Rivalry Week coming up

College football has a name for the final week of a long season.

It’s called Rivalry Week. Traditional rival schools square off against each other on the football field. They’re usually in-state rivalries.

For those of us who grew up in Oregon, Rivalry Week takes on a particularly distasteful tag. It’s known there as the Civil War. Oregon vs. Oregon State.

Why distasteful? Well, for one thing I dislike the use the of the term “war” to describe a football game. I’ve had a ringside seat in a real war and a football game bears no resemblance to it, you know?

I even heard Tiger Woods once describe a round of golf, for crying out loud, as being “like war out there.”

You get my drift.

Well, Rivalry Week is going to present some interesting athletic matchups. The Oregon-Oregon State game, for example, will enable the Oregon Ducks to stay in the hunt for the coveted football playoff that will determine the national championship.

First things first, though. They have to beat OSU, then they have to defeat whoever wins the Pac-12 South title in the league championship game to be played at the San Francisco 49ers’ new field at Levi Stadium.

OK, I’m boring the daylights out of fans of the Big 12, the SEC, the Big 10 (or is it Big 13?) with all of this.

I’ll stick with my original premise.

I wish they wouldn’t call it “war.”

It’s just a game.