(Editor's note: Oregon running back Reuben Droughns will share a weekly diary with ESPN.com throughout the season. For more information on the Ducks, visit the official Oregon site.)

Dec. 2, 1999

It's been a different time for me recently in that I've had a couple of weeks off from football. It's so great to be able to rest, and I've been trying to concentrate on healing up and getting ready for the last game of the season. Although some like the break for the mental part, the physical rest has been the biggest thing for me. As the season progressed, I felt I was getting stronger mentally. Physically, I was slowly getting better as well, but you have to overcome an amount of physical punishment from each game.

	Droughns averaged 7.4 yards per carry and scored nine TDs in 1998.

The last game at Oregon State (a 25-14 victory) was an important game for me, and I almost made it a mission to do well. I had heard some OSU people saying, "Reuben Droughns shouldn't even show up to the game." I remember walking out after Friday's practice before the game, and the OSU fans were saying, "You might as well go home." I was thinking, "I'm going to go home alright -- with a win."

Looking ahead to the Sun Bowl, it's an exciting feeling, and I can't wait. I wish it was next week. It's hard to wait a whole month to play a football game. We're definitely going to keep our focus, and try to go out there and do our job.

It's good that we have some experience with dealing with the bowl scenario. With the experience, we know we can -- and how to -- finish the job. Since coach Mike Bellotti has been here, we haven't won as many bowl games as we would have liked, and we definitely want to leave him with a win. That's what all the seniors -- especially me, Fletch (Michael Fletcher) and Terry Miller -- want.

Looking down the road, there's still more football and I will have to make some decisions early on, but I'm not looking toward the NFL yet. First, I definitely need to make decisions about the Senior and the East/West Shrine Bowls. But I'm staying focused. I'm thinking about (Sun Bowl opponent) Minnesota right now. I'm actually breathing, sleeping and eating Minnesota, so to speak. As soon as they announced that we are playing the No. 13 team in the nation, I got really excited ... anybody would be excited about that. It gives us an opportunity to show our stuff, and it gives us the opportunity to elevate the status of the Pac-10 Conference.

After El Paso, there will be a decision between the East/West and the Senior Bowls. I'll play in whichever one gives me the status that I would like to have. I think the Senior Bowl will be more beneficial since the NFL coaches are coaching that game. But at the same time, they have some pretty physical practices. With my past injuries, I don't know if I can take that chance right now, but I definitely want to. Wherever I play, it'll be important that I show everybody that I am not injury-prone, and that I can play with anybody, in any situation.

I'm also in a situation where I have some things to prove, and it's more my fault than anybody else's. I need to make the right decisions at the right time. Going back to the UCLA game last year, maybe I should have run out of bounds, or dove forward. That injury still runs through my mind. I'm not saying that I could have done anything about it, but I felt that we could have gone very, very far last season if I was healthy. I'm not saying that we could have been national champions, but I think that we definitely could have beaten UCLA in that game, which ended up being the turning point of the season.