HUSKY NOT AFRAID OF QUACKS.

Byline: Jim Feehan The Register-Guard

Rick Osterhout glad-handed his way through the pre-game Autzen Stadium crowd Saturday with the skill of a politician, offering occasional high-fives to rabid Duck fans.

Oregon fans greeted him with a barrage of obscenities and derisive looks.

What gives?

In a sea of green and yellow, Osterhout was wearing purple and gold.

When it comes to Husky fans, you'll find few as devoted as Osterhout, who serves as the treasurer of the University of Washington Alumni Association Board of Trustees.

He's a third-generation Husky.

His grandmother, Mary Purcell, graduated from UW in the 1920s, and his father, Fred Osterhout, played football for the Dawgs and was student body vice president in 1947. Osterhout's family has held season tickets at Husky Stadium since 1937.

Saturday was the 12th Oregon-Washington game at Autzen for Osterhout, a Seattle commercial real estate broker. For the most part, his interactions with Duck fans have been cordial, with nothing erupting into fisticuffs, he said.

`It's mostly good-natured ribbing. But some (UO) fans get out of hand and get in your face and say, `We don't allow Huskies here,' ' he said.

Huskies were welcome at the Eugene Armory off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where 250 Washington boosters gathered for a lavish pre-game rally, courtesy of the UW Alumni Association. The event included the Husky Marching Band, cheerleaders and a live broadcast by the Husky flagship radio station.

The armory's auditorium was decked out in purple and gold balloons and pompoms. Husky fans dined on fajitas. Curious Duck fans walked up to the fenced-off rear parking lot, perhaps aghast to the sight of the Husky Band playing the fight song, "Bow Down to Washington."

Maybe it was only fitting that the Husky rally took place at the armory. Near the rally, a row of military trucks and Humvees were parked in a row. Two spent 8-inch artillery shells and a spool of barbed wire could be seen in a fenced area between the parking lot and Interstate 105.

"The Ducks lobbed that round in here, but as you can see they missed their mark," Dennis Newell of Kirkland, Wash., said jokingly.

On his drive down from Washington, Newell, a marketing executive for Costco, had a foul encounter with some Duck fans at the I-5 rest stop near Coburg.

"There were about a half-dozen Husky and Duck fans at the rest stop, and I went to shake hands with one of the Oregon fans and he said, 'I don't shake hands with a dog,' ' he said.

Shortly after noon, Osterhout and other Husky fans poured out of the armory and walked through a gauntlet of Duck boosters.

"We came here for some Duck hospitality, but we know we're in for some abuse," said Osterhout, who was wearing a purple fleece jacket and a Husky baseball cap.

Near the parking lot of the Boy Scout office on MLK Boulevard, Osterhout walked up to four UO twentysomethings tailgating.

Two of them were wearing a T-shirt with a duck urinating on an upturned Husky football helmet. The back side of the T-shirt read: The Uncivil War.

Undaunted by the crass message, Osterhout high-fived the fans and posed for a photo with them.

"We came here for some Duck hospitality," he said with a smile.

The T-shirt's vendor, a large man in a green and yellow tie-dye shirt, spotted Osterhout and darted behind a sports utility vehicle.

Minutes before kickoff, Osterhout was standing in line at the northwest gate near the Casanova Center high-fiving Duck fans.

"We're a women's volleyball and basketball school," Osterhout tells the Oregon fans, referring to the UW football team's woeful record.

At the 11th hour - literally a little after 11 a.m. - Osterhout received a pass to the visiting team athletic director's suite in the press box. On the elevator ride to the press box, a middle-aged woman blew a raspberry at Osterhout.

"Good luck to you," Osterhout replied to the woman as he left the elevator.

The Oregon-Washington rivalry has grown to where it is more important to Husky boosters than their rivalry with cross-state competitor Washington State University, he said.

"I think it's because we get so much abuse (from Oregon)," Osterhout said.

And that abuse has been going on for a long time.

In the early 1980s, Osterhout worked as an administrator at a hospital in Tualatin. During a blind date at that time, the conversation turned to where each of them grew up and went to school, he said.

"She was real cute. But she wouldn't return my phone calls. I don't even think I got a handshake," Osterhout said of the woman, who graduated from the University of Oregon. "When she found out I was a Husky, it was game over."

CAPTION(S):

Husky fan Rick Osterhout (center) jokes with Oregon Duck fans on his way to the game on Saturday: "We came here for some Duck hospitality." `It's mostly good-natured ribbing. But some (UO) fans get out of hand and get in your face and say, `We don't allow Huskies here.' ' RICK OSTERHOUT WASHINGTON HUSKIES FAN