Brooks Hatch asks his readers whether they would have moved the schedule around this season in order to accomodate television. The way the schedule was originally, the Beavers were to open with Utah, Hawai’i, and Idaho before taking on USC. Instead, they ditched Idaho and took a lot of money to travel to Stanford and Penn State so they could play on TV.
Was it the right decision? Fiscally, yes. But as a football decision? At first blush, I’d say no way. But thinking about it for a minute, do I, as an Oregon State fan, ever expect the team to compete for a national championship? Heck no. I mean the 2000 season was fantastic and all, but the stars had all literally lined up for that run. I doubt it could happen again. Even if they were to schedule Portland State, Idaho, and say San Jose State, then run the table in the Pac-10, a trip to the BCS championship is unlikely. So why not play a couple of tough games up front, on TV, take your lumps, then make a run at the Pac-10 and maybe catch lightning in a bottle? If the Beavers go 8-1 through the Pac-10 (unlikely this season…but there’s always next year), that could well be good enough to make a BCS bowl.
So yeah, why not roll the dice in Happy Valley, play two winnable games against Hawai’i and Utah then blitz through the Pac-10? The more I think about it, the more I like it, both on the field and for the bottome line.
If you have to play legit teams if you want to be considered a legit program. In that, OSU is doing the right thing scheduling tough games early (though if you think about it, Stanford shouldn’t have been tough, Hawaii isn’t, so basically it’s Penn State and a game against USC that is most likely a loss regardless of the time of year).
There’s been a fair amount of talk regarding why Oregon is considered a more successful program despite the fact that OSU has been as good or better the last 5 years. The Beavers inability to win out of conference games at the beginning of the season is probably the reason why that stigma exists.