My remark over the weekend that Oregon State missed an opportunity by adopting such a casual attitude to its spring football showcase sparked the largest and most venomous response of any editorial I’ve written.
It inflamed the ranks of the injured university’s power structure and galvanized Beavers supporters.
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.
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