I received an email this morning from a frustrated reader who wishes to remain anonymous. Correction, said reader wasn’t just frustrated. He was “outraged” over The Oregonian/OregonLive’s coverage early this week on the Oregon Ducks and Washington Huskies’ game.
He happens to be a Beavers’ fan.
It dovetails with an email I got last week from another miffed reader -- this one a woman named Marilyn -- who was “appalled and disappointed” at the lack of coverage of the Oregon State football game in the Sunday home-delivered print edition. She wrote, “The front page of the Sports section and pages four and five were all about the Ducks and not quite one page for the Beavers.”
All of this pleases me, a little. Not because people are frustrated with our coverage, but because if you were looking for signs that Oregon State’s football program is truly back and can be trusted to stick around it’s in my in-box. We officially have two relevant and interesting Pac-12 Conference football programs in our state again and two engaged fan bases.
Can’t wait for The-Game-Formerly-Known-As-The-Civil-War week.
When I first arrived at The Oregonian in 2002 a gentleman who bled orange and black would call the sports editor each Monday and vent about the perceived disparity in coverage. He even took to using a ruler (and I am not making this up) to measure the total square inches of the print-edition copy and photographs dedicated to the teams. He was often hopping mad about what he perceived to be inequity and didn’t seem to care that the sports editor had attended neither Oregon nor OSU.
Hell hath no fury like a Beaver damned?
Oregon is 7-1 and ranked No. 4 in the initial College Football Playoff. Oregon State is a very respectable and dangerous 5-3. The Beavers are the reigning rivalry champions after last season’s 41-38 win in Corvallis. UO coach Mario Cristobal and OSU’s Jonathan Smith deserve collective credit for their parts in engineering wonderful trajectory. The big picture underscores it.
Our state’s two Pac-12 teams are a combined 12-4.
Washington and WSU: 9-8
USC and UCLA: 9-8
Utah and Colorado: 7-9
Cal and Stanford: 6-10
Arizona and ASU: 5-11
No other 1-2 punch in the conference is winning like our state. This season we’ve collectively enjoyed a lot of thrills, a little belly-aching, some booing, some injuries, but the state of Oregon has emerged on top with the final stretch of the season still to be played. But there is no greater marker of OSU’s role in this than a line of Beavers’ fans hungry for more coverage.
Washington and Oregon will play this week, sure. Jimmy Lake, the Huskies’ coach, stepped in it pretty good on Monday when he declared the Ducks weren’t UW’s recruiting rival. Lake pointed instead to Stanford, USC and Notre Dame and said, “we battle more academically prowess teams.”
UO president Michael Schill fired back. I wrote a column about it. I’ve since learned that UCLA and Cal weren’t happy with Lake’s attempt at elitism, either. But the episode got some good run and dominated the news cycle for a couple of days. Amid that, though, Oregon State continued to quietly prepare for its road game against Colorado on Saturday. Win it and the Beavers’ are bowl eligible for the first time since Mike Riley.
That is big.
OSU beat guy, Nick Daschel, is all over this of course. He writes daily about the Beavers and likes to take deep dives. He and his wife are empty nesters with a pile of kids in college and beyond. Daschel even sold his laundromat earlier this year. Some believe he dumped it because he was tired of dealing with vandalism and carrying around garbage cans filled with quarters, but I disagree. I think Daschel simply saw Smith’s football team practice in the spring, decided he wasn’t going to have time for a side hustle, and listed it on the spot.
Our Oregon beat guy, James Crepea, is all over Cristobal’s team, too. One recent game-day Saturday he had six different posts going on deadline and turned me on press row and asked something like, “What do you think my angle should be in my game story?” I wanted to tell him he should write about the Harley-Davidson motorcycle in his garage. It’s the only thing tangentially related to the Ducks beat that he hasn’t posted on yet. Instead I told him him to write the first thing he’d tell his friends about the game.
What would I tell my friends today?
The Ducks are pretty good and enjoying some national love. The Beavers are back, relevant and still have room to grow. We try to cover both programs like nobody else. I can’t wait to see what happens next. I don’t know who is going to win when the Ducks-Beavers play each other Nov. 27 but I do know the outcome pored over in meticulous fashion. Also, I know there are bound to be complaints. I have the receipts in my email in-box. It’s not just Beavers fans, mind you. I have emails from disgruntled Ducks fans complaining about the glowing coverage of OSU this season.
What I’m saying is -- isn’t this great?
We’re officially back as a college football state.
In fact, maybe our advertising department and the editorial team ought to team up and think about a special section dedicated to the college football bonanza our state is enjoying. Publish it during bowl season. Local businesses would love to buy advertising in it. Sports fans would devour it. Of course, I’m floating this wild idea without clearing it with any of the bosses. But someone should get right on that.
I mean, imagine the reaction from the mob of angry Trail Blazers fans who will write to ask, “Where’s our special section?”
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Email: John@JohnCanzano.com
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