State of Emergence

Oregon is now home to two of the Nation\'s fastest rising and best programs
by: Ron Bellamy
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A huge photograph of a college quarterback appears, mural-like, on the side of a building across from Madison Square Garden in New York City during the past summer, touting the senior's candidacy for the Hesiman Trophy. Two of his teammates will appear this season on promotional billboards in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

You think: Notre Dame, maybe?

At the rival school up the road, they're hyping the star running back for the Heisman Trophy. They pose him in a photo with a prominent alum who, it just so happens, also won college football's most prestigious award.

You think: Southern California, for sure.

For $600,000 each, the two rivals have agreed to move their annual battle to the first weekend in December, for a national ABC telecast on a day that will be billed as "Championship Saturday."

You think: Nebraska vs. Oklahoma, in yet another classic.

The two programs have made, or are making, major investments in facilities. They can't pack any more fans into the stands. Other schools keep trying to woo away their head coaches, so far to no avail.

You think: Tennessee and Washington, where money is no object. In 2000, the two rivals combined to go 21-3. They finished the season with bowl victories. They will begin the coming season high in the rankings, with aspirations not simply of winning their league, but of winning the national championship.

You think: Florida and Florida State, once again.

And in each case, you have thought of the wrong answer, because these two schools are none of the traditional powerhouses. They are the University of Oregon, and Oregon State University.

They are traditional rivals linked by funky nicknames - the Ducks and the Beavers, respectively - and separated by 45 miles of Northwest country road between Eugene and Corvallis, by old grudges, and by football fortunes that took drastically different directions in the 1980s, and that only recently reconverged on a collision course in the upper tier of the Pac-10 Conference.

The Ducks got there in the mid-1990s; the Beavers finally arrived in the last two years, after 28 straight losing seasons.

Collectively, the Ducks and Beavers are among the prime examples of the new landscape of college football, in which the 85-player scholarship limit gives virtually any program a chance to win big in any given year.

But the reality is that not every college football program does win, even in this era of parity. A lot of things have to go right, and be done right, and by the right people.

A few decades ago, Oregon and Oregon State were regular inhabitants of the infamous Bottom Ten, a sarcastic ranking of college football's worst teams. Now, they're in the Top 10. Which will have some longtime football fans convinced that in Hades, the doomed residents are donning snowsuits.

There are some similarities in the success stories of Oregon and Oregon State, but there's a big difference, too.

Which is that Oregon has been largely successful since 1989, the breakthrough season that produced the Ducks' first bowl appearance in 26 years. Starting with that season, the Ducks have been in bowl games in nine of 12 seasons. They won the Pac-10 title in 1994 and played in the Rose Bowl.

Dating to the 1994 season, the Ducks have won more games than any other Pac-10 program - a remarkable feat, certainly, in light of the fact that Oregon (and Oregon State) must rely on out-of-state recruits to be difference-makers in the program.

Since the late 1980s, Oregon has also made a significant investment in facilities, the projects led originally by Bill Byrne, UO director of athletics from 1984 to 1992 - he now holds that post at Nebraska - and by Rich Brooks, football coach from 1977 to 1994. They capitalized on an unexpected winning season in 1987 to build skyboxes and a master skysuite at Autzen Stadium, which in turn helped finance contruction of the Casanova Center, which houses the UO athletic department, the football locker rooms and the weight training facility, in the early 1990s.

In 1989, when the Ducks went 7-4 in the regular season, Byrne agreed to spend $350,000 to guarantee ticket sales for the Independence Bowl, outbidding Kentucky and ensuring the Ducks a berth against Tulsa. The decision was second-guessed in the money-conscious state, but when the Ducks won - and took a huge number of quacky fans to Shreveport, La. - Byrne's gamble was vindicated.

Further facilities enhancements continued under Mike Bellotti, who succeeded Brooks as head football coach in 1995, after the Ducks' Rose Bowl appearance, and by Bill Moos, a former Washington State football lineman named Oregon's AD later that year. They led the charge for construction of the West Coast's first indoor practice facility at a total cost of $14 million, plus a new replay screen and practice fields.

Now, the Ducks have begun a project to expand Autzen Stadium by 12,000 seats - current capacity is 41,968, but the Ducks annually exceed that - at a cost of $80 million.

And along the way, the Ducks have kept winning. Since the 1989 Independence Bowl season, Oregon has failed to reach a bowl game only three times, most recently in 1996. Under Bellotti, the Ducks are 49-22, and 26-8 in games decided by a touchdown or less, and Oregon's football players have been successful academically as well.

By contrast, the Beavers have had only two winning seasons - the last two - in the last three decades, after 28 straight losing years. The Beavers have their own modern football facility - a football-only building called the Valley Center that was originally too small but expanded under coach Jerry Pettibone (1991-96) and will have their own indoor practice facility finished by the time the 2001 season starts. They're in the early stages of envisioning the expansion of Reser Stadium (35,362).

