His runback’s the pick of UO’s highlight reel

Kenny Wheaton’s not gonna go there. Kenny Wheaton’s gonna deflect.

“It would be tough for me to say that that’s the reason we’re No. 1 right now,” the former University of Oregon football player said Friday, before signing T-shirts at The Duck Store on campus on the eve of the UO’s annual matchup with bitter rival Washington. “The last thing I want to do is take away from the current coaching staff and players. Was it a big play? Yes. It created change. But I wouldn’t dare say so 16 years later that that’s the reason we’re No. 1.”

Wheaton is credited with making what is considered the greatest play in UO football history, a 97-yard interception return against the Huskies that sealed a 31-20 victory and propelled the Ducks to their first Rose Bowl in 37 years, a play known simply as “The Pick.” The question posed to him Friday was: “Would the Ducks have made it to the top of the college football world and a first-ever No. 1 ranking this season if he had not made that play on Oct. 22, 1994?”

Would they have won that game against the reviled and loathed Huskies, the Northwest nemesis that had dominated the Ducks for years? Or would the UW, trailing 24-20, eventually have scored from the 3-yard line and ended the Ducks’ Rose Bowl hopes that year? Would the Ducks be 11-4 against Washington since that ’94 game, after being 3-12 against them the previous 15 seasons?

Would the Ducks have played in 14 bowl games in the past 16 years? Would they have come within a few votes of playing for the national title after the 2001 season. Would they have been able to expand Autzen Stadium the next season and build all the facilities that have helped recruit all the players who wear all the flashy uniforms and have an offense this season that is averaging 54.9 points and making the nation’s football pundits’ heads spin?

Who knows? Maybe the Huskies would have fumbled on the next play, anyway.

All Deb Carver knows is that she has not missed a home UO football game since 1995, the season after Wheaton made his historic play that is still shown on the giant video board — Kenny Wheaton’s gonna score! Kenny Wheaton’s gonna score! — at Autzen Stadium to the tremendous roar of almost 60,000 fans before each game.

“This changed it!” said Carver, dean of libraries at the UO, holding and shaking one of “The Pick” T-shirts — which are sold to help the Kenny Wheaton Foundation, started by Wheaton last year to raise money for disadvantaged youth to buy anything from athletic equipment to school supplies.

“This changed everything,” she said as she waited in line for Wheaton to sign it.

Mark Watson, a UO librarian standing in line with Carver, agreed. A friend of Watson’s always talks about how “The Pick” kept former UO football coach Rich Brooks from being fired that season, how Mike Bellotti probably never would have had the success that he did as Brooks’ successor, how current head coach Chip Kelly probably would have gone to some other up-and-coming college football program instead of coming here in 2007.

“That saved Rich’s job and paved the way for what we have now,” Watson said of “The Pick.”

Wheaton’s not so sure about all of that. He was just one player, a freshman cornerback on that ’94 team with the defense nicknamed “Gang Green,” and just doing what any defensive back would have done — stepping in front of a pass that former UW quarterback Damon Huard has always wished he’d never thrown.

“I done my job on that play,” said Wheaton, who lives in Dallas now, where he played for pro football’s Dallas Cowboys. “It was ‘Gang Green,’ ” he said. “And, of course, I’m biased. But I think we was better,” he said, busting out a laugh.

But Wheaton loves the 2010 Duck football team. He loves to watch defensive backs Cliff Harris (who reminds him a bit of himself) and John Boyett “fly around” on the field.

Is he surprised the Ducks have reached such heights? Not at all, he said.

“Because I felt for some years now, Oregon really, truly has been disrespected,” Wheaton said. Oregon already should have played for a national title, after the 2001 season, if the Bowl Championship Series system had not been biased in favor of a weaker Nebraska team, he said.

“I knew the day would come,” Wheaton said of the Ducks being ranked No. 1.

Evan Reisbeck, a UO freshman, was only 2 years old when “The Pick” happened. “But I’ve definitely watched it 20,000 times,” said the 18-year-old from Tigard, just before he got his new $15 T-shirt signed by Wheaton.He’s been going to Duck games at Autzen since he was 6 or 7, he said. But why was Reisbeck willing to stand in a long line Friday to get a T-shirt signed by some guy who did something he wasn’t even aware of when it happened?

“He’s part of Oregon Duck history,” Reisbeck said. “He changed the program.”