RIO DE JANEIRO - During the Opening Ceremonies, they would have waved a green flag that featured a cartoon duck and marched between the small Olympic teams from Oman and Pakistan. They would have had more athletes than either country.

In fact, had the University of Oregon seceded from the union or somehow been granted sovereignty and entered these Rio de Janeiro Olympics as an independent nation, it’d likely fare quite well. With 18 current and former Ducks competing in track and field events here, the school can lay claim to more Olympic athletes than 113 countries. Its team - which comes fro...