By George P. Edmonston Jr.

In the first part of this series on the greatest football victories in OSU history, we looked back at the number 12 through six spots on the list.

Now we come to the greatest of the greatest, a veritable trophy room of immortal plays and players, the stuff of legend and the measuring stick, where men of orange still run to paydirt and the shouting lasts forever. The next time someone asks you if Oregon State University has a "football tradition," just smile and share these stories, the Beaver victories that give OSU a special place atop the college football universe.

1942 Rose Bowl, photo from the 1942 Beaver.

5. OSC 20, Duke 16 (1942 Rose Bowl): This game produced two important firsts. It was OSU's first-ever trip to the famous New Year's Day classic, and it remains the only Rose Bowl played outside Pasadena, which has prompted sports historians over the years to prefix the bowl's famous name with the word "displaced." The reason was due to the blackout of the West Coast that had followed the attack on Pearl Harbor. The host stadium was Duke University's home field in Durham, N.C., with the undefeated Blue Devils picked as 3-1 favorites. Oregon State's victory came as a big surprise to Eastern and Southern sportswriters, with Sid Feder of the Associated Press writing, "Probably never in the quarter century history of the Tournament of Roses had such a completely overlooked betting underdog jumped up to beat the big fellows. Oregon State came East to the wonderment of most of Dixie as to why the Westerners were going to show up at all." Beaver boss Lon Stiner, at 38 and the youngest head coach in Rose Bowl history, had prepared his team with a passing attack that dazzled the North Carolinians. Jack Gunether of UPI wrote, "The Beavers skipped and slammed and flicked passes with an ease and finesse which completely baffled the record crowd." For Oregon State, the star was Dan Durdan, who passed and ran Oregon State College to victory. He was awarded Player of the Game honors and later inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame. Beaver greats Bob Dethman and George Zelick also added points. Duke blocking back Tommy Prothro also played magnificently. In one of the great ironies in the annals of college football, Prothro would one day become Oregon State head coach and take the Beavers to not one but two Rose Bowls. The football practice field at OSU bears his name. Returning home, the victorious Stiner and company were feted at a special Rose Bowl Banquet with Oregon Gov. Charles Sprague one of the principal speakers. In 1985, the entire squad was inducted into the State of Oregon Sports Hall of Fame. In 1988 they entered the OSU Athletic Hall of Fame. OSU fans at the time considered the game to be the greatest win in school history.

2001 Fiesta Bowl, photo from the 2001 Beaver.

4. OSU 41, Notre Dame 9 (2001 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl): To many of the almost 40,000 Oregon State fans who packed Arizona State's Sun Devil Stadium on this beautiful night in the desert, OSU's convincing victory over the Fighting Irish in Tempe on New Year's Day will always stand as the program's greatest win ever. It is certainly deserving of a top 5-ranking. Entering the BCS contest enjoying but one winning season in 29 years, the 10-1 Beavers played their most complete bowl game in history and the best game of a remarkable season. In its summary of the game, the 2001 OSU Football Media Guide said, "Oregon State totally dominated the Irish from the opening whistle. The Beavers led but 12-3 at halftime and Notre Dame was fortunate the margin wasn't larger, as OSU rolled up 278 yards in the first half, including 248 through the air, to 98 for the Irish. The third quarter was the clincher, with OSU tallying 29 points in eight minutes to put the contest out of reach. Player of the Game honors went to OSU's Jonathan Smith (offense) and Darnell Robinson (defense). With an 11-1 finish and a No. 4 national ranking, this was and is OSU's greatest team in school history. Led by Head Coach Dennis Erickson, the 2000 Beavers seem destined in the future for induction into one or several halls of fame.

Scott Eaton, who intercepted 4 passes during the season, steps in from of teammate Mark Wahletich and Trojan Ray Cahill to make an important theft. Photo from the 1967 Beaver.

3. OSU 3, USC 0 (1967): Looking back now at the opening few games of coach Dee Andros' 1967 season,
with losses to Washington (13-6) and unheralded BYU (31-13), the Beavers at 3-2 looked like anything but a terror as they traveled back East to face the No. 2-ranked Purdue Boilermakers on Oct. 21. However, the home crowd of 60,147 went home unhappy campers. The 3-2 Beavers had done the impossible in a 22-14 victory that caught the nation by surprise. Two weeks later, OSU was in Los Angeles to face another No. 2,
UCLA. The resultant tie, by a 16-16 score, left Orange fans breathless. The moniker "Giant Killers" immediately caught hold, prompting the not at all breathless Andros to scream to the media, "We're tired of fooling around with No. 2 teams. Bring on No. 1." It's still open for debate whether the passionate utterance started the tradition of "trash talking" in college sports, but Oregon State's hard-nosed coach did, the following week, have the chance to live the cliché "be careful what you wish for, 'cause it might come true." The "wish" showed up in Corvallis as the No.1-ranked USC Trojans, 8-0, led by legendary coach John McKay and his brilliant running back O.J. Simpson. To a team that had already defeated powerhouses Texas, Michigan State, and Notre Dame, USC was practically a sure bet for the national championship, with Oregon State but an interesting bump in the road. Simpson ran for 188 of his team's total of 206 rushing yards for the game; however, thanks to a rock-solid Beaver defense led by All-American Jess Lewis, the fleet All-American and eventual Heisman Trophy winner never crossed the goal line. Oregon State kicker Mike Haggard tried three field goal attempts, one of which, a 30-yarder with 5:18 to play in the second quarter, proved to be the only scoring the Beavers would need to pull off the amazing upset. In a special booklet celebrating the 100th anniversary of Beaver football published by the Corvallis Gazette-Times in 1993, the newspaper's sports staff picked this one as its "Greatest Game." In 1992, The Giant Killers were selected for membership in the State of Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, and in 1997 they received the same honor from the OSU Athletic Hall of Fame.

