By George P. Edmonston Jr.

As the Beavers prepare to open the 2003 football season at home tomorrow night against the Hornets of Sacramento State (7 p.m. kickoff), let’s start the season off, historically speaking, with this writer’s opinion of the 12 greatest football games ever played by the Orange and Black. And who knows? The coming campaign may produce another such game for the ages, if it matches up to the ones in this feature.

Of course, we all know picking the best-of-the-best is highly subjective stuff. Everyone has a favorite game or two that sticks in the memory. The double-overtime win over the Ducks in 1998. A game for all-time, lousy weather and all. The smashing of the Fighting Irish on national television at the 2001 Fiesta Bowl. Was there ever a greater moment for Beaver pride? For Beaver Believers in the 1960s, who can ever forget the three big upsets that highlighted the ’67 season of the "Giant Killers?"

Of the 937 football games OSU has played since 1893, about 30 (give-or-take) were considered, using a few simple guidelines to weed out the undeserving: Did the game bring significant national attention to OSU? Did it result in a victory over a top-ranked opponent? Was the win accomplished against great odds? Does the game enjoy a certain measure of staying power in the collective memories of Beaver fans, to the extent that it has become a part of the lore of Beaver football? Do fans and sportswriters use the game to help define an era?

As the final list took shape, there were a number of contenders that made choosing very tough. For example: OSU’s 6-0 victory over Villanova in the 1962 Liberty Bowl. This was Terry Baker’s Heisman Trophy season, and he did score the game’s only touchdown by scampering 99-yards on a frozen field to put the Novas away. But Baker had already won college football’s top prize by the time the game was played (Dec. 15) and this made the difference. Another was OSU’s convincing 31-21 defeat of USC early in the 2000 season, the first time in 33 years the Beavers had bested the Men of Troy. But alas, this same season would produce an even bigger game. A 29-0 surprise victory over Marquette in Milwaukee in 1926 was huge for that generation. Two years later it would be overshadowed by a victory far more significant. Oregon State shocked the powerful Fordham Rams 9-6 on a game-winning field goal by Ade "Tar" Schwammel. However, four games earlier, Lon Stiner’s "Aggies" had turned in a performance that has virtually superseded everything before or since.

And so, without any additional fanfare, here are my favorite dozen...the 12 most historic games in OSU football history.

Photo from the 1999 Beaver.

12. OSU 44, Oregon 41 (1998-double OT): In what many Beaver fans consider to be the greatest Civil War game ever, in a series dating back to 1894, freshman OSU running back Ken Simonton flew by an exhausted Duck defense in the game’s second overtime period for the 16-yard winner and his fourth TD of the contest. A delirious Parker Stadium crowd stormed the field, turning the TV screens of millions of fans watching the national telecast on the Fox Sports Network into a sea of orange. This was the Civil War game that did more than any other to change national perceptions about the storied rivalry, transforming what was considered to be nothing more than a quaint, regional interstate rivalry into a national phenomenon.

11. OSU 17, California 7 (1999): This game made the list for one simple reason: OSU’s home win over the Cal Bears on Nov. 6 marked finally and forever the end of OSU’s streak of 28-straight losing seasons, an NCAA record. It has been said that as the gun sounded to seal the victory, many a Beaver fan around the country remarked, "Now I can die in peace."

10. Oregon Agricultural College 10, St. Vincent's of Los Angeles 0 (1907): Until the 1915 season, this was the biggest win in history for Oregon Agricultural College and the most impressive victory ever by a team from Oregon, Washington or Idaho. The game also marked the first time OAC had traveled outside the Pacific Northwest to play football, all the way to the sunshine and oranges of southern California’s crown jewel, the City of Los Angeles. The opponent was a big dog to take down, the undefeated 11 of St. Vincent’s College, then one of the great powers of the West Coast. The Thanksgiving Day tilt would be for all the marbles, the Coast Championship.

The 1907 team practices a formation while Coach Norcross watches from the rear. Picture from The Orange, 1909.

OAC’s head coach F.S. Norcross also had an undefeated team, and his "farmer" boys had given up no points to any opponent during the season, a statistic probably overlooked by a lot of the media from the L.A. metro area, most of whom were shocked by game’s end at the ease with which OAC had rolled-up the locals. The win, and the way it was accomplished, thus preserved the only time in OSU’s history in which a Beaver team has finished a season undefeated, untied and unscored upon. Over 3,000 fans poured into downtown Corvallis to greet the return of their heroes, essentially the entire population of the town and college. The huge throng marched, with the OAC band in the lead, back to campus for a celebration the likes of which the Willamette Valley had never seen.

