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Beaver Insanity

By jtlight

It's been a boring week, so let's make fun of a writer at Oregon State!  Why?  Because we can!  And let's do it Fire Joe style.

This little number was written by a Jenna Santelli, a sports writer for Oregon State's newspaper, the Daily Barometer.  Take it away, Jenna!

Just when you think you've seen it all, the University of Oregon throws a curveball in the direction of Oregon State. The expansion of Goss Stadium has been a sign of what winning two national championships can do to a program: more seats, a better score board, a turf field and a more exciting atmosphere overall. It seemed like we were going to have the finest ball park in the Pac-10 until the proposed Duck stadium appeared on the Ducks' website.

This proposed stadium is going to have it all: a state-of-the-art video board, picnic tables, and between 4,000-5,000 seats. It is also going to have nice locker rooms for both home and away teams.

Oh no!  How dare our beloved university build a better stadium?  If only we knew it would hurt the feelings of the poor abused Oregon State fans.  Just when they thought they had something to be proud of.  I guess no one told the University of Oregon that you had to become successful before you built a nice stadium.  

Now, before talking about the stadium, I want to share something. I know that athletic department websites are supposed to be biased and talk up their respective schools, but the U of O goes above and beyond bias. While reading an article pertaining to the new ballpark I stumbled across a paragraph that took bias to a new level. After reading this paragraph, I though they had interviewed Terrell Owens. (TO and the Oregon athletic department both have confident and cocky attitudes.)

To take a quote from the press release, "The hiring of two-time National Coach of the Year and 2004 College World Series manager George Horton provided immediate credibility and demonstrated the school's aspirations to field a national-caliber program from the outset."

This begins a theme constant through the article: talking about a topic of no relation to the point of the article.  But let's look at the bias:  "Two-time National Coach of the year."  That phrase is bound to upset any Beaver fan.  

But in all seriousness, you have to be very biased or stupid to ignore the fact that the above statement is 100% true.  Let's go step by step so that Jenna and OSU fans can keep up.

  1.  Oregon begins a new baseball program.  Program does not have any credibility.
  2.  Oregon hires one of the top coaches in the country.
  3.  Oregon, through the spending of a large amount of money and an influx of coaching ability, instantly becomes "credible" (which also means "believable"--credible might be too big a word) as a program.  This also demonstrated the "school's aspirations."
But hey, that's bias right there.  
They might be able to talk the talk, but really it's going to come down to swinging the swing and walking the walk.

Um, yes. If you remove "swinging the swing" from that sentence, you could apply it to almost any situation in life.  

Coach Horton is certainly one of the top five coaches in the nation. However, he has nothing on OSU coach Pat Casey. In the 2007 College World Series the Beavers beat his "credible and national-caliber" top five team.

How does this relate to a stadium?  Oh yeah, it doesn't at all.

I hope the Ducks do have a national-caliber team, because then the Civil War series would just get a whole lot better. That first baseball Civil War will be the revolution to a new and exciting rivalry, and the Beavers will get to battle their two biggest rivals in one season in the Washington Huskies and the Oregon Ducks.

The first cogent thought of the article.  And I agree.  Two stellar teams will be great for the state of Oregon.

Now with their supposed national-caliber team comes their national-caliber stadium, which will be built in two phases. Totaling costs will range between $12-$15 million - or at least $12-$15 million is the proposal. I guarantee it will cost more than that.

You would expect a guarantee like that to be backed up with facts, especially when published for all to read (and mock).  However, you would be wrong.

Louisiana State University, which has won five national championships, is redoing its stadium to have 18 luxury suites and 8,000 seats. That project is going to cost around $35 million. LSU has been playing baseball for at least 20 years and, like I said earlier, has won five titles. LSU's stadium will have 3,000 more seats than the Oregon ballpark and more luxury suites as well. LSU's Alex Box Stadium will boast a new hall of fame, more parking, covered batting cages and an outfield berm. In the original proposal the stadium was going to cost less; however, construction costs have increased since Hurricane Katrina.

I personally think LSU's proposal gives fans, players and the athletic department much more bang for its buck. For one, LSU has a well-established baseball program. Even when Oregon did have a baseball program before cutting it in 1981, they never had a program like LSU's.

While Oregon will offer all new state-of-the-art stadiums, it doesn't have two national championships under its belt like Oregon State does, nor does it have the best coach in college baseball. All Oregon will have is one costly stadium, some good recruits for the 2009 season and a costly coach.

Besides the fact that the last three paragraphs had no point, let me point out the obvious. Prepare yourself to be astounded by this truth...

Are you ready?

Oregon is not LSU.

While we're on the topic of the Ducks' extravagancies, how about their proposed $200 million basketball arena, which is more ridiculously priced than the ballpark. Just to put that amount into perspective for people, that is almost as much as Houston's $202 million Toyota Center, home of the NBA team the Houston Rockets. The Charlotte Bobcats' arena cost $260 million, but again, they are a professional team. To spend $200 million on a college facility is absolutely ridiculous. Phil Knight and the Oregon athletic department have raised the bar so high that other Pac-10 teams can barely hang on.

Reading all this makes me feel like I have the flu again. My body feels achy, my head is pounding and I feel sick to my stomach. I feel there should some kind of spending cap like there is for the NBA, NFL and MLB.

Here's a question:  if Oregon has the donors and money, why shouldn't they build the stadium they want?  This article is so bad that it doesn't even mention the actual reasons that the basketball arena shouldn't be built.  U of O has given enough reasons for you to dislike the building of the arena, but at this point, you sound like a bitter 5 year old that didn't get its way.

And as for a spending cap, someone should tell that to the Dallas Cowboys, who are spending $1 billion on their new stadium.  The fact is, spending caps are set on a per stadium basis when the spending is done in government dollars.  Oregon will most likely be using state-backed bonds, which will be paid back in full.  If Oregon were using public funding to build the stadium, the state/county/city would set a spending limit. That is not the case.

Like I said earlier, they might talk the talk - or, in this case, throw the dollar bills toward Oregon athletics - but can they actually get the athletes to pitch the pitches? We have seen the Ducks' basketball team perform exceptionally well in the last five years, but the chance of them making the NCAA tournament is slim to none this season. You are better off betting on the Beavers having a winless Pac-10 season before betting on Oregon making the sweet dance.

At this point, I assume Jenna ran out of actual material on baseball, and instead decided to remind everyone that Oregon State is going winless this year in the Pac-10.

The point is, money doesn't buy success. It might help attract fine, young athletes, but they don't always mean success.

What an astute observation.  What would we do without bitter OSU students pointing this out to us?  And despite the obvious fact that "money doesn't buy success," it should not shock anyone that the most successful athletic programs have the largest budgets.  

So to Phil Knight and Oregon, go ahead and build your costly stadiums, and have fun paying for them. Just remember come game time that it doesn't matter the cost of your stadium - what matters is getting the "W" and winning championships. Good luck with that.

And to you, Jenna, please work on your writing skills. Good luck with that.

Let's run through that sequence again, shall we?

  1.  Oregon is building a new stadium.
  2.  Oregon is already talking up their team, those bastards.
  3.  But Oregon State has won 2 national titles!  And last year they beat Oregon's new coach in the CWS.
  4.  And LSU is better than Oregon too!
  5.  Those hippies from Eugene are building a new basketball stadium too, with all the money they have. I feel sick, because Oregon has money and spends it.
  6.  Sure, the Ducks spend money, but do they win?  Not every year.
  7.  Have fun paying for stuff, wins matter.
And that everyone, is how an Oregon State fans thinks.  Bitter, rambling, with no actual wisdom to impart.  

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