Song debuts on eve of game

Oh, move us to tears, Mat Kearney.

And what perfect timing, on the eve of the biggest non-conference football game in Autzen Stadium history, the third-ranked Oregon Ducks vs. the seventh-ranked Michigan State Spartans, at 3:30 p.m. today.

And ESPN College GameDay is in town, once again, to make sure this national game of the week gets all the play it deserves.

Kearney, who graduated in 1997 from South Eugene High School, wrote the song and the University of Oregon made the video, for what is sure to become the new anthem for Duck Nation: “Coming Home (Oregon).”

Kearney is the Nashville-based singer-songwriter who’s had several top hits and whose songs have been featured on TV shows such as “One Tree Hill,” “Parenthood” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”

The video was posted on YouTube Friday and had more than 29,000 views by 11 p.m. And it was being shared between Duck fans on social media all day Friday.

Kearney’s press agent sent a release Friday afternoon saying the video will be shown during Fox’s national broadcast of today’s game.

“If you were born here and you don’t lose a 1/4 cup of fluids running down your cheeks viewing this … something is wrong,” Eugene resident Randy Rogers wrote on my “Living Here” blog. “If you are a Beaver — dream on.”

Ouch.

Kearney’s piece is not only a moving song about his affection and attachment to what those of us who live here know best — that there is no place on Earth like our beloved Oregon — it also is full of clips of Autzen being built in the mid-1960s, screaming Duck fans, an image of former UO track coach Bill Hayward himself, Pre, Bill Bowerman, Phil Knight, Rich Brooks, Mike Bellotti, Mark Helfrich, the whole dang UO sports story wrapped in a three-plus minute video.

I headed out, down Interstate 5

My money was all spent but I felt so alive

I was chasing down the dream

Like you always taught me to

There are images of men fishing with their sons, horses running wild and Oregon’s snow-capped peaks.

This is not Kearney’s first affiliation with music video about Oregon football. You might remember the one he did a few years ago, a personal plea to former UO coach Chip Kelly to pass on the offer from the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And you know what? It worked. Kelly turned them down, only to sign a few weeks later with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Oh well … it was worth a shot.

I’m coming home to the place that I remember

Back to the land of my first love

Would you spread your arms wide for this wayward son

I left my heart in Oregon ….

You go, Mat Kearney.

Run wild, like the horses and the wind.

Stir those native hearts again.

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