In short, the Beavers have been playing catch-up, and not simply with the Ducks but with the rest of the Pac-10 Conference. And so there's strong irony in the fact that it seems to have taken the Beavers' sudden success, in two years under coach Dennis Erickson, for Oregon's longer record of success to be noticed nationally. A key factor, certainly, was Oregon State's 23-13 victory over Oregon in the Civil War last November, which knocked Oregon out of the Rose Bowl and propelled the Beavers to the Fiesta Bowl, part of the Bowl Championship Series.

Whereupon, in the bowl games, the Ducks' thrill-a-minute victory over Texas, 35-30, in the Holiday Bowl was overshadowed two days later by the Beavers' 41-9 route of a college football icon, Notre Dame. "We've been successful for a long period of time," Bellotti says. "Being the winningest program for the last seven years in the conference, but only probably getting some of the national recognition because of the turnaround of the Oregon State program is a little frustrating. Any acknowledgement for your program, any opportunity to get your players some exposure, is good.

"But it is interesting that the first bowl victory in a long time for an opponent helps highlight that your program has been doing well for a long time. ... There's more track record here, there's more history, there's more substance, in all honesty."

All true. But it was the Beavers who got the regional cover of Sports Illustrated, trumpeting their Civil War win.

Differences aside, the Ducks and Beavers offer a general blueprint of how to get from rags to riches, no longer the seeming impossibility that it was 20 years ago."There's a lot of parity," Erickson says. "I just think it can be done about anyplace now. Now, to develop some consistency, that's another thing."

In general, the elements of success boil down to these:

• The right head coach. Undeniably, in Bellotti and Erickson, Oregon and Oregon State have two of the hottest coaching commodities in the country. Bellotti was courted by Ohio State and Southern California after last season; Erickson previously turned down USC; either could have had the Arizona State job, among others. They've brought winning systems - both run fun-to-watch, high-scoring offenses - to Oregon and Oregon State, and winning credibility. The players believe in them, the boosters believe in them.

Interestingly, there was some luck involved in each hire. The Ducks, remember, started 1-2 in that Rose Bowl season of 1994; if they hadn't turned it around, Brooks might well have been forced out - instead of left to resign in triumph for an NFL job - and Bellotti, as Oregon's offensive coordinator, would have been swept out as well.

The Beavers, meanwhile, bungled their first chance to hire Erickson, selecting Dave Kragthorpe instead in 1985; Erickson ultimately wound up at Miami and won two national championships. Then OSU fell into Erickson in early 1999, when popular head coach Mike Riley, seen as OSU's savior, abruptly left for the San Diego Chargers a few weeks after Erickson was fired by the Seattle Seahawks. The twist is that a terribly blown call in a game against the Jets cost the Seahawks a playoff berth, and perhaps cost Erickson a chance to get the last year on his contract in the NFL.

While Bellotti credits the foundation for the Oregon program built by Brooks, Erickson has also paid tribute to his immediate predecessors - Pettibone, who recruited solid-citizen players and was instrumental in expanding the Valley Football Center, and Riley, who led OSU to a five-win season in 1998 that included a double-overtime win over the Ducks.

There were both Pettibone and Riley recruits on last season's OSU Fiesta Bowl team, along with impact junior college athletes recruited by Erickson who molded the team and instilled in the Beavers the belief they could win, to the tune of 18 wins over two seasons.

• Solid staffs. Erickson's had the same nucleus of key assistant coaches since his days at Idaho in the mid-1980s; they've followed him from Miami to Seattle and to Corvallis. Erickson cites OSU's willingness to invest in improved salary packages for assistants, to prevent the top talents from being wooed away, as a major commitment to future success.

At Oregon, Bellotti's also retained a veteran nucleus, though he's been faced with more turnover, particularly after last season, when three assistants took jobs with more responsbility at other schools. At the same time, however, the Ducks have recycled some coaches, who have left for other jobs then eagerly returned "home."

Defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti and defensive line coach Steve Greatwood, for example, both followed Brooks to the St. Louis Rams; both are back at Oregon, after stints at UCLA and Southern California, respectively. The Ducks also rehired tight ends/special teams coach Robin Ross from the Oakland Raiders, and have a fourth assistant coach with NFL experience, newly hired Mike Gillhamer, formerly of the New York Giants.

"You have to have stability, you have to have loyalty, or else you have no chance," Erickson says. "I've known them all, I can trust them from beginning to end, and we'll all go down together or win together. I know they'll do their jobs." Says Bellotti: "I think the staff is the morst important thing. My peace of mind on a daily basis is a direct function of my confidence in my staff. ... There's no question in my mind from the standpoint of coaching and recruiting and just the daily interaction that it can make or break your program, and your peace of mind."

• Supportive administrations and boosters. Both universities are led by school presidents who have embraced athletics, when conducted so as to not harm the school's image, and recognize the importance of football as a revenue-generating sport. Dave Frohnmayer at Oregon and Paul Risser at OSU aren't the show-up-for-bowl-games kind of presidents; they can be seen at games, home and away, throughout the season.

