2000: The Win Over Stanford

This fall marks the 20th anniversary of one of the greatest football seasons in Oregon State history. The 2000 Beavers tied for the Pacific 10 conference championship and defeated Notre Dame in the 2001 Fiesta Bowl, finishing with an 11-1 record and ranked in the top five in the country. That OSU team is among the 2020 inductees into the Oregon State Sports Hall of Fame, and osubeavers.com is recapping that season with a series of stories this fall.

By Kip Carlson

The night of October 7, 2000, all the way from Seattle to Corvallis, Oregon State players, coaches and fans spent hours pondering the coulda-woulda-shouldas of the football game they'd just seen.

Oregon State's defense, stout all year, had given up over 500 yards of total offense to Washington, including 281 on the ground; OSU had allowed a total of just 234 yards rushing in its first four games. Coming up short on a second-and-one run with no timeouts left in the closing seconds forced the Beavers into spiking the ball and trying a long field goal rather than having a few more plays to try for a touchdown or at least a shorter kick.

And OSU was still oh-so-close to beating the 13th-ranked Huskies, or at least taking them into overtime, and remaining undefeated on the season. Instead, the Beavers lost 33-30 on the road in front of a hostile crowd of over 70,000.

"I felt coming into the game that if we had a chance to win or tie on the road in the fourth quarter, I'd take it," OSU head coach Dennis Erickson said. "That's exactly where we were. We had a chance to win and definitely a chance to tie at the end. Then we missed the field goal."

Ryan Cesca's attempt from 46 yards drifted wide right, leaving the Beavers with a 33-30 loss, their first of the season after starting 4-0 for the first time since 1957. With the Oregon State defense struggling to contain Washington, the OSU offense managed 474 yards of its own.

"This time was a little different story," Erickson said. "Our offense stepped up to keep us in the game. As time goes on, maybe we'll get them both together."

OSU's next chance would come at home against Stanford, the defending Pacific-10 champion. Along with their 4-1 overall record and 1-1 conference mark, the Beavers would take into the game an even higher national ranking than they had against Washington. OSU moved up three spots to No. 20 in the USA Today/ESPN coaches poll while remaining No. 23 in the Associated Press media poll.

For its part, Stanford was 2-3 overall and 1-1 in the Pac-10, coming off a 20-14 loss at No. 25 Notre Dame; the Cardinal had also dropped a tough 27-24 home loss to No. 5 Texas earlier in the season. The week before that, though, Stanford had lost 40-27 at home to San Jose State – but the previous year had proved that result wasn't necessarily a killer blow.

"You don't know how to figure them sometimes," Erickson said. "Obviously, it's kind of how it was last year wat the beginning of the season when they lost to San Jose and came back and went to the Rose Bowl."

Cardinal senior quarterback Randy Fasani had been hurt against Texas but might be able to play against the Beavers; if not, the starter would be freshman Chris Lewis, who had been one of the nation's most highly recruited players. In either case, a top target would be senior DeRonnie Pitts, who Erickson said "might be as good as anyone in the league."

On Monday, the Beavers found defensive tackle Eric Manning would be available to help contain the Cardinal offense; they'd originally thought he'd have to miss the first half of the game after being ejected at Washington. However, the Pac-10 ruled the ejection wasn't for fighting, so Manning would be eligible to play the entire game against Stanford.

By then, all reserved seats for the game had sold out and a limited number of general admission tickets remained for sale. A blurb in the Eugene Register-Guard noted that OSU had adjusted its count of the total seating available at Reser Stadium, lowering it from 35,363 to 33,278, meaning the previous home game against Southern California had been a sellout.

OSU's Ken Simonton remained among the nation's leaders in a number of categories: fourth in rushing (162.6 yards per game), sixth in scoring (12 points per game) and 15th in all-purpose yards (161.8 per game). That week, The Oregonian profiled Simonton, focusing on his academic pursuits and off-the field interests.

"The only advantage I feel I've been given is athletically, so I have to use it," Simonton told reporter Rachel Bachman. "I have to use it. They've opened up the door for me, so I'm going to walk in. If they had opened the door for me academically, I would have gone to Stanford on an athletic scholarship and told football to kiss my butt."

