Crunch time.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

Eric Brandt counts Duck football victories a little differently than most people.

This year, he figures, the score is 33,000 hot dogs, 10,000 hamburgers and cheeseburgers, 15,000 pretzels and 4,500 orders of garlic fries. The fries, with their pungent new flavor this year, are down slightly from the 4,800 orders of plain french fries sold last year. But they made more money for the University of Oregon because of their higher price.

And for the UO, athletic refreshments are a money game.

The hot dogs, hamburgers, cheeseburgers and the like are among the 345,000 food items Brandt and his crew sold to football fans in the six home games at Autzen Stadium this season. That all adds up to around $2.1 million in total sales - a slightly slow year, for reasons we'll get into later - and a profit of about $840,000 toward the UO Athletic Department's $38 million budget.

Brandt also sells food at other sports events during the year, but football is king. Football accounts for 76 percent of the department's gross food sales and 90 percent of profits. The whole men's basketball season grosses $160,000, while a single football game can gross over $300,000.

In a sense, Brandt, director of food services at Autzen, runs one of Oregon's largest restaurants, albeit one that is open just six to eight days a year. To torture that metaphor a little further, you might say the restaurant seats 58,000, the capacity of Autzen Stadium.

On those days - the home games played by the Ducks at Autzen - Brandt is in charge of serving hot dogs and beer, coffee and bottled water, hamburgers and sodas and a host of other foods to hungry fans.

Brandt's is an unusual operation even in the world of college sports. Most stadiums, such as Reser Stadium at Oregon State University, contract their food business to outside vendors.

Autzen, by contrast, has its own food staff, makes some of it own food, and contracts with food companies that make the rest.

And, yes, food at Autzen is slightly more expensive than Reser fare, but not by much.

A hot dog at Autzen costs $3.50; a hot dog at Reser, $3. The most expensive menu item at Reser is $7 for a fajita plate or a rice bowl. At Autzen, you'll pay $8.50 for a cheeseburger plate, an order of chili and chips or a Fighting Duck steak sandwich.

Beer at Autzen - you have to buy it at the Moshofsky Center - is $5 or $6 for 16 ounces. Reser doesn't sell alcohol.

But at Autzen, you can bring your own food to the game, so long as it doesn't include alcohol or glass bottles. You can't bring any food into the stadium in Corvallis.

Brandt himself is an unusual guy. He can say, with a straight face, things like, "The hot dog is the quintessential vernacular food experience in a stadium," and mean it.

On the day of the last home game of the season, Brandt arrived at work at 6:30 a.m. in his office at the Moshofsky Center, where he put on a recording of Frank Sinatra singing Cole Porter lyrics.

"It's the first thing we start the day with once in a while," he said. "People have comfort food. Sinatra is comfort music. It gets my feet on the ground and prepares me for the day." By 7 a.m. he was ready for his first staff meeting.

Not surprisingly, he runs his food business in some unique ways. To serve the fans at Autzen, Brandt has just two full time employees on his staff besides himself. The rest of the operation depends on about 35 part-time student workers and a network of 1,100 volunteers, who come from 35 different service clubs and charitable organizations.

The volunteers - Brandt and his staff train them each summer for the season ahead - donate their time; in return, the organizations get a 10 percent cut of the take. That works out well all around, Brandt says. "What we gain is the quality of person behind the counter," he explains. "We know they're gregarious. We know they're giving. And we know they care."

Among the volunteers serving food at that last home game, against UCLA, was Creswell School Board member Gary Clark. He and a contingent of girls from Creswell's high school basketball team were dishing out pizza and shrimp Louie plates at the Moshofsky Center, an indoor workout arena that is turned into a 2,300-seat dining room for each home game.

"This is our fourth year," Clark explained as he took orders and made change. "Shrimp Louie!" he called to an assembly line of students behind him. "Last year we made more than $4,000 for the school sports program. This year we'll make not quite $4,000. The Ducks aren't doing as well."

Clark had put his finger on one of the facts of life of feeding the football multitudes: Happier fans eat and drink more.

Stadium food sales are better when the Ducks play better, just about everyone agrees. More precisely, Brandt says, food sales relate to the "sense of celebration" that fans feel at a particular game.

"The first home game of the year, there is a lot of anticipation," he says. "It really doesn't matter how they're playing, it's woo-hooooooo!"

The right opponent makes a difference. Best, he says, is a Pac-10 team with a rivalry, such as the Civil War game against Oregon State. "These are games where people walk into the stadium and are much more likely to buy something for themselves and their family."

Good play in the first half of the game translates into good half-time sales. Other more mundane factors also come into play. Cold weather hurts cold drink sales. Hot weather dries up the hot chocolate.

This year is down, both because of losses on the field and because of chilly weather. "The kickoff temperatures were so low this year," Brandt complains, "that the warmest temperature we had was for our night game."