'Walmart' football team embarrassed (again) after Indy 500 cheap shot

IndyCar fans have been patiently waiting 88 days for the sequel to this one, and that day finally came. And it sure did not disappoint.

In fact, my only concern was that a certain overrated college team from the Pacific Northwest might find a way to blow it before the rematch could ever happen. But the Oregon Ducks, embarrassed at home by the Indiana Hoosiers in October, got embarrassed again, this time on an even bigger – and far more glorious – scale.

ESPN College GameDay built by The Home Depot was in Eugene, Oregon ahead of the high-profile clash between No. 3 Oregon and underdog No. 7 Indiana at Autzen Stadium back on Saturday, October 11. Signs being held up among the sea of rowdy fans on the popular morning show has become a tradition.

Some of them are clever, some of them are stupid, and some of them make no sense. Let's be honest: what do you expect from a bunch of college students who rarely know how to spell Pat McAfee's last name?

Of course, some of them might also be considered borderline offensive, and while it's generally all in good fun – and quite frankly, seen as more of a "you" problem if you let them get to you – one sign in particular riled up just about the entire state of Indiana.

Specifically, the motorsport community.

The Oregon Duck mascot, which some IndyCar fans might say looks more like a Disney knockoff, held up a sign which simply read "INDY 500 IS JUST A WALMART F1".

After Indiana came away with a 30-20 victory, ending an 18-game home winning streak for Oregon which came largely against cupcake opponents, the IndyCar community let them hear about it.

Conor Daly, an Indiana native and Indianapolis Motor Speedway fan-favorite who always runs well in the Indy 500, probably had the boldest response.

Graham Rahal, whose Ohio State Buckeyes ended up losing to Indiana in the Big Ten Championship Game in December, also got in on it, albeit in a bit of a more subtle way – much more subtle than some of his own Formula 1 takedowns in the past.

Oregon had nearly 13 weeks to prepare for part two, and the Peach Bowl went even worse than part one. IndyCar fans loved every minute of it, from D'Angelo Ponds' opening-play pick-six to Daniel Ndukwe's blocked punt to the Hoosiers' other seven touchdowns, five from Fernando Mendoza, to everything else in between that played a part in the 56-22 shellacking.

It was a sheer embarrassment on every level, the likes of which not seen since...well, since Oregon in the Rose Bowl a year ago, in a game they fell behind Ohio State 34-0 despite being the so-called No. 1 team in the country.

Daly certainly kept the receipts.

Reigning Indy 500 winner and four-time IndyCar champion Alex Palou couldn't even believe the level of the beatdown that Curt Cignetti's squad unleashed on Dan Lanning's clearly overpowered group.

And as someone with his own past Formula 1 ties, you know he had to be loving it even more because of the opponent.

So what's Great Value Donald Duck's beef with IndyCar, and why does it matter?

First, the elephant in the room: the series is IndyCar, not "Indy 500"; the Indy 500 is just one race. So from a Formula 1 comparison perspective, the sign didn't make sense to begin with.

With that Racing 101 lesson – maybe U of O should offer the course – out of the way, here's the reality of it. Formula 1 has unquestionably skyrocketed in popularity in recent years, specifically in the United States, and a lot of that has to do with the hit Netflix show Drive to Survive.

Yet every IndyCar fan knows which series is more exciting, and those who reject that have clearly only ever watched the less exciting of the two. However, Formula 1 promotes such an elitist "cool kids" culture and mentality that the mainstream just absolutely has to align with, all while completely missing the plot – and again, all while ignoring some of the true best racing on the planet.

So our guess is that the Duck saw a couple episodes of the show, because a massive Guenther Steiner fan and F1 expert overnight, and immediately tried to align himself as one of the "cool kids" in a fanbase that might or might not think downforce is merely a video game setting.

