man, everywhere you look in Eugene there's Duck stuff!" he had told his mom, a 50-year-old physical therapist, after the trip.

Needed to stay in the same Campus Inn motel.

Needed to show her the same "O" on the center of the field where Riley had stood early that Saturday morning and called his high school football coach, Buck Roggeman, on his cell phone and said: "Coach, I'm here. In Autzen. Standing in the `O'! It's awesome!"

This past weekend, you see, was a pilgrimage of sorts for a mother and father whose son had died between last season and this. But only after "going out" in a way that inspired the Pacific Grove community so deeply that the overflow space at his church memorial service overflowed.

"Riley McDowell didn't spend the last couple of years dying," Roggeman says. "He spent the last couple of years living. And that weekend in Eugene was a weekend that gave him life."

Riley's love for the Ducks was rooted in his father.

Stuart, from Huntington Beach, Calif., had come to Oregon in 1970-71 on a tennis scholarship. Though driven back to California by the fourth-wettest year in state history, he maintained a dogged loyalty to the Ducks, who had fulfilled his dream to earn a college scholarship.

Riley inherited that loyalty.

"There was only one kid at Pacific Grove High who wore Duck stuff, and that was Riley McDowell," says Roggeman, 40, who played football for Stanford in the late '80s.

His car had a "Love a Duck" sticker on it, his room Duck posters. Every Saturday in the fall, he organized football-watching parties at his house, complete with an intricate prediction contest for a half a dozen of his football-player buddies.

"Riley would always pick Oregon to win," Stuart says. "Always. That worked out great at the start of last year. Not so great toward the end."

A 3.8-GPA student, his dream was to go off to college somewhere, maybe even to Oregon.

The pain in his hip in November of his junior year changed everything. Soon Riley was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that occurs most frequently in male teenagers.

He immediately began 90-minute trips to Stanford University for chemotherapy treatments.

As a senior, weak and losing weight, he couldn't play football - he'd been a halfback and defensive back - but volunteered to break down video tapes of games while undergoing chemo. He graduated in the spring.

Last fall, Roggeman came to him with a question: How would he like to help coach the team's defense?

"This wasn't about showing mercy to a kid dying of cancer," Roggeman says. "Riley was passionate about football. And about people. He was a warrior."

Every night during the week before the rivalry game against Carmel, Riley had the entire defense come to his house to study film.

"He handed each player these index cards with Carmel's offensive tendencies," says Roggeman. Pacific Grove won 42-0.

At one practice, Roggeman got so mad he told a kid wearing No. 11: "That's a perfect number for you because that's all we ever get out of you, 11 percent!" It was Riley, amid the silence, who couldn't stifle his laughter and, in so doing, humbled the coach, who'd lost perspective on the game.

"Riley, who was embroiled in a battle for his life, had the courage to keep his sense of humor through it all," Roggeman says.

Later, the coach came to Riley again: "I want you to call the team's defensive plays and give the pre-game talk against Greenfield." Riley was so nervous he nearly puked. "But he instilled fire in our team's eyes," Roggeman says. "And called a perfect defensive game. We won."

Toward game's end, Riley felt a cold chill on his back: it was the ceremonial "Gatorade shower" by players who then carried him off the field on their shoulders.

By the time Stuart, a 54-year-old school psychologist, asked his son if he wanted to go to a Duck game in Eugene last fall, they both knew the painful truth about the cancer. Where it was heading. Riley told his dad he wasn't going to stop living just because he was dying.

"It's like death took him from boy to man," Stuart says.

"Here he is dying, and yet he became a comforter for his family. He once said some people will think if he died, he'd somehow `lost the battle.' But he said God was going to see him as a success, and that's what mattered."

The idea of the Autzen trip thrilled him.

"He knew of the Autzen mystique, how it was one of the top 10 places to play in the country," says Stuart. "He'd had to give up some dreams because of the cancer, but this trip to Eugene became like a little dream-come-true."

So father and son - after scoring tickets on eBay from a season-ticket holder in Illinois - came north for the Oct. 14, 2006 game against UCLA.

Roggeman had called the athletic department. "They were great," he said. "They understood."

Stuart and Riley were given field passes for the Ducks' warm-up before the game - and access to the Pittman Center afterward, where Coach Mike Bellotti makes an appearance.

When the two went to pick up the field passes, the woman at the booth looked at Riley.

"So, you must be a recruit, huh?"

"Uh, no," he said.

Later, Riley turned to his dad. "Wasn't it cool that she thought I was!"

It was, Stuart says, a magical weekend. The sun shined. Oregon won.

The Autzen enthusiasm amazed Riley. The two headed home, stopping at Heaven on Earth Restaurant, just north of Grants Pass.

"He wanted to get one of those famous cinnamon rolls for his mom," Stuart says. "That's the kind of kid he was."

Riley McDowell died May 29 at home, where only a few nights before he'd awakened in the middle of the night, and when Stuart and Caren had come to him, had said: "I just want you guys to know you're incredible. You've always been there for me."

And, in a sense, that's why they'd come to Autzen Stadium on Saturday afternoon, the couple once again scoring the same two tickets on eBay from the same guy in Illinois.

And Karen wearing the same hat Stuart had bought for Riley the previous year.

To be there for him.