Welcome to Glendale, but where’s the game?

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories on the “Road to Natty.”

GLENDALE — Well, that didn’t take very long. On the road for only a couple of hours Wednesday, and we already made it from Eugene to Glendale for the BCS National Championship between Oregon and Auburn.

We see the “Glendale” sign on Interstate 5 and take the exit.

But where is everyone? Where are the Ducks and the Tigers and the ESPN folks doing their 24/7 coverage?

The town seems a little desolate to be hosting such a major sporting event. But it appears friendly enough. “Glendale: Where good people meet,” a sign reads.

We find City Hall. City Recorder Betty Stanfill is wearing a “Go Ducks” T-shirt.

We ask to speak with the mayor. Maybe he’ll know what’s going on? But he’s not here.

“No, he’s a school bus driver, as well,” Stanfill says of Mayor Fred Jensen. “He’s in Roseburg.”

Stanfill says fewer than 1,000 people live here. Well, it is a suburb of Phoenix, right?

On Pacific Avenue, the main drag in town, we videotape a few folks coming and going to capture some atmosphere.

Glendale resident Ernie Nelson is walking with a plastic sack holding a 16-ounce can of beer shortly before 11 a.m.

“Is that survey equipment?” asks Nelson, taking a drag on his cigarette.

Nope. Camera.

“Taking pictures of this hole in the wall?” asks Nelson, a 56-year-old, semi-retired handyman wearing ear muffs, a brown leather jacket, a big, bushy mustache and a navy blue ball cap that says, “Natural Gas Team.”

Nelson says the favorite pastime here is drinking beer. Probably not surprising that alcohol consumption would be popular in a place where college football’s national championship game happens in just four days.

But where is University of Phoenix Stadium? Shown a photograph of the modern, steel structure that resembles a giant spaceship, Nelson says it looks familiar, but this town’s football stadium is that-a-way, just north of here.

Sure enough, a drive to the other side of town, which takes about a minute, reveals a football stadium. But it’s called Daniel A. Leckel Memorial Stadium, and it would not seem able to hold 70,000 football fans.

Asked how many fans it does hold, Glendale School District Superintendent Lloyd Hartley, says: “I don’t know.”

The field is nice and green, but a tad on the mushy side. And it’s filled with deer droppings.

Turns out we’re not the only media in town, but that’s hardly surprising, either, given the hype for this game. A TV newsman from Roseburg wants a word with Hartley about the sewage problem at Glendale High School. Hartley says there’s no running water, the students are using portable toilets and the problem won’t be fixed for five months.

Yikes. Might want to pay attention to that, Duck and Tiger fans.

Asked if he was excited when he heard the Ducks would be playing in Glendale for the BCS title, Glendale High senior Nathan Kitchens says not so much.

“It’s always in Glendale, isn’t it?” Kitchens says. Actually, only once every four years, he’s informed.

Another reason he wasn’t too surprised, Kitchens says, is because he knows “there’s lots of Glendales.”

True. There are at least 11 in the United States, from tiny Glendale, Ky., to Glendale, Calif., to Glendale, Wis.

There’s also one in Oregon, we’re told. Just west of I-5 in southern Douglas County.

Oh.

A stop at the Swanson Lumber Group office on the way back to the freeway verifies that this road trip to Glendale is going to have to continue for a while.

“You’re in the wrong Glendale,” says plant manager Chris Swanson, a 2004 UO graduate. “The other Glendale is about 16 hours away. The Oregon Ducks won’t be playing here anytime soon.”