Sunday morning insight from the folks in Corvalis

Football
1

Every football game is its own story, with the warring sides having very different views of what happened, what problems exist, etc.

While our guys are back home sleeping, with video on Arizona State ready for when they get up, I took a look at what the Oregon State side had to say after the game.

HC Jonathan Smith said they had a great week of practice and was a bit surprised it was so lopsided. Some of the players comments indicated they had to flush themselves of the UCLA euphoria, shake off last night and move on, so I think they had a little swagger going after Pasadena, knew you had to prepare, you can’t just show up, but ran into a rested, highly talented & motivated team with really good coaching and great player leadership.

And the game took the most optimal path imaginable for us. If we had to play them 5 more times, we wouldn’t be able to match what happened last night.

Utah likewise needs to rack the “W”, turn the page, and get ready for Saturday.

For us fans, after a win it’s fun to read what the other sides’ fans think. The reader reactions on Oregon live were the regular mix of Oregon-OSU sniping, some rational reactions about how their path upward is going to be long, some folks ready to dump football, etc.

(It’s not like watching the hordes of lemmings of BYU fans after a loss, trying to “out-fling” each other as they depart from the top of the cliff.)

Here’s one hilarious exchange involving one (apparent) advocate of the Oregon recreational marijuana statutes, and a witty reaction:

Reader 1) “Who cares. It’s just a football game. Played by teams of people with a lot of various concerns and which lots of arbitrary stuff happens to”.

Reader 2) “Like your family… but yet… here you are”.

2

We came over from Bend, East Cascades in the high desert. We sat in row 14, on the 47 yard line with a few scattered local Ute fans and some who flew in for the game. The Ute fans stayed to the end, fueled by ice cream bars, popcorn, and sodas. We enjoyed some terrific 10 Barrel brews. For us the game was fun, a rout, a convincing and commanding performance against a struggling program on their home turf for homecoming.

Beaver fans began to leave in a trickle just before halftime, by mid-third quarter, that turned into a torrent. The stadium was at most 10% full at the final. A lot of silence and long faces. Their disappointment was palpable.

We took a local extremely well-organized shuttle to the game. On return, Beaver fans were stunned at the magnitude of the loss, the near total domination on both sides of the ball by Utah. None of them saw that coming. And they were gracious in their team’s defeat.

We listened to the OSU postgame program. The sportscasters did not mince words, Utah is a great team and they embarrassed OSU. The OSU coach was frank, they have a long way to go. Utah was awesome and has terrific athletes. Four players were interviewed, they were outplayed and had no answer for how to slow Utah down. Everyone talked about how prepared Utah was for everything they tried, and most of all how physical Utah plays.

This morning at the motel, we mixed with a few OSU fans. One 80-something said this was the biggest defeat she has ever seen by OSU. That can’t be true, but that is how the game appeared to them. Another said, OSU did not manage 3 first downs…I know that can’t be accurate. Anyway, we leave for home now, satisfied that the Utes are pointed in the right direction. Still Utah needs to play better teams to get a full measure of how good they are.

9 Likes
3

Well written
Thanks for representing the U as a sportsman and gentleman

2 Likes
4

They had 16 first downs. I think that person was probably referring to their low number of third-down conversions—only 2 of 13. The Utes’ defense was solid. (Oregon State did have a couple of fourth-down conversions, however.)

5

Way back in the Mac days OSU played a triple option offense. The Utes went up there a blew them out. One of their players made some comment about #33 (Shareef Shah) being in their backfield more than the OSU QB.

2 Likes
6

Here is a link to an Oregon article about the OSU and a potential match-up with Oregon.

Utah Bulldozer

2 Likes
7

I will say this, the few faithful Beaver fans who remained were quite loud in celebrating their last minute score and they deserve credit for staying and supporting their team until the end.

Reminded me of a rainy game in the 80s where visiting CSU beat Utah 50-10 with just a handful of us staying to cheer when Utah scored their lone TD with about a minute remaining.

1 Like