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Oregon State Beavers vs California Golden Bears Football Preview

As the season progresses toward November, the level of urgency rises on each and every college football Saturday. This sense of raised stakes and heightened drama will definitely be felt this weekend at Reser Stadium in Corvallis, Oregon.

When the California Golden Bears tangle with the Oregon State Beavers, two teams will be plunged into a battle that holds more than a little importance.

For Cal and coach Jeff Tedford, this game is sorely needed – not so much because the Bears harbor Pac-10 title hopes (they don’t), but because a drifting program needs to show the rest of the conference (and the country) that it can beat a good team on the road. Cal is 4-3 this season, with all four wins coming at home and all three losses unfolding away from Berkeley. What’s even more noteworthy about the trajectory of the Golden Bears’ season is that six of their seven games have been decided by 21 points or more. This team either wins big or loses big, with almost no variations in between.

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Cal has to not only stand in the ring against Oregon State; it needs to leave the Pacific Northwest with a victory. The only Northwest team Cal has been able to beat on the road in recent years is Washington State; the Bears’ last trips to Oregon State, Oregon and to the University of Washington have all produced ringing defeats. Tedford is a man who has generally improved the Cal program, but he’s also a man who has done nothing to sustain the glory years of 2003 and 2004, when Cal played USC’s best teams on even terms and acted the part of an elite team on a national scale. Over the past few seasons, Cal hasn’t even sniffed a Pac-10 title and has had to settle for third-tier bowl games in December. Some heat is beginning to surround Tedford’s position of power in the San Francisco Bay Area. He needs a quality win to quell the chatter that’s beginning to increase in Berkeley, and a win at Oregon State would do just that.

For Oregon State, this is a crucial game not only because of the Pac-10 title race – which the Beavers are still immersed in – but because it could become a turning point, for better or worse, in the evolution of the career of Ryan Katz. Oregon State’s starting quarterback took some lumps against TCU and Boise State, but when he led OSU to a 29-27 road win at Arizona earlier in October, it seemed that Katz had become the unquestioned leader of coach Mike Riley’s offense. However, on Oct. 16 at Washington, that aura evaporated. With Oregon State dominating the Huskies in the third quarter of a 21-21 tie, Katz threw two bad interceptions – one of them in the end zone – to ruin a pair of promising scoring drives. When Washington beat OSU in overtime by a 35-34 count, Katz’s third-quarter meltdown took on added significance. Katz has to play well this Saturday (in a win, of course) for Oregon State to feel good about its chances during the stretch run of this season. If OSU becomes a road victim against a Cal team that’s been decidedly impotent on the road, you can kiss OSU’s Rose Bowl hopes goodbye… and the team’s bowl prospects would also be in jeopardy as well. A fourth loss can’t be absorbed this early in the season.

Cal is trying to improve its reputation. Oregon State wants to get to Pasadena. This game will be defined by more than a little desperation.

By Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Staff Writer