Beaver Nation Passes the Vibe Check
Image courtesy of Oregon State Athletics
To quote Ice Cube, “Today was a good day.” It’s always a great day to be a Beaver, but today was probably one of the better vibes days I can ever remember in Beaver Nation. There was almost zero to complain about, from coaching decisions to player execution to the score…heck I didn’t even see anyone complaining about the announcers for once. (Not that they had reason to, I thought Ross Tucker was phenomenal. His pointing out offensive line play all game gave me a very different perspective on the game than I normally get). DJ looked like the guy we thought he was. When he picked up the first 1st down of the season with his legs, thought about sliding and then said “screw it” and lowered the shoulder for another yard or two, I smiled. When he converted a 3rd and long, I stood up and clapped by myself in my living room. And when the offensive line gave him enough time to do his homework in the pocket before firing a 31-yard strike to Jeremiah Noga for a touchdown, I couldn’t stop smiling the rest of the day. It was as complete a win as anyone could’ve hoped for.
Beaver Nation in general NEEDED this win. For a full month, we’ve been dealing with the harsh reality of being on the outside of the realignment circus. The performances of Colorado and Arizona earlier in the weekend showed that the bottom of the conference is better than it has been in a while. QBs across the conference put up video game numbers this weekend. A close win would’ve given oxygen to the embers of doubt smoldering in back of our minds. A loss would’ve been disastrous for our collective psyche. None of that happened. By halftime, the Belligerent Beavs Twitter Spaces was a full on party. One guy proudly proclaimed he was “on his 16th beer of the day” and that “Coach Bray is going to dial up some stunts and blitzes that nobody has ever seen before.” I like the idea that Coach Bray is going to revolutionize defensive football as we know it, but I’ll settle for what we saw today.
Maybe most of what I loved about today is that it was about US. It wasn’t about Deion Sanders or billboards in New York or conference media deals, it was about Jonathan Smith and DJ Uiagalelei and Damien Martinez and James Rawls and the offensive line. It was about 42-17 and playing our second string most of the 4th quarter.
Next week we open Reser Stadium in what promises to be a celebration of all things Corvallis and Oregon State. The weather should be perfect, the game should be over by halftime, Miley Cyrus will echo down Beaver Street, and the Beavs will move to 2-0, and the vibes will roll on for another week. I’ve never been so excited for a season in my life. Once we get past UC Davis and SDSU, we’re basically playing a 9 week playoff. Everyone is good. I feel pretty confident saying that nobody is going 9-0 in conference this year and 6-3 may be good enough to get you into the championship game…the league is that loaded. I can’t wait to soak it all in. Savor this season Beaver Nation, this season is so unique, you’re going to want to experience as much of it as possible.
Things to Gnaw On
The vibes were good this weekend off the football field as well. Volleyball beat Oklahoma and Boise State in straight sets. Men’s soccer won both their games this week by a combined score of 7-1. McKenna Martinez scored 25 seconds into the women’s soccer match Sunday as OSU battled Univ. of Portland, an NCAA Tourney Team last season, to a 1-1 draw. The cross country team won their season opening meet as well.
I can’t wait to see what kind of an audience the football game got. The move to Sunday allowed the game to be on CBS and meant little competition on the TV airwaves. Unfortunately, we got a stinker of lead-in: Rutgers, maybe the worst P5 team of the last decade, against Northwestern, a school that made headlines all summer for things that had very little to do with actually playing football. Further exacerbating the situation, they played one of the most boring 4th quarters imaginable. Rutgers was up 24-0 and desperate to preserve their shutout to prove to their fans (and maybe themselves) that this year is different. Northwestern was desperate to avoid their shutout to at least have something positive to talk about for the first time in months. The result was a lot of timeouts that prolonged a game whose outcome was a foregone conclusion. I promise that anyone not invested in OSU or SJSU changed the channel…we can only hope they came back. Was this a further ploy by BIG MEDIA to suppress OSU’s TV number to make them feel better about not inviting us to their party?
The methodical way that the Beavs dismantled SJSU probably worked against our viewership number as well. A 21-3 lead at halftime probably didn’t get the casual fan to stick around. I absolutely hate that this stuff matters at all, but in all honesty, it probably would’ve been better for OSU if they had let Cordeiro run wild a little bit and kept the game a little closer.
Continuing with things that shouldn’t matter but do, several B1G and SEC teams faceplanted this weekend. Purdue lost at home to Fresno State, blowing a two-score 2nd half lead. LSU and South Carolina lost to ACC foes. Illinois was pushed to the very end by Toledo. I’ll admit that any time schools from those two conferences play poorly I cheer, I also wonder if losing or struggling in those games will accelerate the consolidation of those two conferences. Why play games against teams you’re telling everyone you’re better than when you might lose? Just play each other and if you lose tell everyone how deep and talented your conferences are. Either that, or they’ll just continue to take the couple of schools that are most successful and kill other conferences. I hate all of it.
