Erickson Turns Oregon State Into Pac-10 Bully

TEMPE, Ariz. —  More than anything, coaching matters in college football.

And Oregon State has the best college football coach going right now. Which means, Southern California, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Dennis Erickson has dressed Oregon State up in black uniforms and white socks and turned the Beavers into Miami. Oregon State crunched Not-Ready-For-BCS-Time Notre Dame, 41-9, Monday night in the Fiesta Bowl. There were lots of penalties by the Beavers, some mean-spirited personal fouls and even a touchdown that shouldn’t have been a touchdown because the scorer was prancing and posturing and he dropped the football before he crossed the goal line.

But it didn’t matter. The Beavers were stronger, quicker, more ferocious, more confident than the Fighting Irish.

Scared of tradition? What tradition? What fear?

“We have,” Oregon State wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh said, “the best coach in the country, and he’s running the best system in the country. That’s the tradition now. Dennis Erickson. We don’t need no other tradition.”

All those high school football players in greater Los Angeles will have watched this game on TV and seen an Oregon State team that was full of swagger and playing fun football.

The ball gets thrown. The hitting is brutally hard. The coach encourages his players to tiptoe on the edge of crazy aggression. Sometimes a line is crossed, but when you’re having this much fun, who cares about a few personal foul penalties and the nation’s boos?

DeLawrence Grant, a starting defensive end from Compton, says USC and UCLA are already irrelevant. “I know the guys in L.A. I know they’ll be wanting to come up here. It don’t matter about the weather and it don’t matter about Corvallis and it don’t matter about the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum. You know what matters? We got a coach who knows how to get it done. Period. You saw that with your own eyes.”

It can be argued that the Pac-10 should now have three teams ranked in the top six when the final polls come out--Washington, Oregon State and Oregon. The three teams from the gloomy Northwest, where it rains all the time and there aren’t many players. Thank you, California. Rick Neuheisel, Erickson and Mike Bellotti, thank you. Thank you, USC and UCLA, for letting your programs become gloomy.

College football is all about coaching, and the Northwest has three great coaches.

And Erickson is the best of the bunch. In only two years, Erickson has created bullies.

This was a bullying, no doubt about it. The Beavers taunted, preened, pranced. They also blew the Fighting Irish off the line of scrimmage and ran an intriguing, interesting offense with a quarterback, Jonathan Smith, who was once a walk-on, and a running back, Ken Simonton, who, in that black uniform, resembles a bowling ball with arms. And speed.

“I don’t think Notre Dame’s seen speed like ours,” Simonton said. “I don’t think they expected us to be that fast. Or that strong either. You could see it in their eyes. We knew what we had. Nobody else did. We have it because we’re playing for the best coach and the best staff in the country. We’re playing for a professional coaching staff. That’s what matters now. Who cares about tradition? The Golden Dome doesn’t win games. The coaching staff does.”

The Beavers have attitude. Lots of attitude. They walked with a strut, they stuck out their chins, they clobbered the Irish in every way possible. The hot-dogging was ridiculous and it will not win the Beavers any friends. But, you know what? The Beavers don’t much care.

“You want to call those penalties? Fine,” said linebacker Richard Seigler. “Look at the scoreboard. That tells you what you need to know.”

The Beavers set a Fiesta Bowl record for penalties (18 for 174 yards) and the aggression was intimidating. You could see the Irish cringing on the line of scrimmage. Erickson used to do that to the Irish when he was the coach at Miami. If it took a punch here, an out-of-bounds shove there to establish superiority, that’s what happened. Don’t like it? Get used to it. The kids who like it, the tough kids from the city, came to Miami and now they’re coming to Corvallis.

“Recruits out there that are watching tonight,” Simonton said, “I think they saw a brand of football that is fun and exciting. Coach Erickson knows how to bring out the strengths of players. We got a quarterback nobody wanted. Look at him now. We got players USC and UCLA would never look at.”

Washington and Oregon play the same way. The Huskies and Ducks aren’t afraid of speed over size, of fearless passing over conservative running, of coming to California and taking players up north.

Three different Beavers called Notre Dame “a pitiful powerhouse,” which sounds like something a coach told them.

First thing Notre Dame Coach Bob Davie said after the game was: “I think it’s pretty obvious we got whipped. We got outcoached, we got outplayed.”

“Two years ago,” Houshmandzadeh said, “this was a team afraid of everybody. Then Coach Erickson came and now we’re afraid of nobody. Teams better be afraid of us.”

Coach Davie couldn’t have said it any better.

So welcome to the Pac-10, Pete Carroll. And be afraid. Be very afraid.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: [email protected]