Bo Nix opens up about Oregon and Auburn football college career: 'Ups and downs'

Some may take Bo Nix's comments about his Oregon and Auburn football college career ending as a shot at the Plains, with a focus on adversity and ups and downs. Truthfully, though, Nix was being honest in his reflection on his five years at the highest level of college football after a 45-6 destruction of Liberty in the Fiesta Bowl.

“It’s been a great career, it’s been a lot of ups and downs,” Nix said (h/t The Associated Press). “There’s been some great adversity, too, that I’ve been able to learn from. I wouldn’t be here without every year, every step. It’s been a journey. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

“I feel like I’ve played a lot of football. Every time I went out there, it slowed down more and more. By the end, I had just a really comfortable feel. I think this year, with what we were doing offensively, schematically, we were very efficient.”

Bo Nix claimed he was miserable with Bryan Harsin's Auburn football program in 2021

Being that Nix said that he was miserable under Bryan Harsin during his final season at AU, it's absolutely correct to believe the adversity he mentioned was in 2021.

"Last year, I was just kind of over it. Each week it was something else," Oregon's quarterback told CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd in October 2022 just before Harsin's dismissal. "There was, quite frankly, nothing I could do about it. I just remember kind of being miserable. It wasn't fun anymore."

When Nix gets to the NFL, he'll announce "the University of Oregon" on NBC's Sunday Night Football broadcast if/when he's starting under center for a franchise, and it's hard not to wonder if that'd be the case if Hugh Freeze had simply been hired in 2020 instead of Harsin. That's a tough pill to swallow, but at least there was the 2019 Iron Bowl and the 2021 LSU game in Death Valley.