Bold Predictions for the 2018 Ohio State Buckeyes on the Gridiron
September 1, 2018Brantley, Vitale among the notable cuts in Browns 53-man roster trim
September 1, 2018Welcome back to another season of Know Your Opponent, where each Fall WFNY skirts the edges of libel law in 37 states and territories to bring you the most raw, breathtaking, hip, unfiltered takes on every opponent of the Ohio State Football Buckeyes. This column has it all — fat shaming, class warfare (both ways), North Coastal elitism, Midwestern values, data gleaned from Dark Web scans, kink shaming, ableism, anti-ableism, and oh yeah, information about college football teams playing the Buckeyes.
Sound off in the comments if you catch any errors, where they will certainly be read and the errors hastily corrected. This week: The Beavers of the Oregon State University at Corvallis, Oregon, USA. Enjoy!
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Old hands will remember that I start these off each week with the very best hype video available from a YouTube search and 10 entire seconds of viewing, and this season will be no different. However, WNFY editorial is committed to a process of continuous improvement, so I’ve added an extra 10 seconds of viewing before choosing a video to feature here. Thank them, not me.
This week we have the Oregon State Pump Up 2018-2019 in full HD from my man “KechTv01,” who before this video posted a Saquon Barkley highlight reel and some videos in what I believe are French. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
FBS Stats: No. 110 of 130 per SBNation; no stats yet!
Record: 0-0, 1st in Pac-12
Not bad, everyone is No. 1 before any games are played. This is the “every grade now has a graduation ceremony” phenomena of college sportswriting, which I thankfully only have to deal with once a year.
Coach: Jonathan Smith
Originally from Pasadena, CA, Smith played QB at Oregon State as a walk-on under then-head coach Mike Riley, who incidentally now serves as Smith’s assistant after flaming out at Nebraska. Smith started all four years at Oregon State, once leading the team to its greatest season in history with an 11-1 record, a share of the conference title, a fourth-place finish in the polls, and selection as the Fiesta Bowl MVP. I should make fun of a school hiring an iconic former player as a coach, but I had a lot of feels when Luke Fickell left for Cincinnati, so I’ll refrain.
Smith began his coaching career for his alma mater as a graduate assistant, and the rest of his career has gone as such:
- 2004–2009 Idaho (QB)
- 2010–2011 Montana (OC/QB)
- 2012–2013 Boise State (QB)
- 2014–2017 Washington (OC/QB)
As you can see, this is his first gig at the helm, but the Buckeyes would be well served to watch out for the scrappy underdogs with their new head coach whose sole accomplishment in the sport is having one great season out of four there as a player 20 years ago.
Mascot: Benny Beaver
No one is sure when Benny Beaver was first adopted as a mascot, but there is a photo in the school’s 1942 yearbook showing a student standing next to a beaver statue labeled “Benny Beaver,” so at least since then. A beaver has been a popular totem in the state for generations due to the animal’s abundance in the area, dating back to frontier times as featured in movies like The Revenant. The animal was also popular at rival University of Oregon, which used The Beaver as its yearbook’s title for years before adopting The Duck, I guess.
I put some serious time into this Benny Beaver business, but failed to find a single account of the mascot doing anything special or interesting that would make it stand apart from other mascots. The closest I came was a 2010 Bleacher Report post of the 20 worst behaved mascots of all time, featuring Benny at No. 13 for beating up Puddles the Duck once, but I’m not linking to it here because inter-mascot felonious assault is the minimum expected of a foam-rubber and polyester clad angry beaver. I’m not rewarding that pedestrian shit. I’m also going to refrain from the obvious beaver jokes because this isn’t 1994 and I respect the readers too much.
Silly Traditions
Oregon State, along with the vile Oklahoma State, is a pretender to the storied and revered “OSU” moniker, stolen from our beloved alma mater like the neighborhood ne’er-do-well swipes a pie from the widow-next-door’s windowsill. Both of these imposter academies use orange and black on their heinous uniforms, making it easier on good guys like us to tell them apart from the blessed and pristine Ohio State, but Oregon State is even lowly enough to use a Block O-style zero on Benny Beaver’s uniform, the swine. That’s like Bernie Madoff wearing a Mets cap in his mugshot.
As with Benny Beaver above, I hit a brick wall at full speed trying to find traditions for the Oregon State University. Their website merely lists the mascot, team name, and school colors. If the information doesn’t exist, we cannot find it. We’re sportswriters here at WFNY, not miracle workers, so back off!
