Future of Beav Football
From the prior thread, this is my prediction:
1. AAC or MWC
2. This results in (a) Smith leaving and (b) 75% of our current recruits entering the transfer protocol.
3. We are then stuck rebuilding the entire program with a new coach, maybe Riley, and waiting years for the team to get respectable again. In that time frame, we have a terrible record even in these inferior conferences.
4. While going through this transition, we have to watch foreign games with no ties like Tulane, which make the teams pretty much unwatchable.
So, this is the end of Beaver football. Die hard fans will sit around and waste their lives watching this total crap product, but a lot will tune out and do something better with their limited time on this amazing planet.
I’d watch if we went to the Big 12. That would be interesting and competitive games, and we’d keep our recruits and probably our coach intact. But the odds of that are under 5% I’d say. Short of that, it is the end.
Edit: Rebuilding the PAC if we could keep Cal and Stanford would be semi-watchable. Would have to add some intriguing schools like SDSU, Fresno, Nevada, BSU, Air Force, CSU…something like that is bad but just barely watchable. We’d still lose a lot of recruits and most likely lose Smith. Smith is only here for nostalgia. He is/was reliving his playing days. That’s why he’s a HC at Oregon State. To relive his glory vicariously through others. Now that that is gone and all the schools he competed against are gone, he will be gone.
We are better off going independent than doing all this. Then we can at least play in interesting games and probably get good recruits if they see a competitive schedule. I don’t think chasing TV money is wise since TV as we know it will be completely obsolete soon. There’s a 99.999% now that all of us will die never seeing the Beavs achieve greatness (Rose Bowl, Pac title, etc). We had a pretty good shot if we had stayed in the PAC, but of course we wasted so much time with Riley. Those wasted years where we accepted mediocrity lead to this result. We’re building into something respectable but ten years too late and just in time for the entire landscape to change on us. Once again, Lucy pulls the football on OSU.
It is this year or bust for OSU. Smith is likely hammering that home. It’s our last chance at something special in our lifetimes.