Pre-Game For The Civil War

Coaches and players prepare for the game throughout the week. And pre-game begins on the day of the game. My pre-game starts Sunday, the day after a Beaver game. This is a special week. Clash of the Titans for a lot of people around here. Colossal. Mammoth. This one’s going to hurt. Either in a good way or bad one.

SUNDAY: I get up and read the paper. It’s a good week. Oregon State put the pasting on California, 62-14. The game went as expected. Finally. Articles on Beaver victories are always enjoyable and I treaded in unfamiliar waters by actually reading about Oregon‘s balloon popping.

Okay, I can start thinking about next Saturday. It’s the one everyone has been waiting for: Civil War. Since the Ducks lost on Saturday night to the Stanford Cardinal, 17-14 in overtime, already I can sense the extra tension building. This is no average matchup between the Ducks and Beavers. Bowl berths are in the balance. My nerves are starting to jangle and we are still a week away. Later in the day I travel to my local Starbucks to satisfy my iced caffeine addiction. One of the girls there, an avid Ducks supporter, has a bleak look on her face. Not happy. Wearing an orange and black clad OSU jacket I ask her,

“Would you like to rub my jacket for good luck?”  Ouch. My drink comes out different. Wait, didn’t I order an iced drink? No matter, this is the best day of the week. As I visit my favorite eating establishment, Chicken Bar, the owner and I commiserate about our joy. Ducks lose the night before and the Beavs dominated. Good times.

Sleep time Sunday night: 7 ½ hours.

From Craziness, The Oregon State Beavers Stare At Opportunity

It has been a crazy football season for the Oregon State Beavers. Mike Riley's team has experienced dizzying ups and downs and twists and turns, most recently, a dreadful loss against Washington that wrecked their undefeated season. That loss is, however, the only loss, stunningly, of the current campaign. The Beavers are the 11th ranked team in the land, fighting for a berth in the Bowl Championship Series and a program defining year. One hiccup from the Beavers, that fitful night in Seattle, hasn't sunk the BCS ship. Two losses and the Beavers have a chance to stay afloat. Three losses is checkmate on BCS dreams. It's that simple. Not making a BCS game would be short of a catastrophe, but a definite shame in this rebound season. The chance to make the Rose Bowl, or a Fiesta Bowl, it doesn't come around often. It's been a wild ride so far in 2012. But from the craziness, we meet opportunity, and Oregon State needs to seize the moment.

It's certainly has been quite the football season in Corvallis. The season opener nobody was going to care about against Nichols State turned into a high-stakes drama when storms in the south made it impractical and impossible for Nichols State to fly out to Oregon to play the game. The Beavers viewed it as a missed chance to start the season out of the right foot before the shellacking that never was against Wisconsin. Last year's B1G champions, a team that fell a few yards short of victory in the Rose Bowl was supposed to smash the Beavers. But Oregon State, behind a fantastic defense, stole the day with an unexpected 10-7 win. That got the ball rolling. The offense took off in the next two games, road wins over UCLA and Arizona, and while the Beavers, and more specifically Sean Mannion, struggled in a win over Washington State, OSU was at 4-0.