Just some quick takeaways from Saturday before moving on to my prediction.

Needs improvement:

1. Defense was lethargic, but that picked up by Q2.
2. Smith still doesn’t understand FGs and probabilities. This will obviously never correct, and anything to the contrary is an excuse by fans to protect “their guy”. It’s going to be bad in close games vs good opponents, though, so it’s a big deal.
3. WRs. Irish can’t be the #3. This is the same as last year when Martinez should have been the starter from day 1. This staff doesn’t always get the best option on the field. I’d like to see Zachary Card get a shot. He had great film. Vaslin. Even Noga looked better. Irish can’t be the guy, though.
4. Ivy had a bad game, and that could get uglier vs better competition, but he had good form, and that will go a long way. Secondary overall was fine. D was fine. No drop off as others expected. If anything they seemed to get more pressure and finish more plays. Good tackling overall.

I think this week is even uglier for the opponent. Beavs are tuned up and at home.

56-17, Beavs. Though, the quicker clock does make higher scores harder…I’ll say a 5TD spread.

I’m sticking with 45-13, Beavs.

DJ with 4 total TDs in his debut.

I think the big thing is to savor this game and every game this year. This season is like sipping a Bailey’s or eating mousse cake. You want to really sit it in and savor this. It’s basically Fall (we have leaves dropping already!), air is cooling, angle of the sun changing, corn and pumpkins ripening, and the Beavs about to go [rage] undefeated…enjoy, savor, and Go Beavs!

12:30 on CBS.

Can you believe it’s here? And it will be over before we know it. Savor every game this year, Beavs! We’ll never see PAC football as we know and love it again.

I’m going Beavs either at 1 loss or undefeated this year. I think they’re going to have a rage year and obliterate people. We’ll see.

Final in this one:

45-13.

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.

Have at it, Beavos.

My stance is we need to see DJ win the job, and we need to stop having corporations ruin NCAA sports. What is interesting is many fans view giant corporations as the saviors for their conference, and this allows their destruction to continue. When the enemy is the savior that’s going to be the outcome every time. What the PAC should do is charge for and stream all games on their own app ala carte, then charge Apple, YouTube, et al a royalty free to pick up and stream games. That’s the way to go.

Also: On the 1st day ’til fall camp, my true love said aw shucks, “let’s go hunting for some Ducks!”