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Beavers bolt rain for sunny Arizona
Associated Press
PHOENIX -- Oregon State took another step on its remarkable journey from obscurity Thursday night, catching a flight to Phoenix to begin preparations for the Fiesta Bowl.
The Beavers arrived in Arizona four days ahead of Notre Dame,
their opponent on Jan. 1.
"I look up and I see clear sky, and that was the biggest
strategic move that we made," coach Dennis Erickson said about the
decision to leave early. He said it rained daily during practices
in Corvallis.
"We felt that we could get down here and get situated and be
able to get seven or eight really solid practices in here. A year
from now we'll have our indoor facility, and obviously we could
stay up there a little longer and practice. But we don't have that
right now."
Oregon State begins workouts at Scottsdale Community College on
Friday morning, but because of the extra time, the players will
have Christmas Day off while the Irish travel.
Oregon State (10-1) earned a share of the Pac-10 championship, missing out on an undefeated season and the Rose Bowl berth by the margin of a three-point loss to Washington.
But the Beavers weren't even in the preseason Top 25, and the
highest they rose in the Bowl Championship Series standings was
sixth. There was even talk that no BCS bowl would take them, which
led Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen to say the conference ought to
pull out of the BCS if the Beavers were ignored.
The issue became moot when Fiesta officials, intrigued by Oregon State's turnaround, issued the invitation.
Erickson left little doubt he felt it was justified.
"When you do things well, you get rewarded, and we feel that's
what happened."
He said he still considers the BCS the best alternative to a
national playoff.
"Obviously there's some argument about who should play in the
championship game, and obviously some people are going to be left
out, but to me right now it's the best way to go," Erickson said.
"We weren't sure where we would go, and we couldn't have ended up
in a better place."
The Beavers endured an NCAA-record 28 consecutive losing seasons
until they hired Erickson in 1999.
His first team was 7-5, including a loss in the Oahu Bowl, and this year Oregon State made the biggest splash since it went to the Rose Bowl in 1964.
Part of the storyline is the battle between Notre Dame, one of the college game's all-time haves, and Oregon State, the perennial have-not. But the circumstances this year are reversed.
The Irish got off to a 2-2 start and had to win their last seven games to get into position for a No. 11 BCS ranking and an invitation to one of the top four bowls. They were invited ahead of Virginia Tech, which had a higher ranking, but Erickson didn't
mind.
He remembered meeting former Notre Dame coach Frank Leahy when
he was a fourth-grader in Everett, Wash., and grew up under the
spell of the Irish.
"When I first took this job at Oregon State, to be in a great,
prestigious bowl was a goal of ours, but we thought it was probably
a long way away," Erickson said. "Now we're able to play against
one of the great, historic programs in the country, and we're very
excited about it."
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