We knew it was coming, but it still brought a smile to my face to see the Beavers and Ducks work out an agreement to continue their football rivalry without interruption.

September? Sure, why not.

Nonconference opponents? That will take some getting used to.

But if that’s the compromise, so be it. The important thing here is that a game that means so much to so many, that brings people together from all corners of our state, will continue.

I’ll confess that I was skeptical early on. There were too many hurdles, too many hard feelings. Would the Ducks really want to risk a nonconference loss on the road at Reser Stadium before starting Big Ten play?

UO leaders said they did, but did they really?

Oregon backed up the talk, moving around dates with Boise State and Texas Tech to accommodate their rivals.

“If we have to put the ball out in the parking lot, that is fine with me,” Dan Lanning said after Oregon beat the Beavers in their final Pac-12 meeting on Nov. 24.

Turns out he meant it.

The announcement that the game would be played on Sept. 14 next year in Corvallis, as previously reported by The Oregonian/OregonLive and others, and in Eugene on Sept. 20, 2025, was a welcome one.

I have sometimes wondered if we spent so much time over the past few years contemplating what to call the annual affair that we forgot to embrace it the way we should have.

Hopefully, the fact we were at risk of losing it reignites some of our collective appreciation.

The past four months have turned college football in the Pacific Northwest upside down.

The Ducks decamped for the Big Ten and the Beavers blame them for displacing them to the Little Two. The court battle between Pac-2 and the 10 departing schools is bitterly ongoing.

The Beavers are still figuring out life in a post-Pac-12 world. Their schedule for next season, finally complete and announced Thursday, looks like one the Beavers have never seen.

OSU will play seven Mountain West opponents, including road games at San Diego State, Nevada, Boise State and Air Force — with a trip to Cal in there, too.

A previously known home date against Purdue remains, but UNLV, San Jose State and Colorado State will also be coming to town.

It’s impossible to declare whether that’s a schedule that can make a run to the top of the Group of Five and a shot at the expanded College Football Playoff. Tell me who’s starting at quarterback first.

But amid all the disruption and the newness, the Beavers and Ducks worked together to provide at least one anchor point for Oregonians who cherish the in-state rivalry.

On gameday, you can’t stop for coffee anywhere between Portland and Eugene without seeing someone in Beaver and Duck gear. Cars streaming down Interstate 5 fly flags for one of the two schools, sometimes both.

It’s a special rivalry between institutions separated by fewer than 50 miles. It has determined Rose Bowls, national championship appearances and Heisman Trophies.

Tradition is getting squeezed out in college football’s game of musical chairs. Too many schools have been content to say goodbye to longstanding, beloved rivalries. Texas and Texas A&M scuttled their annual matchup when the Aggies left for the SEC. Bedlam is on pause in Oklahoma.

I never believed that was going to fly in Oregon. There is too much crossover between the Ducks and Beavers. They prop each other up and make each other better. As the state’s flagship universities, they are connected, even if on gameday the state is bitterly divided.

It felt like something the Ducks had forgotten when, led by a university president a month into his tenure after arriving from Big Ten country, Oregon sped away from the smoldering Pac-12 to begin anew.

So, kudos to UO for being receptive to keeping it going and to OSU for putting feelings of betrayal aside to keep the series alive.

I’m not optimistic that the rivalry will ever carry the same weight it did for its first 127 years. There just can’t be as much on the line in a nonconference matchup in September as there is in a final conference test at the end of the regular season.

But at least we will get to find out what it looks like in this new world.

The alternative was simply not an option.