Both athletic departments are led by football-conscious athletic directors who are committed to fund-raising, marketing and, bluntly, to taking some risks. At Oregon, Moos talks constantly about "reinvesting" in success; to the foundation started by Bill Byrne, Moos has led Oregon to the indoor practice facility and now the project to expand Autzen Stadium.

"I think you have to realize that you can't stand pat," Bellotti says. "You can't say that the way we've done things for years is the only way to do it. When you continue to try to improve your program, you do take risks. You step out in uncharted territories."

At Oregon State, Mitch Barnhart, a successful fund-raiser at big-time Tennessee, brought an aggressive will to win - and to no longer play second-fiddle to Oregon - that has permeated the entire athletic department. When he arrived at OSU in 1998, Barnhart faced a deficit of $8.2 million that has been virtually eliminated. Among his boldest decisions was to sell the naming rights to the football stadium, which went from Parker Stadium to Reser Stadium in 1999 with a $5-million donation from packaged foods magnates Al and Pat Reser, which not only gave the Beavers desperately needed funds, but inspired other donors.

"Al and Pat Reser helped raise the bar for us," said the OSU athletic department's top fund-raiser, Greg Byrne - the son of Oregon's former AD, and a former Oregon staffer hired away by Barnhart. "When you talk to other fans about a seven-figure gift, it's not out of the question anymore."

• Smart scheduling. Look at the schedules of the two schools in the 1970s and early 1980s and you'll see designated-loss trips to Oklahoma and Nebraska for deficit-reducing paydays in games the two schools had no chance to win. Bill Byrne changed that at Oregon, putting together non-league schedules that gave Oregon chances to win. Moos has also scheduled conservatively, although more ambitiously - Bellotti's only regular-season non-conference defeats are road losses at Michigan State and Wisconsin, both of which cost Oregon better bowl berths, and the latter of which cost Oregon the Rose Bowl last year in a tiebreaker formula.

The Beavers, for now, have also adopted the philosophy that no win is a bad win. Last season, their non-conference wins were over Eastern Washington, New Mexico and San Diego State; this season, they open at Fresno State (in a Sunday night game on ESPN) and visit New Mexico State before hosting Division I-AA Montana State.

• Effective recruiting and coaching. Oregon hasn't won the most games in the Pac-10 in the last seven years because it's landed the top-ranked recruiting class each year, but the Ducks have a knack for recognizing talent that fits into the Oregon system, and the same can be said for Erickson at Oregon State. For both schools, the degree-of-difficulty in recruiting is not insignificant; they wage war over in-state recruits, but the bulk of the athletes come from California, primarily the talent-rich Los Angeles area.

"Tradition and history are more compressed now," Bellotti says. "The kids we talk to, their tradition and history is a three-to-four-year span now, in which they've been aware of who's hot, and who's not. It's different than it was 10 or 20 years ago. That's helped us, and it helps the Beavers now."

Both programs also make effective use of junior college recruits, though the foundation of both recruiting philosophies is high school talent. Oregon's last three featured tailbacks have come from the southern California JUCO ranks - Saladin McCullough, Reuben Droughns and now, going into his second season, Maurice Morris. At Oregon State, Erickson also goes after JCs to fill certain roles.

"We will always be involved in the JC route to a point," Erickson says. "I think there's a lot to be said for them. They're hungrier than the highly recruited high school kid who's been spoiled all his life.

"You go to JC, you're fighting to get an apartment, you're fighting to make it financially. They're not as spoiled as some of the high sckids you recruit. I think you need one of those every once in a while, to keep things balanced out."

At Oregon and Oregon State, expectations for the coming season are high. Season-ticket sales have shattered records, selling out at Oregon, and, for the first time ever, at Oregon State. Both teams are envisioned as title contenders. They finished the 2000 season in the Top 10 - Oregon State at No. 4 in the AP poll, the Ducks at No. 7 - and they're likely to start the coming season in that lofty category.

Remarkably, though, the football world is looking at Oregon and Oregon State these days and analyzing the reasons the Ducks and Beavers will win, not why they won't, and certainly not why they can't. And in early summer, Harrington and Smith were co-grand marshals of a parade in Portland, Oregon's largest city.

Not that long ago, in the big picture, the only place Duck and Beaver quarterbacks attracted a crowd was in the backfield, chased by hordes of angry tacklers from the big-name Pac-10 schools.

Now, they're celebrated as heroes by a state grown immensely proud of its college teams, and the bottom line is that nobody's making fun of the Ducks and Beavers anymore. Ron Bellamy is the sports columnist for The Register-Guard (Eugene, Or.)
In Corvalis, Dennis Erickson has led a revival second only to Kansas State's rise in the polls.



In Eugene, Mike Bellotti has built and sustained a powerhouse.

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