EUGENE — On a recent afternoon, Holly Herbert walked into her kitchen holding a framed photo that could have come out of an Oregon athletics museum.
It was taken at Christmastime in 1998. Nine-month-old Justin Herbert, the second of Holly and Mark’s three sons, wears overalls in the lap of a smiling Len Casanova, then 93. It was signed in gold pen: “To Justin, from Cas.”
“Who’d have known, taking this photo?” Holly said.
The significance is startling: An infant who’s since become the face of Oregon Ducks football as its homegrown, star quarterback, held by the iconic coach who brought the program into the modern era with success that took decades to replicate.