The Oregon State Beavers football team just lost their fifth game in a row. Their 0-5 record marks the team’s worst start to a season this century. 

The team that used to beat the Oregon Ducks and be ranked as a top 25 team in the nation are currently in the midst of a crisis. 

Nowadays, fans are only left with the memories of the glory days of the team. 

“I got to Oregon State right as they started getting good,” Science Department Chair Mr. Kyle Voge said. “That was the best time to be a Beaver.”

Mr. Voge attended Oregon State University and graduated as part of the class of 2002.

“I watched us destroy Joey Harrington’s team,” Mr. Voge said, “That was fantastic. Freshman year we stormed the field on a double overtime winner at Civil War [the rivalry game between the Ducks and the Beavers]. It was great.”

In December of 2022, the Pac-12’s media rights contracts were expiring. 

University of California, Los Angeles, and University of Southern California had announced their joining of the Big Ten conference before any other team had made new contracts.

In a desperate attempt to keep the UCLA Bruins in their conference, the Pac-12 board offered UCLA more revenue from their contracts and media rights, but for that to work the board would also have to convince other Pac-12 members of the idea that UCLA could bring in more revenue than the other teams.

Patrick Phillips, University of Oregon’s interim president at the time, immediately rejected the idea, refusing to let the Ducks lose money from contracts and media rights to UCLA. An argument behind this was that Oregon’s brand is arguably just as large or even bigger than UCLA’s, and they felt that they would be unjustly given less. 

USC, UCLA, and Oregon were arguing about money. Instead of acting as college athletic programs, they were focused on being brands and companies. Overall, the root cause of the disintegration of the once mighty Pac-12 conference was due to the root of all evil: money.

Big name schools with huge athletic programs such as UCLA, USC, University of Oregon, or University of Washington would have no problems joining a new conference.

Smaller athletic schools like Oregon State or Washington State University would.

“Immediately we lost any sort of interest from the TV markets, any sort of interest in [from] advertisers,” Mr. Voge said, sharing the idea that Oregon State’s small share of viewership in a Ducks-dominated market contributed to the Beavers being unable to find a new home. 

By the fall of 2024, Oregon State’s schedule highlighted games against smaller schools such as San Jose State University (SJSU), San Diego State University (SDSU), or Fresno State instead of UCLA, USC, University of Washington or other teams they used to play.

The Beavers program was no longer getting the national reputation they once had. They were now just another mid-tier football program, just like the SJSU’s or SDSU’s they were playing. 

“Who wants to go to a mid-tier school? If you’re good enough to play for a big school, you’re going to go to a big school because you’re trying to get on TV, you’re trying to go to the draft,” Mr. Voge said. 

Oregon State immediately lost any type of recruiting prowess they had. Once upon a time, they were attracting recruits that would get to play Oregon or USC. Nowadays, those recruits don’t want to play against SJSU; they’d rather go to a school in a conference that will give them more opportunities.

“If you had the talent to play at a big school, you’d go to a big school,” Mr. Voge said, “Look at what happened to Jonathan Smith,” Mr. Voge added. “He had the ability to stay at Oregon State and coach at his alma mater, his love, his place, or he could go coach at a big school playing real teams, and he left in a heartbeat.” 

Oregon State is a school where multiple of La Salle’s seniors go each year, and the unfortunate thing is, they won’t experience the double overtime winners in games against the Ducks that Mr. Voge did in his years there. Instead, they get the crushing 41-7 losses that the Beavers fell victim to against the Oregon Ducks two weeks ago. 

The reason they won’t is because these schools that have football programs already worth millions of dollars just wanted more money.

“Oregon State’s just not that anymore, and it breaks my little heart because I love the Beavs,” Mr. Voge said.