Greg Byrne remembers the first time he got an idea of the raised expectations for Oregon State football, a program that experienced 28 consecutive losing seasons until 1999.
Byrne, Oregon State's associate athletic director, listened as Dennis Erickson, who won national titles at Miami in 1989 and 1991, addressed his first Beavers' squad shortly after becoming coach in January, 1999. These Beavers still were basking in the afterglow of a 5-6 finish, a record sweetened by a double-overtime Civil War victory over hated arch rival Oregon.
"One of the first things he said to them is 'Some of you might be happy with being 5-and-6. Where I come from, that stinks. We're here to win championships,' " Byrne said.
|  | | Dennis Erickson led the Beavers to a Fiesta Bowl win last year. |
"I'm standing in the back of the room thinking, 'Come on, Coach, 6-and-5 would be a heck of a deal.' But he sets the tone to win championships, and he makes you believe it."
Erickson led his first Oregon State squad to a 7-5 finish, including their first bowl visit in 34 years. Last season Erickson's second OSU squad finished 11-1 and No. 5 overall in the ESPN/USA Today poll, including a 41-9 trouncing of Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl. Erickson has 42 lettermen returning, including Heisman Trophy candidate halfback Ken Simonton. All this caught Sports Illustrated's attention as the magazine named the Beavers No. 1 in their preview issue.
But just down the road in Eugene, about an hour south of Corvallis, there's another program thinking it's the team from Oregon that belongs in the national championship game in Pasadena.
Under coach Mike Bellotti, the Oregon Ducks have had the best record in the Pac-10 over the past six seasons. They have a 20-game home winning streak. Quarterback Joey Harrington, the Ducks' Heisman Trophy candidate, is one of 31 lettermen returning from a 10-2 team that knocked off Texas in last year's Holiday Bowl and is ranked ninth in the ESPN/USA Today poll.
"One of our goals is always to win the Rose Bowl . This year the Rose Bowl is for the national championship, so our ultimate goals coincide," said Bellotti, a longtime Ducks' assistant who took the reins from 18-year head coach Rich Brooks after the Ducks' 1994 Rose Bowl season.
Suddenly, Oregon is the hotbed of football in the Pac-10. Season tickets are sold out. ABC is featuring the Civil War on a national telecast. National publications are picking one -- or both -- in the top of the polls. How did two schools once mired in mediocrity become players in the national scene?
"I don't think you can talk about them in the same breath," said former Arizona head coach Dick Tomey. "Oregon State has done such an amazing job, from coach (Jerry) Pettibone to coach (Mike) Riley to coach Erickson, they've risen to incredible heights from where they were. That's a whole different thing from what Oregon's done, which has been to be consistent year after year. I think the two are greatly different. It's unfair to compare them."
Still, the programs share more than just the Willamette Valley.
The staffs at both schools credit their respective administrations' recent commitment to invest in football. Before Oregon completed construction of its multimillion-dollar Casanova Center in 1989, for instance, the Ducks made do with archaic equipment and practices.
"The same tables that we were using on Saturdays to serve hot dogs, the players sat on the rest of the time getting their ankles taped," former Oregon athletic director Bill Byrne -- father of OSU's Greg Byrne -- said. "That's not too appetizing."
Bill Byrne, now Nebraska's athletic director, and longtime coach Rich Brooks spearheaded fund raising drives during the 1980s to upgrade Oregon's athletic program, with the focus on football. Autzen Stadium underwent a makeover that included various expansion plans including the construction of sky boxes.
The improved facilities made coaches, once ashamed to show recruits the staff's small offices and nail-on-the-wall locker facilities, proud tour guides.
It also made the Ducks the envy of the Pac-10.
"We weren't in the same league," in terms of facilities, said Tomey, who coached Arizona for 14 years and lobbied his school's administration to make a commitment like Oregon's.
"We were doing well enough that it didn't seem to be a priority. It takes a real sales job by the coach on the administration," Tomey said. "Oregon was the one that most proactive in our conference, and Rich Brooks got it done."
The state-of-the-art digs made a difference in the attitude of the Ducks, former quarterback Bill Musgrave recalls.
