Oregon State travels to San Diego State’s beautiful stadium for a Saturday night tilt. Oregon State and Washington State will probably never fully recover from the demise of the Pac 12. The pain for Oregon State may even be greater than for Wazzu when their head coach and favorite son, Jonathan Smith, took the Big 10 money and bailed out to East Lansing.
Trying best to pick up the pieces, both Oregon State and Washington State will play 6 Mountain West teams in to fill out their 2024 dance cards. In an interesting recent development, this scheduling alliance will not be renewed for 2025. How much worse can it get for the 2 orphans when the Mountain West says, “see ya?” Last fall, the Odyssey came up with a creative proposal that would have benefited both the orphans and the Mountain West. Six Mountain West squads would become members of a revamped Pac 8. The leftovers would remain in the Mountain West that would need to add 2 new members (New Mexico State, UTEP, the Montana schools or a pair of Dakota schools would make geographic sense). To make this arrangement palatable to the leftovers in the Mountain West, an annual promotion/relegation feature would be included. Voila! Such reconfiguration would be a Win Win. Now if the powers that be would just be wise enough and creative enough to make this happen.
San DIego State’s pain is less but still apparent. SDSU has been wanting to join a power conference for at least a decade. In mid-2022, the Pac 12 was taking a long look at the Aztecs. However, the Mountain West was firm on a 30+ million exit fee. Shortly thereafter, USC and UCLA dropped their Big 10 bombshell.
In the long-term, we expect SDSU to prosper more than Oregon State. In addition to a more fertile recruiting base, the allure of both San Diego and Snapdragon Stadium make SDSU one of the potential jewels of the Group of 5. As a bonus, the Aztecs caught a break when they were able to hire Sean Lewis. Lewis was an offensive savant at Kent State, who got sideways with Prime TIme in his very bried stint as Colorado’s offensive coordinator.
The outcome of tomorrow’s game is hard to predict. As is typical in the NIL, insta-transfer era, new coaching staffs usually are catalysts for large roster turnover. Oregon State is favored by 5 points. Given the massive improvement of SDSU freshman QB, Danny O’Neil, from first half to second half of last season’s opener, the Odyssey believes the home underdog may well surprise.