Baseball Weekend Thread

Good luck with the move. GoBeavs

Overtime is brutal. Miss…miss…miss….game over

Mulholland gets final 2 outs. Beavs win 10-8

Moran has a recap of the Scott Barnes PTGAF Town Hall meeting from the weekend. I won’t link the article directly, but this is what he had to report:

On Saturday in front of approximately 200 Oregon State fans, Scott Barnes quickly cut to the topic he expected to be most popular.

The OSU athletic director opened by talking about the school’s investment in football, “or lack of,” as he put it.

“We have not invested in football like we should,” Barnes said.

The comment came during a town hall at the Toyota Club at Reser Stadium, where alumni and fans could ask Barnes questions following his 30-minute opening presentation. Barnes’ acknowledgement about football spending came one year after he officially took over running the Oregon State athletic department.

And while he touted record graduation rates and grade point averages, the recent student-led launch of the #DamWorthIt mental health awareness campaign and the ongoing success of the Beavers’ baseball, gymnastics, softball and wrestling programs, the primary focus of his hourlong forum was football.

The Beavers are coming off a 1-11 season in which Gary Andersen, whom Barnes first hired at Utah State in 2009, abruptly walked away six games into his third season in Corvallis. In November, Barnes hired Washington offensive coordinator and former OSU quarterback Jonathan Smith as Andersen’s replacement.

Barnes called Smith “our No. 1 pick as a head coach” and spoke of salary efficiencies, as Oregon State agreed to pay the first-time head coach less than Andersen and spread the remaining money to assistant coaches.

Barnes also acknowledged the athletic department will pay this coming year for the salaries of assistant coaches not retained from the previous staff who have not taken other coaching jobs. Those coaches are owed a combined $1,120,020 in salary for the coming season.

When that money comes off the athletic department ledger, Barnes said the goal is to invest it back into football staff salaries.

“If this program is to going be successful … there’s going to be a retention issue and we’ve got to be ready to take that next bite at the apple,” he said.
Oregon State Beavers football vs. Stanford Cardinal
Randy L. Rasmussen for The Oregonian/OregonLive

Oregon State fans in the stands before the Beavers take on Stanford at Reser Stadium last October.

Barnes spoke of the significance of season tickets, which have followed a nationwide trend of decline from more than 20,000 in 2014 to 17,177 this season. He made multiple references throughout the forum to being short on fundraising, pointing to low Annual Fund totals.

“We’ve ticked up,” he said. “We’re trending. But certainly, we’re not where we need to be in terms of overall dollars. And then membership is very low.”

He pointed to multiple pie charts that highlighted the disparity in football spending between OSU and other Pac-12 schools, saying that the Pac-12 average for football spending is about 29-30 percent of total budget, compared to 19-20 percent for Oregon State.

He then noted that OSU does not count debt service, game operations, marketing and equipment into those figures, and said OSU is closer to on pace with other conference schools with those metrics included.

“We are behind,” Barnes said. “But if you normalize that and you put in the four things I said we don’t count that most do, we go to 30 percent. Does that mean we’re where we want to be? Absolutely not.”

Barnes also spoke with optimism about the future, referencing a financial sustainability plan that would balance operations in 2020 for a department that has long operated at a deficit and would include “an additional $4 million from the university invested into athletics.”

With OSU President Ed Ray and former Olympic high jump gold medalist Dick Fosbury attending, the event came one week after the Oregon State athletic department published a strategic plan called “Build the Dam,” which included future athletic, academic, fundraising and infrastructure goals.

Goals varied, from winning 15 Pac-12 titles by 2023 to establishing a professional mentor program to launch in the spring. The plan was short on specific detail for accomplishing each goal. Barnes said the plan included 200 “action items” that will be fluid and were not released to the public.

Ultimately, Barnes indicated the success of other elements of the plan all can be traced back to football.

“If we get — when we get football right — every program succeeds,” he said.

More from Barnes’ town hall:
Paul Vernon/AP

Ohio State fans tailgate outside of Ohio Stadium before the start of a football game against Oklahoma last September.
SCHEDULING

The Jonathan Smith coaching era will begin on Sept. 1 with a rare trip to the legendary “Horseshoe” at Ohio State, which will mark the Beavers’ first trip to Columbus since 1984.

Don’t get used those kinds of football road games, Barnes said.

“Enjoy the trip to Ohio State because we’re not going to do that again,” Barnes said, drawing laughs from attendees.

The first available betting lines for the 2018 college football season show just how much of a challenge Smith will face right out of the gate: The Beavers are 31-point underdogs at Ohio State. The schools agreed to the game in 2014 when Bob De Carolis was athletic director.

While the game is expected to be one-sided, it will provide a financial windfall for Oregon State.

The athletic department will receive $1.7 million from Ohio State for the standalone game. In 2015, the Beavers earned $1.45 million for their game at Michigan – a 35-7 loss.

But Barnes said the school’s ultimate goal should be to reach the College Football Playoff and that scheduling one-off non-conference games against powerhouses like a “Group of 5” school in search of revenue is not the path toward that objective.

Barnes said the team’s model will be to play home-and-home series with schools from the Big Ten or Big 12, while regularly scheduling opponents from the Mountain West and FCS. In the past year, Oregon State has signed home-and-home contracts with Purdue, Fresno State and San Diego State.

Barnes cited Washington as an example of Pac-12 team that has created a “pathway to success” with its scheduling. The Huskies recently drew the ire of some analysts at ESPN for their scheduling but did reach the College Football Playoff in 2016 after defeating Rutgers, Idaho and Portland State in Seattle. They will notably open their 2018 season against Auburn in Atlanta.