Biancone carries the ball. Photo from the 1933 Beaver.

2. Oregon State Agricultural College 0, USC 0 (1933): Although not a victory in the strictest sense, the story
of this game would make a great movie. There's enough drama to keep people on the edge of their seats for hours, which is not exactly where fans sat that Oct. 21 day in Portland's old Multnomah Stadium (now PGE Park) to watch this titanic struggle. The sell out crowd of 22,000 stood for almost the full 60 minutes.
Howard Jones' Trojans had entered the game as back-to-back national champions and sporting a 25-game winning streak. Their starting lineup gleamed with All-Americans, their offense a veritable "thundering herd" of destruction. First year Beaver coach Lon Stiner carried but 37 players to the game,
compared to over 80 on Jones' squad. Somehow, Stiner's game plan for the visitors ignored a saying the nation's coaching fraternity repeated often: to beat USC, you must have "backups for your backups." Instead, he played but 11 men, a fact which gives this special game its special place in the lore of college football. This seemingly innocent tie remains the only game played in NCAA history in which a No.1-ranked, defending national champion has been upended by a team using no substitutes. Thus, they became for all time Oregon State's "Iron Immortals" or "Ironmen." With each singing of the words to the OSU Fight Song, a part of which reads, "watch our team go tearing down the field, those of iron their strength will never yield," Beaver Believers honor once-again Stiner's Ironmen of '33. The lone survivor of that immortal 11, right guard Bill Tomsheck of Corvallis, was asked in a recent interview if any of his teammates, the ones who watched from the bench, ever showed any jealousy toward those who played. Said Tomsheck: "They showed no
animosity at all. We were down in the dressing room and they all came over and undressed us. I guess they felt we needed a little help. I've never been that tired in my life." In 1988, Bill and the rest of his 36 teammates were inducted as a unit into the OSU Athletic Hall of Fame.

Beaver defense pounces on Huskies. Photo from the 1986 Beaver.

1. OSU 21, Washington 20 (1985): This is Oregon State's greatest "David and Goliath" victory, the Beavers' "Miracle on Ice," an upset of such magnitude it could easily serve as the stand-alone example of Beaver pride triumphing over the impossible. By 1985, OSU had suffered through 14-straight losing seasons. It had been 20 years since the program had gone to a bowl (1965 Rose Bowl) and had won but 21 games from 1972-1985, with seven of these coming before 1974. In the two games prior to their trip to Seattle to face the powerful Washington Huskies, the Beavers had been beaten by Washington State, 34-0, and humiliated by USC, 63-0. In OSU's storied football past, no Beaver team had ever given up 97 points in back-to-back games. Before USC, the Beavers had fallen to Division II Grambling, 27-6. Las Vegas oddsmakers had OSU as 38-point underdogs, a spread based partly on the fact that Oregon State would be starting a freshman quarterback, Rich Gonzales (replacing Eric Wilhelm, out for the season), and be without the services of the Pac-10's leading receiver, Reggie Bynum. So remote were OSU's chances, the Corvallis Gazette-Times didn't bother to send a photographer to cover the game. Seattle's media showed even less respect, with one writer, Steven Runciman of the Post-Intelligencer stating flatly, "Oregon State plays football pretty much the way Barney Fife played a deputy sheriff in Mayberry. They have ceased being a joke. They are not only an embarrassment to themselves and their fans, they are an embarrassment to the Pac-10. Beaverball is a blight that has gone on long enough." Runciman forgot one thing: games are won on the field, not in the newspapers. Needless to say, his words cut deep into Beaver pride, both on the team and among fans, and it was for pride, and nothing more, that Oregon State took the field that day. As OSU assembled to enter the giant stadium to start the opening quarter, UW's players began barking at them like dogs. But "Deputy Fife" would have the last bark. By game's end, Gonzales had completed 26 of 42 passes for 298 yards, and had scored a touchdown on a 20-yard run. On defense, Andre Todd blocked a punt late in the fourth quarter and Lavance Northington recovered the ball in the Husky end zone with 1:46 to play for the game-winner. Afterwards, OSU found out it had just set the NCAA "underdog" record. In the history of Division I football, no team picked by Las Vegas oddsmakers to lose by 38 or more points had ever won. (Many sports historians believe Centre College’s...located in Danville, KY...upset of Harvard 6-0 on Oct. 29, 1921, to be possibly the greatest upset in history but this was before the era of pre-game publicized point spreads.) After the game, a few doors down from where his team was celebrating its amazing upset, first-year Head Coach Dave Kragthorpe sat at a table staring out at a room full of empty chairs. He was waiting to answer questions from the Seattle media. They never showed up.

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