Season of change for Ducks.

Byline: Rob Moseley The Register-Guard

For the first time since 1993, the Oregon football team will have season captains this fall.

Quarterback Dennis Dixon, center Max Unger, linebacker A.J. Tuitele and rover Patrick Chung were named captains for the upcoming year through player voting. The Ducks open the season Saturday in Autzen Stadium against Houston at 12:30 p.m.

Beginning in 1994 through last season, coaches had named game captains based on a variety of factors.

Conspicuously, none is a vocal field general in the mold of Joey Harrington, or a towel-waving cheerleader a la Brent Haberly. But according to their teammates, the quartet is representative of the team's collective personality and ideals.

"Obviously the expectation on them is to lead by example, make plays on the field, make plays in practice, and demonstrate basically a competitive streak in their personality so guys can emulate them," senior guard Josh Tschirgi said. "I don't think it's a motivational thing. Just showing guys how to compete is the biggest expectation I have of them."

The Ducks did away with season captains following the 1993 season. The program underachieved at 5-6 that year, and the two captains that season, Willy Tate and Ernest Jones, were caught in the middle of the dysfunction. Partly because of frustrations stemming from his duties as a captain, Tate left Oregon before the following season, giving up his final year of eligibility.

Then, using week-by-week game captains in 1994, Oregon won the Pac-10 title and reached the Rose Bowl for the first time in 37 years. It took last season's 7-6 campaign for the staff to consider once again naming season captains.

UO coach Mike Bellotti said he first considered reinstating season captains this winter, in the wake of Oregon's 0-4 finish to last season, when the Ducks seemed like a ship without a rudder. Each position group elected a squad leader to monitor that unit this offseason, and the success of that program led to the election of captains for this season.

"It's sort of an experiment, to be honest, and we're hopeful it helps," Bellotti said, adding that "the mantle of leadership doesn't just fall on those guys. Leadership is a shared commodity. Those guys are going to be the focal point, but there are many others. Every senior is involved. Everyone on the team is involved, hopefully."

Chung is the lone junior of the group; each is entering his third season as a starter. The selection of Dixon would seem to put to rest the idea that his teammates were put off by his decision to leave Eugene and play minor-league baseball this summer.

"I feel real honored, first of all," said Dixon, whose streak of 13 straight starts was broken in the final two games of last season.

Of not being a vocal quarterback, Dixon said he will "continue to do what I do. For the most part I think things have been working out. They picked me for a reason, so I'm going to continue to do what I do best and hopefully that's good enough."

Tuitele also is "not really a rah-rah guy," in his own words. But he has started 15 games in his career, the most experience of any member of the defensive front seven.

"I'm still going to be the same person," Tuitele said. "If I see something wrong, I'm still going to address that person. I'm still going to fix the little thing that make us a better team."

Defensive tackle Cole Linehan said he anticipates the captains progressively becoming more vocal leaders, due to the manner of their selection.

"We got to pick them," Linehan said. "It was our choice of who they should be, so that kind of helps the idea of the captains, because it's coming from us and not just from coaches picking guys who they think should lead us."

Unger called his selection "an unbelievably humbling experience."

Still, he said, "I'm not going to go pump everybody up with some big, emotional speech. But it's grinding out at practice, and on the field before games, just being humble and getting it done."

Tschirgi said that's exactly the kind of leadership the team will require.

"I think this team's more focused than we were last year," he said. "I think more guys are on the same page as far as what our goals are, what we want to try to accomplish. I don't think we're going to have a lot of that rah-rah stuff, but I think we're going to have a more focused group, an ambitious group, a dedicated group that wants to win games."