Sherwood hits Violet line. Photo from the 1929 Beaver.

9. Oregon State Agricultural College 25, New York University 13 (1928): Between the 1916 and 1933 seasons, a span totaling 17 years, Oregon State Agricultural College’s defeat of the NYU Violets on Thanksgiving Day in Yankee Stadium was its biggest win of that era. It was also the upset of the year in the country. Howard Maple’s brilliant performance at quarterback earned him All-American honors, the school’s second player to be so honored. Hoping to win the game with the forward pass, and with a defensive scheme coach Paul Schissler devised to stop the vaunted, smash-mouth running game of the New Yorkers, receiver Bill McKalip and all-Coast guards Jules Carlson and Vernon Eilers shared game-hero honors with Maple. The Beaver yearbook later reported: "Many Eastern people learned much of this state from the publicity gained in this big game." Humorist Will Rogers delighted in his column over what the "Oregon apple knockers" had done to the "city slickers."

8. OSU 31, Fresno State 28 (1981): Not only did the 28,000 Parker Stadium fans who witnessed this season-opener on Sept. 12 see the greatest comeback in Beaver football history, they also enjoyed the greatest comeback in NCAA history up to that time, meaning no Division I team had ever made up a 28-point deficit to pull out a victory. The record was held until Maryland rallied from a 31-0 deficit on Nov. 10, 1984, to defeat the Miami Hurricanes, 42-40. Down 21-0 at half and then 28-0 later in the third quarter, OSU quarterback Ed Singler brought the Beavers back on the strength of his 34-yard TD run and a 17-yard pass for another score. The elation was short lived, however, as Joe Avezzano’s boys finished the season 1-10.

Ken Carpenter darts through a big hole. Photo from the 1950 Beaver.

7. Oregon State College 25, Michigan State 20 (1949): Eight games deep into the 1949 campaign, national power Michigan State was ranked No. 8 in the country as it traveled to Portland’s Multnomah Stadium to play first-year Head Coach Kip Taylor’s 5-3 Beavers. The result was a stunning upset of the Spartans before 22,000 amazed fans. Things looked bright indeed for Taylor, whose big claim to fame had been that he had scored the first touchdown ever in Michigan Stadium in 1927. But 1949 would be his only winning season. And tragedy would strike six weeks after season’s end with the sudden deaths in a winter traffic accident of team member Stan McGuire and fraternity brother Bill Corvallis of the baseball team. McGuire’s field goals had made the difference in the upset.

Photo from the 1916 Beaver.

6. OAC 20, Michigan Aggies 0 (1915): When E.J. Stewart’s Aggies defeated the No. 1-ranked Michigan Aggies (now Michigan State) in East Lansing, the fifth game of the 1915 season, it was the biggest win yet turned in by an OAC football team and marked the first time in school history Oregon State had traveled off the West Coast to compete. The game also introduced the rest of the country to the talents of Herman Abraham, whose performance earned for him a place in history as OSU’s first All-American. That the defeat was accomplished coming on the heels of a long train ride, in which Stewart’s players had little chance to practice, made the victory all the more astonishing. Also factored in was MAC’s remarkable defeat of Fielding Yost’s Michigan team 24-0 the previous week, prompting a Michigan sportswriter to pen this pre-game warning: "The Oregon Aggies, in choosing the Michigan Aggies as a medium for introducing themselves to middle western football circles, have hit upon a road to a broader football field that promises not to be altogether blanketed by Roses." The writer followed with this slap at the Orange and Black: "The Michigan farmers, in their great 24-0 victory of the University of Michigan team in Ann Arbor last Saturday, made it plain to all followers of the college sport that they must be met with caution and then only by teams of the major class." Portland’s Morning Oregonian newspaper was about as optimistic, with reporter Roscoe Fawcett writing, "One thing is very certain, and that is the Corvallis boys are due for a trimming...and a bad one!" After the results of the game reached the desk of legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice at his New York Tribune office, he was moved enough to immortalize the game in a special poem for his column titled, "The Pacific Slump," a part of which goes like this:

Ah yes, it’s sad to think about the Old Pacific Slump,

The way the West has hit the chute and hit it with a bump;

But when you speak of things like this in a manner somewhat free,

don’t mention it at Michigan or up at MAC;

They haven’t any stuff at all to call for autumn boasts,

except a team that smeared a team

that smashed a team of Yost’s.

Next week in Part 2...the Top-5.

GeorgeP. Edmonston Jr. is editor of the Oregon Stater and E-Clips.