Famous Alumni
Timothy Leatherman, founder of the Leatherman multi-tool beloved by soldiers and hillbillies across America, attended Oregon State. Inventing a multi-tool is easy if you have a redneck name like “Leatherman.” Try inventing a tool with the last name “Crapo,” then get back to me.
The McMenamin brothers, founders of the beloved Pacific Northwest hotel, pub, and brewery chain “McMenamin’s,” are Oregon State Alumni. I’m fairly sure I ate at one of their Seattle locations while on vacation in 2007, but I can’t be sure given the time lapsed and the amount of alcohol consumed since my visit. Anyway, it sounds familiar.
Bernie Newcomb, founder of E*TRADE, is an alumnus of Oregon State, and is responsible for convincing every dipshit spreadsheet pusher you work with that he can make a killing on the stock market, like the big boys. Listen up guys (and its always guys), just because you have an MBA from DeVry, it does not mean you’re Jack Donaghy.
Don Robert, current chairman of credit reporting giant Experian, received some sort of business degree from Oregon State. Readers may be familiar with Experian if they have ever tried to purchase a home or car. Here’s a good explanation of this racket if you need something to illustrate just how little control everyday folks have over their lives, especially when it comes to unaccountable private companies safe from even the minor annoyance of having to be reelected every so often.
Leonard Shoen, founder of U-Haul, was a graduate of Oregon State. He built U-Haul into the nationally-known giant it is today, transferring most of the stock to his 12 children to avoid taxes along the way. This backfired on him most spectacularly in 1986 when two of his sons launched a hostile takeover, ousting him from the firm. He committed suicide at 83 years’ young in 1999 by crashing his car into a telephone pole outside Las Vegas. Motivating!
Pinto Colvig, the original Bozo the Clown and the first voice of Disney’s Pluto and Goofy, attended the school sporadically during the 1910s, but never graduated. He also voiced a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz and provided Ichabod Crane’s screams for the 1949 animated classic The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, the watching of which is a favorite Halloween-time tradition at my house. That’s as sincerely personal as I’m going to get this season.
NBA legend Gary Payton played college ball at Oregon State, graduating in 1990. Known as “The Glove” for his defensive prowess, Payton famously held Michael Jordan to his lowest Finals point total in 1996, when the Sonics faced off against the Bulls, though the Bulls won the series. As a Cleveland fan, you may remember Payton best as being the first to speculate that LeBron was heading to the Lakers this past summer, which he surmised by revealing that Bronnie was enrolled at an LA school. He was right of course, and he only had to violate the privacy of a child to bring that news to us!
Infamous 1970s radical, bank robber, and cop killer Katherine Ann Power earned her masters from Oregon State after her release from prison. Part of a student radical group, Power took part in a bank robbery in Brighton, MA, that led to the death of a Boston police officer. After the robbery, Power went into hiding in Oregon under the name of an infant girl that had died the year before she was born, a trick The Highlander also used to retain ownership of his antique store forever. She established a normal life including starting a family, getting married, teaching at the local community college, and even owning a bakery. She turned herself in in 1993 due to the overwhelming guilt of her crimes, serving six years in prison and 14 years’ probation. Just the type of person a school like Oregon State would actively recruit, if you ask me.
Mixed martial arts legend and Expendables stalwart Randy Couture was an assistant wrestling coach at Oregon State, leaving the job to pursue his MMA career in 1997. I like Couture in The Expendables as he fills out the back bench nicely with Terry Crews, and he was actually in the Army unlike every single other actor in the series, but he does not fit the franchise’s mold of “washed up action film star making one final push for box office relevancy.” Honestly, I’m just still in awe that these movies even exist for me to unironically enjoy, to the great dismay of my wife and other female relatives. It’s also just nice to see a former collegiate assistant wrestling coach move on in his career without the taint of being an accessory to institutionalized sexual assault.
Last, but not least, we have former Cleveland Brown, Arizona Cardinal, and Carolina Panther, quarterback Derek Anderson. What a magical season this man gave us in 2007, leading the Browns to a 10-6 record and no playoff appearance. It’s very “Browns” that a 10-win season for a team with a historical drought of excellence ended without a playoff appearance, and Anderson is the perfect example of that trope, reverting to his career backup numbers in 2008. He’s been a backup ever since, most notably behind Cam Newton for something like 20 years. Anyway, thanks for all the memories, Derek!
