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Passionate C.O. Ducks and Beavers fans heading to bowl games ‘no matter what,’ despite high travel costs

(Update: adding video, comments from Oregon, OSU fans)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- For the second year in a row, the Ducks and Beavers are going bowling.

Fifteenth-ranked Oregon is headed to San Diego for the Holiday Bowl on Wednesday, Dec. 28.

The 17th-ranked Oregon State Beavers (14th in the CFP Poll) head to Las Vegas on Saturday, the 17th for the Las Vegas Bowl.

For fans like Oregon season ticket-holder Peter Pierce, the cost of going to his first-ever Ducks bowl game was certainly on his mind.

“No matter what, we wanted to go, and we were going to make it work," Pierce said. “This time, we just decided to bite the bullet. San Diego is nice this time of year -- Bend not so much, so let's go down and have some fun in the sun!”

Even former OSU President Becky Johnson couldn’t escape rising travel costs.

“The flights were expensive … ended up using miles,” Johnson said with a laugh. “So it would have been a tough decision to pay that kind of money, if we didn’t have enough airline miles.”

For the Ducks' Holiday Bowl, the cheapest game ticket is $70 (per Stub hub), the cheapest flight with reasonable layover time is $945 (per Google Flights), and hotel costs range from $89-$310 per night (Per Expedia).

For the Beavers' Las Vegas Bowl, the cheapest game ticket is $62 (Per Stub Hub), the cheapest and most reasonable flight is $870 (per Google Flights), and hotels cost between $64-$295 per night (per Expedia).

“You know, I’m sure it probably will cut down on attendance, just with the cost of things. But this is a bowl -- it's a real bowl, right?” Johnson said. “Last year, we went to the LA Bowl, which was fun, but a little bit different.”

The Beavers are headed to back-to-back bowl games for the first time since 2013, and are happy to take on Florida in the Vegas Bowl.

“For a long time, we thought we were going to go to El Paso to the Sun Bowl. That might have seemed like a little bit of a letdown,” Johnson said. “I think the Vegas Bowl feels like something people are looking forward to.”

Ducks fans had high hopes for a Pac-12 championship and even a playoff berth, so this game against North Carolina brings some mixed feelings.

“I’m kind of in the middle on it,” Pierce said. “Yeah, we wanted to have a better outcome to the season, but it's still a really good bowl game.”

While the excitement might be different for each fan base, both the Ducks and the Beavers have a chance to finish the season with 10 wins, which has not happened since the year 2000. 

Article Topic Follows: Sports

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Noah Chast

Noah Chast is a multimedia journalist for NewsChannel 21. Learn more about Noah here.

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