A: Toss out Territorial Cups, Civil Wars and Apple Cups, and the most you-ain’t-got-a-prayer-today-buddy Pac-12 site I’ve visited was Oregon State’s Reser Stadium, 1999.
The attendance was only 33,314 that chilly November night in Corvallis, but it was Judgment Day for the Beavers. Arizona was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Beavers had not qualified for a bowl game since 1964, had not produced a winning season since 1970. Can you imagine the decades of stuffed-up frustration?
All the Beavers needed to do was beat slumping 6-4 Arizona, which opened the season ranked No. 3, and both ignominious streaks would end.
About midnight, as the Beavers won 28-20, a celebration that matched what you might imagine an Arizona-clinches-the-Rose-Bowl hullabaloo ignited. Nobody went home. Stuck in the party-til-dawn parking lots until 2 a.m., my colleagues and I walked to the campus bars on Monroe Avenue and soaked it all in. We finally arrived at our Eugene hotel at 3:30 a.m.
It was a star-is-born night in Corvallis and that star-of-the night was Beaver quarterback Jonathan Smith, who threw for three touchdowns against Arizona.
Jonathan Smith? He’s now Oregon State’s head football coach.