Of all the columns I’ve written, few have inspired a bigger response, and none more vitriol, than my suggestion over the weekend that Oregon State missed an opportunity by taking such a casual approach to its spring football showcase.
It mobilized Beavers fans and caused heartburn at the top of the wounded university’s power structure.
I was accused of “writing a hit piece” and a “hackneyed hit job” that was “in poor taste” and “kicking OSU while they’re already hurting.” I was called “sanctimonious, self-entitled” and “anti-Beaver, pro-Phil Knight.” One reader lamented the “mediocre and often substandard ‘reporting’ of the Beaver teams” by myself “and the other gumshoes for the Oregon Pravda.”
Admittedly, as a begrudging millennial, I had to look that one up.
Most Beavers fans, between curse words, simply called me the very worst thing they could think of: a Duck.
Buried within the avalanche of anger, however, was a note that struck a decidedly different tone.
“Probably not supposed to say this,” it said, “but great column.”
It came from a university source. Someone who knows how the athletic department operates.
This person understood that I was talking about much more than a spring football game. The column was about how Oregon State chooses to move after losing the Pac-12, its top athletes, its highest-paid coach and a clear future.
The fact that this single voice was such an outlier among those coming from Corvallis, that the source knew a vote of support was akin to treason, tells me that OSU still doesn’t get it. So let me put it even more plainly.
The Beavers need to start thinking more like Oregon.
I know, I know.
The Ducks have Phil Knight. But that’s a cop out, isn’t it?
It’s not just the presence of the Nike founder that sets Oregon apart. It was the willingness more than two decades ago to go bold and, frankly, to be wrong.
What risk is Oregon State willing to take?
For a long time, being Not Oregon worked wonders for Oregon State. It appealed to those who believed that yellow “O” stood for “ostentatious” or “obnoxious.” There is beauty in simplicity and, like I’ve written before, letting the work speak for itself.
My advice to Beavers fans — and, more important, the people calling the shots — is to stop being so proud that you can’t admit something needs to change.
OSU doesn’t have Knight or his endless bankroll. But it is coming into a pile of cash from the breakup of the Pac-12. It has a partner in Washington State. It has an opportunity to go big.
What’s the worst thing that could come from a little daring ingenuity? The Beavers end up in the Mountain West? Even odds that happens anyway.
But the thud of the spring football game should echo as a call to action.
To do things better, more comprehensively, more ambitiously. To be fearless.
To put pride aside and ask an uncomfortable question: What would Oregon do?
They’d stab their brother in the back while he slept!
Good, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way.
Longtime Oregon fans will remind you that it wasn’t always like this in Eugene. The Big Ten would have looked right past the Ducks 30 years ago, too.
Oregon could have stopped running out those uniform combos when many of us rolled our eyes so hard they nearly escaped their sockets.
Beavers, of course, saw that as trying too hard. All the bells and whistles were UO selling out.
Fine. Is there any argument that it didn’t pay off?
Do you think Boise State really wanted to play on a blue turf?
It was about being distinctive. About being memorable.
It became the Broncos’ thing.
Oregon State didn’t need gimmicks while it enjoyed life as a charter member of the Pac-12. Things were working out just fine inside the box. The Beavers weren’t the highest-funded department nor did they win the most championships.
But they were safe.
Well, that has been blasted to smithereens.
Now, they need a thing, too.
I once wrote that the yin and yang of the in-state rivalry worked so nicely because one school was a spaceship and the other a John Deere.
At whatever level it is going to operate, Oregon State needs to try to fly that tractor to the moon.
I’m not saying to install orange turf at Reser Stadium.
But at least it would be something.
One reader this week lightly chastised me for not giving concrete enough ideas for Oregon State, saying, OSU needs to “design an all-out, national, powerful, meaningful media blitz.”
That’s some great advice.
A billboard in New York?
It’s no more ludicrous for OSU now than it was when Joey Harrington peered down at millions of New Yorkers every day in midtown Manhattan.
You have the sympathy of a nation right now, why not lean into it? A national ad campaign that declares: “LEFT BEHIND, BUT STILL HERE.”
Cut to video of oceanography students at sea...
AND HERE
... to timber fellers revving chainsaws...
AND HERE
... to Trent Bray high fiving every player on his team every day ...
AND HERE
... to attorneys shaking hands after last fall’s judgment in Whitman County court ...
AND HERE
... to a raucous student section ... to Benny body surfing.
COME AND GET US.
Buy ad time during every Oregon game. Take over a billboard near each of the 10 Pac-12 defectors’ stadiums in the fall.
What are ya, scared? as a thoroughly teed off Benny gnashes his teeth.
If sports are the front porch to a university, as campus leaders have said, the spring game we got instead could have been wrapped in yellow tape and marked CONDEMNED.
The good news for OSU is that they will have more chances.
Last week, in an open letter to fans, AD Scott Barnes said OSU “has always punched above its weight class.”
After being on the “receiving end of multiple gut punches,” he said, you can either “exit the ring or throw counterpunches.”
“Hear this, Beaver Nation, the gloves are on and we will not stray from our mission,” he said, maximizing the potential of a single metaphor.
If you were like me, you dropped into Reser Stadium last weekend wanting to see that fighting spirit represented somewhere in some way. It didn’t require an eclectic showman pounding on some bongos. It just needed to be an investment of some kind in the experience.
Put it this way: It wasn’t just on the field that the 10-7 scrimmage featured too much punting.
Forty miles down the road, Oregon has implored its fans to “pack Autzen” for its spring game. Doubtful that they will fill 54,000 seats, but they’ll get dramatically closer than OSU did to packing the 35,000-plus at Reser Stadium.
That’s on OSU, not OSU’s fans.
Oregon’s spring game doubles as a food drive. Military families will be honored. There is a flyover. Families can enjoy a two-hour fanfest before kickoff and stick around postgame for a set by Oregon folk star Mat Kearney.
I don’t think athletic department officials planned all this to con fans into the stadium. I just think they don’t take for granted that they would have come anyway.
Tickets to Autzen Stadium on Saturday are free.
I can think of a few people in Corvallis who should take advantage of that deal.
They might get some ideas.
Stories by Bill Oram
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