Beavers Currently in the NFL
- D.J. Alexander, LB, Seattle
- Josh Andrews, G, Minnesota
- Victor Bolden Jr., WR, San Francisco
- Devin Chappell, S, Kansas City
- Tim Cook, RB, Jacksonville
- Brandin Cooks, WR, Los Angeles Rams
- Treston Decoud, CB, Houston
- Obum Gwacham, LB, New York Jets
- Sean Harlow, G, Atlanta
- Johnny Hekker, P, Los Angeles Rams
- Manase Hungalu, LB, Jacksonville
- Fred Lauina, G, Cleveland
- Andy Levitre,G, Atlanta
- Sean Mannion, QB, Los Angeles Rams
- Ryan Murphy, S, New York Giants
- Ryan Nall, RB, Chicago
- Steven Nelson , CB, Kansas City
- Ricky Ortiz, RB, Atlanta
- Kyle Peko, NT, Denver
- Jordan Poyer, S, Buffalo
- Mike Remmers, OT, Minnesota
- Jacquizz Rodgers, RB, Tampa Bay
- Isaac Seumalo, G, Philadelphia
- Dustin Stanton, G, Dallas
- Markus Wheaton, WR, Philadelphia
Our own Cleveland Brown Fred Lauina attended Oregon State. His is a name I’m betting we’ll hear more of as the Browns advance from NFL bottom feeders to consistently getting 6-7 wins a season. Jordan Poyer played safety for the Browns at some point in the last few seasons, as you can see. I certainly picked up both Jacquizz Rodgers and Markus Wheaton at points last year in fantasy, desperation moves that go a long way towards explaining my 8th place finish in a 12-team league. Brandin Cooks is a household name. The perpetual deep threat is a fun player to watch, so hopefully he rebounds with the Rams from his year in purgatory with the despised Patriots.
Noteworthy Players
- Conor Blunt, QB
- Kee Whetzel, LB
- Hamilcar Rashed, Jr., LB
- TraJon Cotton, S
- Jesiah Irish, WR
- Jason Moron, WR
- Champ Flemings, WR
- Briceton Branch, Jr., CB
- Alexander Skeleton, LB
- Kammy Delp, OL
- Brock Wellsfry, OL
- Nick Van Valkenberg, K
Come on, this isn’t funny — none of these are real people. This roster sounds like the secret identities of a 12 year old’s homemade superhero group, created during a fever dream while home sick with viral meningitis.
Key & Peele rejected these names from their writer’s room as too on the nose. Elliot Spitzer was too embarrassed to use these names as aliases with his high-priced hooker agency, for fear they would be judgmental. Facebook has banned all of these monikers as fake in violation of their terms of service. Even Twitter would never verify these goons while gifting blue checkmarks to countless Nazis and @LabyThriller69.
Prediction
Well, it appears that Urban Meyer is still the Buckeyes head coach. His full suspension ends right after this game, and he’s suspended for the next two games themselves, which reads to me as he can go back to work on September 2 but cannot attend the actual games. Morally, I’m very conflicted. Football-wise, I have full confidence that Ryan Day can manage the clock and use timeouts effectively.
I was lucky (??) to catch the press conference live as I was up watching the Indians lose to the Red Sox, and it was a surreal affair. During his prepared statement, Meyer appeared like a petulant teenager forced to apologize to a neighbor for breaking their window with an errant baseball. He mumbled through it in true Northeast Ohio fashion and did not look up once. After, he whiffed on easy questions like “what would you say to Courtney Smith after all this?” His answer of “I’m sorry we’re all in this situation” sounds a little bit too much like “there’s very fine people on both sides” for my tastes. While major gaffes were avoided, Ohio State didn’t do itself any favors with that press conference. Anyway.
As for this game, against the Beavers of the Oregon State University in Corvalis, OR, I predict The Ohio State Buckeyes take home a win, 36-21. I’ve found it’s best to keep my predictions conservative early in the season, then work my way up to the spectacular and absurd. Especially this season, I think it’s best to weigh on the side of caution for now, not that there’s a single repercussion to going balls out with this shit.
That’s it for this week, folks! Turn in next week when our beloved and beleaguered Buckeyes take on the Scarlet Knights of the State University of New Jersey, Rutgers!