Road Doesn’t Get Easier for Oregon

No. 19 Oregon, stinging from a 55-16 loss to Washington State, tries to right itself tonight when it travels to Salt Lake City to play Utah.

Duck Coach Mike Bellotti wants to forget about the loss to the Cougars as quickly as possible.

“I told [the team] ... that we were going to toss this game where it belongs and that’s in the garbage,” Bellotti said.

Oregon (4-1) hasn’t played Utah (3-1) since 2001, when Joey Harrington led the Ducks to a 24-10 victory in Eugene, Ore. Paris Warren was a freshman receiver on that team and threw a 50-yard pass against the Utes, then transferred to Utah after the season.

Warren, who leads the Utes in receiving with 24 catches for 245 yards, has been open about his dislike for his former program and how much he would like to beat the Ducks. But Coach Urban Meyer quickly put an end to that with a gag order this week.

“I’m a big believer in just shutting your mouth and playing football,” Meyer said. “All you ever say is great things about your opponent. That’s the rule here at Utah.”

Utah’s depth at receiver took a hit this week when Larry Miles, who didn’t catch a pass in the last two games, quit the team.

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Officials at Penn State are downplaying reports that receiver Tony Johnson faked an injury Saturday in the Nittany Lions’ final drive against Minnesota in order to give his teammates a rest.

Penn State sports information director Brian Siegrist said in Thursday’s edition of the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa., that doctors treated Johnson for a slight strain of his right hamstring after the game.

“Tony originally said he wasn’t injured at all on the play, leading people to believe that maybe he was trying to stop the clock,” Siegrist said. “But he did have a strained hamstring and was treated for it.”

Johnson had said a day earlier that he faked an injury to stop the clock with 63 seconds left in the Nittany Lions’ eventual 20-14 loss to Minnesota.

“I never really did get injured,” Johnson told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “It was kind of, uh ... we were in a two-minute [drill] situation and you could tell the offensive line and the receivers were getting kind of tired.

“So, I just kind of decided to fake an injury, so we could get an injury timeout instead of using one of our regular timeouts. It was just to give everybody a breath of fresh air.”

Although faking an injury is not in the spirit of fair play, Big Ten Conference officials said Johnson will not face any punishment.

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Tennessee players will honor center Chuck Prugh, who remains hospitalized in critical condition with an undetermined illness, by wearing Prugh’s No. 67 on the back of their helmets in Saturday’s game at Auburn.... Wisconsin Eau Claire player Justin Greenwood, who had brain surgery after being injured Saturday against Wisconsin River Falls, was upgraded from critical to serious condition.... Andrew Bourne, a former Ball State student who was left paralyzed when a goal post fell on him after the Rockets’ upset of Toledo in October 2001, is suing Gilman Gear of Gilman, Conn., saying the manufacturer was negligent in how it made the goal posts.