Barnes also said Oregon State would consider playing neutral-site games, “depending on the opportunity.”
FACILITIES

Barnes reiterated comments to John Canzano of The Oregonian/OregonLive in October that the renovation of the west of side of Reser Stadium would mean maximizing access of the facility between both on-campus and off-campus users.

“If we’re going to do this, then this should be a facility that’s used 365 days a year, not just six times a year,” he said.

Exactly what shape that year-round usage will take remains unclear. Barnes said OSU will look at privately look at concepts in the next couple weeks and evaluate costs “down the road.”

The OSU 10-year capital forecast from January 2017, one month before Barnes officially started as athletic director, outlined a $150 million need in private donations for the Reser Stadium west side project. While Barnes did not cite any figures, he said the costs of materials and labor would lead OSU to be even more “prudent.”

“It scares me to death when you think about the market right now,” Barnes said.
Randy L. Rasmussen/Staff

Fans cheer at Gill Coliseum during an NCAA women’s basketball tournament game in March 2015.

By April or May, Barnes said the athletic department would prioritize its facility needs while evaluating potential plans and renderings.

Recently completed projects include: the men’s basketball locker room renovation; new lighting at the Merrit Truax indoor football practice facility; the second phase of the Whyte Track and Field Center renovation; Dale Thomas Wrestling Room renovation; the practice facility, greens and driving range at Trysting Tree Golf Club; and the $46 million Valley Football Center renovation.

The upcoming list of projects includes: new scoreboards, videoboards and lighting for Gill Coliseum over the summer; continued upgrades to Goss Stadium; new lighting for the Oregon State Softball Complex; new bleachers at Paul Lorenz Field; and LED lighting for Reser Stadium.

Barnes fielded a complaint from an attendee about the uneven concreate at the front entrance of Gill Coliseum, as well as the second-level restrooms.

“It’s embarrassing, and we have to move very quickly on that,” Barnes responded, calling the arena “a jewel that we want to take great care of.”

Barnes was also asked about the potential for expanding seating capacity at Goss Stadium, which sits at 3,315. He said Oregon State was looking at expansion in its facilities master plan but did not want to get too big given the high potential for sellouts.

Oregon State had 17 crowds of 3,000 or more last season and an average of 3,199 per home date.

And while most of the discussion around facilities surrounded needed improvements, Barnes also said he believed the football practice facilities were the best in the Pac-12.

“We’re not as far behind as people suggest,” he said.
PAC-12 NETWORK

The lone pre-submitted question to come before Barnes was about the state of the Pac-12 Network.

The controversial television rights deal has provided a major platform for the conference’s Olympic sports but has also featured limited national distribution due to an ongoing standoff with DirecTV and provided lower payouts than originally expected to member schools, which have retained full collective ownership of the network.

Barnes was optimistic about the conference’s next rights deal in 2024 but did not have any news for fans affected by the DirecTV impasse.

“There’s no magic bullet in the next six years unfortunately,” Barnes said.

Barnes did point positively to a recent leadership change, as former Time Warner Cable executive Mark Shuken was named the president of the network in August. Barnes referred to Shuken as “brilliant,” crediting him with making leadership changes in the sales and programming departments.

Jon Wilner of the Bay Area News Group reported in January the network was cutting staff, while Barnes said the television production of Olympic sport coverage would come from a single center instead of on-site to save money.

“Our best opportunity in the next six years is to bring dollars to the bottom line … is not through huge revenue growth unfortunately,” Barnes said. “It’s through efficiencies.”

But much of the conversation about the state of the network involved the desire to keep administrative issues with the deal or the conference out of the public eye.

“What we have to stop doing is killing ourselves,” Barnes said. “We have athletic directors and presidents that are out there bashing the Pac-12 about what’s going wrong. Those conversations need to stay in the room and we need to speak with one voice because if we don’t it hurts recruiting, it hurts our brand and you guys get really frustrated.”

Ray, the OSU president since 2003 who was part of negotiating the original network contract, echoed the sentiment that administrators were bringing down the conference brand with public critiques.

“There in fact were ADs and presidents who spent money they didn’t have,” Ray said. “They built stadiums and made commitments based on money they anticipated. And what they really are belly aching about is they got out over their skis and now they’re in financial trouble. So instead of owning the situations they’ve created, they’re whining about what the Pac-12 can’t bail them out of.

“And somehow they don’t get that that’s not a productive exercise – that bashing your own product and complaining about the brand not delivering what you anticipated but wasn’t realized is no way for us to move forward.”

Neither Barnes nor Ray mentioned any names, although in an October interview with The Seattle Times, Washington State University President expressed disappointment with the revenue generated by the Pac-12 Networks and that it was a concern of the university presidents within the conference.
Anibal Ortiz/The Corvallis Gazette-Times via AP

Oregon State football coach Jonathan Smith
RECRUITING

Barnes said more money needed to be available for football recruiting, highlighting the desire for a private air service for Jonathan Smith and his staff to use during football season for midweek trips.

Smith has said he intends to focus more on areas considered part of the traditional Pac-12 footprint, putting a particular emphasis on Southern California.
EXPANSION

Barnes said there are no plans to expand beyond the 17 sports currently offered at Oregon State, which is tied for eighth in the conference with Arizona and Utah. Barnes said the top priority remained correcting the course for football before the possibility of adding men’s track and field, which the school dropped in 1988.

“When we get football right and we sustain that, we’ve got a lot of our problems solved,” Barnes said.
NIKE

Asked about switching uniform suppliers to a different company like Adidas, given Nike’s connection to founder and Oregon alum Phil Knight, Barnes stressed that Nike had been an “unbelievable partner” and the school was happy with the relationship.

“They’ve advanced us in so many ways,” Barnes said.

Oregon State is in the seventh year of an eight-year deal with Nike worth more than $17.3 million, which will expire June 30, 2019.

— Danny Moran