The funniest part of it all is that IndyCar actually races in Oregon. In fact, NASCAR does too. But maybe I'm taking something for granted by assuming that he knows IndyCar and NASCAR aren't the same thing. You might be surprised at how many still don't know that, and the Duck's F1 claim certainly reeks of that level of ignorance.

Good luck getting Formula 1 to visit Portland International Raceway.

And look; I've got nothing against the guy. But the fact that Lando Norris is the reigning Formula 1 world champion says something about the state of the series. Sure, he earned it, but absolutely nobody is ready to give him his flowers as a world-class talent – nor should they be.

Formula 1 is a manufacturer war more than anything else. Norris was in a rocketship all year, and he beat the guy whose team's car would have finished ninth of 10 in the standings (had he not been in it) by two points. He was beaten in wins and laps led, and the real story since the season ended has been about how McLaren almost found a way to lose.

It goes without saying that winning eight out of 17 races, including the Indy 500, in a spec series which actually promotes parity, wheel-to-wheel action at 230+ miles per hour, overtaking, battling for position without constant complaining on the radio when a rival enters one's mirrors, and needing to beat more than two drivers on a given weekend is far more impressive.

And that's without getting into the long, long list of Formula 1 drivers who have admitted they are too scared to run Indy. For as much as fans who know nothing about IndyCar joke about "turning left", somehow turning left suddenly becomes the most intimidating thing in the world when you actually think about it.

Funny how that works; talk is cheap.

By the way, we are aware that IndyCar doesn't just run on ovals, right? Asking for all the misinformed waterfowls in the room.

At the end of the day, probably just best to stay in your lane – unless you're Palou and making the Indy 500-winning move; then it's okay to go low, because unlike most Formula 1 parades, the Indy 500 isn't decided in the first turn on the opening lap.

Oregon never had a chance

For what it's worth, everybody should have seen this dismantling coming. No, not because Indiana had already beaten Oregon. Not even because Indiana had just beaten Alabama 38-3 in the Rose Bowl, or even because Oregon had just cakewalked their way into the semifinals with the coveted No. 5 seed.

And no, not because Oregon's logo is cleverly modeled after the number of national championships they've won, or even because Mel Kiper Jr. has Dante Moore as his No. 1 quarterback in the 2026 NFL Draft, just one year after Shedeur Sanders was his top choice – and he only missed that prediction by 143 picks.

To be fair to Kiper, I picked Stoffel Vandoorne to contend for the 2018 Formula 1 world championship. It's a take that ranks right up there with the Duck's F1 poster, and it's the sort of analysis that makes the coverage from my unexpected foray into a completely unrelated sport look like it's from someone with an actual background in it.

But seriously, just look at how Oregon got here.

They were suddenly viewed by the public as national championship contenders simply because they beat Penn State in the vaunted White Out game.

Penn State went on to suffer two historic losses in the weeks that followed, fired their head coach, and lost three more games before finally beating a team better than FCS Villanova. It literally took them until the 13th week of the regular season to beat another Power Four opponent.

So in hindsight, the fact that Oregon blew a 14-point fourth quarter lead and fell behind Penn State in overtime was more of a warning sign than a sign that they were an elite football team that deserved to jump to No. 3 ahead of the first Indiana game.

And if not for Noah Whittington's knee touching a blade of grass, the outcome of that game is probably vastly different – and so too the knock-on effects that have spread throughout Penn State's athletic department, even beyond football. But that's a subject for another day.

To be fair, Penn State did almost beat Indiana too. But Indiana didn't need overtime, and that came after the head coaching transition.

About the only good thing Oregon can claim is that they only lost to Indiana, and beat everybody else. With how Indiana is playing, losing twice to the Hoosiers might not be as bad as it seems.

But it sure was great to watch the sequel, especially as an IndyCar fan – and even for the many other IndyCar fans who probably don't hold petty grudges over College Gameday signs.

Oregon is now 0-2 against Indiana, 0-2 against IndyCar, and still leaning into their role as the Dollar Tree version of Donald Duck. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if it looks like a fraud and quacks like a fraud...