Oregon was in the midst of an eight-game losing streak to archrival Oregon State back when Terry Ranstad played linebacker for the Ducks.

“I lost every game I played to the Beavers,” says Ranstad, who lettered for the Ducks from 1968 through 1970. “I have memories of angst … the frustration. The pain of losing to them all those years … we couldn’t stand anything about them. We wouldn’t go on their campus. It was a bitter rivalry. It was awful.”

Jerry Frei resigned as Oregon head coach following the 1971 season — in large part, Ranstad suggests, because in five tries he could not beat the Beavers.

The Ducks would go on to win 12 out of 13 over Oregon State (from 1975 through 1987), mostly under head coach Rich Brooks. But Ranstad never forgot all those losses to the Beavers as he and his wife, Carol, raised three children in Bend.

Much to his chagrin, all three of the kids, after graduating from Bend High, attended Oregon State.

“The thought that my kids would even go to Oregon State was not even within my imagination,” says Ranstad, 62. “But we gave our kids independence. Now I don’t hate the Beavers. They’ve never done anything to us.”

After reaching the BCS national championship game last year, Oregon is again ranked in the country’s top 10 and on track for a Rose Bowl berth, as long as the Ducks (9-2) beat the Beavers this week and then win the inaugural Pac-12 championship game next Friday. Oregon State, meanwhile, is 3-8 and will finish with its fewest wins since 1997 if it falls to Oregon.

The Ducks are four-touchdown favorites for Saturday’s 115th Civil War at Autzen Stadium in Eugene.

The Ranstad kids were raised Duck fans. The oldest, Kristen, married former OSU football player Cameron Reynolds, so she is now firmly ensconced in Beaver Nation.

“There’s some funny jokes played — bumper stickers are secretly placed on the backs of cars,” says Kristen Reynolds, 37, of the Beaver-Duck divide in her family. “We’ll find U of O paraphernalia around the house on a week like this week. It’s all in good fun, and when the Ducks are playing somebody else we still root for them.”

Cameron Reynolds was a running back and team captain for the Beavers in the mid-1990s. He is now a teacher and freshman football coach at Bend’s Summit High School.

“That was very difficult for me to have (Kristen) marry an Oregon State football player … but he’s a good guy,” Terry says.

But Terry’s son Hal, who pitched for the OSU baseball team from 1996 to 2000, has remained a UO fan despite his college alma mater.

“I never could have imagined going to Oregon State, but it was the only way to play baseball at that level,” says Hal, 34.

Oregon did not field a baseball team during the years when Hal was in college, but if it had, he says his choice of schools would have been a “no-brainer.”

Hal remained a Duck fan through college, attending football games in Beaver garb but deep down rooting for Oregon.

“I had to lay low in college,” Hal recalls. “I had to keep that a secret. Even now, some (OSU faithful) really resent it. They get angry — it’s funny.”

Hal and Terry both have season tickets to Oregon football games and attend every home game with other family members.

“I’m a loyal Duck fan, for sure,” Hal says. “However, I’m a Beaver fan, too. I hope they win all their games but that ONE.”

Last month, just before kickoff at the Washington State game, Terry Ranstad was introduced to the Autzen Stadium crowd of nearly 60,000 as one of two honorary Duck captains for the game.

A former general manager of Bend’s High Mountain Homes and now semiretired, Terry has a host of memories from his days at UO, including suiting up with a couple of Duck legends who would become College Football Hall of Famers: quarterback Dan Fouts and tailback Bobby Moore (now Ahmad Rashad).

But perhaps his fondest recollection involves two other current Bend residents who played in the 1968 Civil War in Corvallis, which the Beavers won 41-19.

“It was the last year they had grass at Parker Stadium,” Ranstad recounts. “Late November, it was a sloppy, muddy mess. It was so torn up. All they did was hand the ball off to (Bill) Enyart. It smelled so bad, we thought they put cow manure in the field to bother us city slickers from Eugene.”

Ranstad recalls with clarity the muddy matchup between All-America OSU running back “Earthquake” Enyart and UO’s all-Pac-8 Conference middle guard George Dames, who are both now longtime Bend residents.

Ranstad and Dames remain good friends, remembering the days when the Civil War was a more heated rivalry because often they were going up against players they had battled in high school.

These days, much of the Ducks’ and Beavers’ rosters are made up of players from California and other states, so the rivalry has lost some intensity among the players.

“We played against guys in state,” Ranstad says. “We knew each other — and it was bitter.”

The bitterness remains, but these days, it’s mostly among Duck and Beaver fans.

Among family, they try to keep it civil.

Next up

Oregon State at Oregon

• When: Saturday, 12:30 p.m.

• TV: ABC

• Radio: KRCO-AM 690, KICE-AM 940, KBND-AM 1110