In 1989, the year the Casanova Center opened, Musgrave's Ducks finished 8-4 -- the program's first eight-victory season since 1963. In 1998 Oregon completed a $15 million indoor practice facility
"It was awfully exciting for everybody to suddenly have access to a weight room bigger than Nebraska's, and a locker room that was very much deluxe," said Musgrave, now a Virginia assistant coach and the player cited by some as the key to the Ducks' rise in the past 15 years.
|  | | Mike Bellotti resisted other offers to remain at Oregon. |
For Oregon, continuity of the coaching staff is also important. Assistant head coach Neal Zoumboukos and recruiting coordinator Don Pellum -- a former Ducks linebacker who played against his brother Forrest in the 1981 Civil War -- have been in Eugene in some capacity since 1980. Bellotti, a longtime assistant of Brooks', keeps many of his old mentor's offensive and defensive programs intact.
"We have a commitment to excellence in the program. I like what we have here," said Bellotti, who resisted overtures from USC, Arizona State and Ohio State after the Ducks posted their first 10-victory season.
Likewise, Erickson wants to enjoy his resurrection of the Beavers' program. After finishing a four-year stint as coach of the NFL's Seattle Seahawks, Erickson became the third different Beavers' coach in four years. He succeeded Corvallis native Riley, who accepted the San Diego Chargers' job after 3-8 and 5-6 seasons. In 1997 Riley succeeded Pettibone, who never won more than four games in his six seasons but is credited by many with laying the foundation for the Beavers' current success.
It was Pettibone, along with then-athletic director Dutch Baughman, who convinced Beavers' boosters and the administration to invest in the football program.
When Pettibone arrived the Beavers' football facilities "were the worst in the Pac-10, by far," said Pettibone, who was 13-52-1 with the Beavers. "Everything starts with your ability to recruit. We knew we needed to improve the physical plant there, as far as football is concerned, in order to recruit competitively."
He helped oversee the $6.2 million expansion of the Valley Football Center, the home to the Beavers' team, coaches and training facility. Cozy Reser Stadium underwent various upgrades, and under current athletic director Mitch Barnhart and Erickson's watch, a $10 million indoor practice facility is being added.
"Dennis told me that it was a more functional facility than the one he had in Seattle," Pettibone said.
"Dennis has done a great job of utilizing the players that I recruited and Mike Riley recruited. He's put them into a system they understand and done a great job of teaching that system. Those players obviously believe in it."
And no longer are coaches limited in their recruiting. Where once Oregon might have been a tough sell to recruits, both Erickson and Bellotti believe college football's scholarship limits have spread the wealth of talent. Players today also are more open to attending school in college-oriented towns than they might have been years ago. Greater exposure of the sport on television also opens doors, though each school primarily relies on California and the rest of the West for recruits.
Erickson, who has combined players he inherited, with his own recruits and with junior college transfers to rebuild the Beavers, said his coaching staff's resumes help woo recruits.
"We coach like we have coached for the past 25 years. Kids see what this staff has accomplished in a lot of different places," Erickson said.
And like the Ducks, the Beavers concentrate on recruiting players they think will fit their system. Each staff might want the players UCLA and USC recruits, but they will not mold their systems around those prospects. The players must tailor their talents for the Ducks and Beavers.
It's a successful formula. The result is a passion for college football unprecedented simultaneously for the Oregon schools, which until recently regularly endured questions whether they even belonged in the highly-competitive Pac-10.
Oregon's demonstrated consistency and the Beavers' recent emergence have quieted those critics. But now the expectations are as high as the oversized billboards touting Oregon quarterback Harrington in New York City and Oregon State halfback Simonton in downtown Portland.
"How many times do you get to see yourself 12 stories high in downtown Manhattan?" said Harrington regarding Oregon's $250,000 investment in his Heisman Trophy campaign. "As far as added pressure, I don't think it's possible to have more pressure than the pressure I place on myself."
Oh yeah? Wait until the two teams line up on Dec. 1 for a BCS spot -- or even a spot in the national title game. Think about this -- it's possible that a national title contender could emerge from a state with slightly more than 3 million people, only a handful of whom annually are deemed worthy of being awarded four-year Division I football scholarships.
It is possible that the 105th Civil War -- a game that in 1983 finished in a scoreless tie between then-typically dreadful Ducks and Beavers teams -- could be played for a shot at the national title.
"Last year's game was for the conference championship, and this one could be, too," Zoumboukos said. "There was a time that (playing the Civil War for the league title) was a possibility that existed only in people's wildest imaginations but that has changed."
Sheldon Spencer is an associate editor at ESPN.com.
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