"This is Simonton's contradiction," Bachman wrote. "The very thing that brought him to Oregon State – college athletics – has empowered him to criticize it. He does criticize, voluntarily and at length, what he sees as the hypocrisy of college sports. But the views of the Beavers' all-time leading rusher also reflect an intellectual life burgeoning beyond the borders of his sport …

"The Simonton you don't see is the junior majoring in liberal studies who is on track to graduate in four years, whose most recent grades averaged higher than 3.0 and who spends more time in the Valley Football Center's academics office than in its weight room."

The other side of the ball got some attention as well. Defensive ends LaDairis Jackson and DeLawrence Grant were featured in the Corvallis Gazette-Times. They'd been junior college teammates at El Camino College in California: Jackson from Houston, Texas, and Grant from Compton, Calif. After competing for a starting job they ended up bookending the El Camino defensive line.

"We started developing a friendship because we kind of felt we had common goals," Grant told the G-T's Kevin Hampton. "We wanted the same thing out of what we were doing playing the same positions and we kind of looked up to the same people. that pretty much brought us closer."

Thursday brought bad news from afar: the USS Cole was bombed in a terrorist attack in Aden, Yemen. The destroyer was part of the United States forces on heightened alert in the Middle East in recent days because of increasing Israeli-Palestinian turmoil and anti-American hostilities in the region. Seventeen American sailors were presumed dead in the blast; the G-T reported Lieutenant Commander Chris Peterschmidt, who had grown up in Corvallis, was second in command of the ship but was not among those killed or injured.

On a happier note locally, the football game against Stanford would be part of Dad's Weekend at OSU, the continuation of a school tradition dating back to a Dad's Day held in 1934. Other events would include the Friday Night Kick-Off with pizza, beer and a band in the Memorial Union ballroom and then a Saturday night comedy show with comedian Bill Cosby.

The same issue of the Daily Barometer that outlined the weekend's events included a "mid-term report card" for the Beavers as evaluated by the Baro sports staff. The grades? Defense, B+; receivers, B; running backs, A; quarterback, B; offensive line; B; kicking, B-; and coaching, A-.

The morning of the game, the Salem Statesman-Journal's Roy Gault opened his preview with the question, "What's left in the tank?" He wondered how much the Beavers had left after the bitter loss at Washington.

"It's a disappointment that we didn't pull it off at Washington, but I wouldn't say the dudes are down," Simonton said. "You hope to go undefeated, but there's always a situation in the season that you have to draw from and this is ours."

Added Erickson: "It's make or break for both of us. We've used up our margin for error. It's important that we bounce back and get it together, to stay in the race for the championship."

Gault, a veteran of covering decades of Beaver football, noted Erickson paused, "as if listening to what he just said. OSU last played in a Rose Bowl in 1965."

"I guess maybe for Oregon State to say that is odd," Erickson continued. "But it's fun. Anyone who's undefeated or has one loss and doesn't think they can win it, well, they aren't preaching the right things."

For the 3:30 p.m. kickoff, a sellout crowd of 34,777 got a clear, 60-degree afternoon with a slight breeze. And, for a quarter, the overflow throng wondered if the Beavers had recovered from their disappointment in Seattle.

Oregon State kicked off and Stanford picked up three first downs on its opening drive before punting; the Beavers managed just one first down on their initial possession before having to boot the ball back to the Cardinal.

Lewis then guided Stanford on a 13-play, 74-yard drive that ended with Mike Biselli's 24-yard field goal and a 3-0 lead with 2:47 left in the opening quarter.

"We were pretty concerned early because we gave up a lot of yards," linebacker Richard Seigler said afterward.

That seemed to wake up the Beavers. Oregon State came back with a drive of its own, going 70 yards in 10 plays and Patrick McCall scoring from three yards out to put OSU up 7-3 early in the second period.

Stanford tacked on two more first downs before its next punt, which left Oregon State on its own 24-yard line. On the first play, Jonathan Smith faked to Simonton on the right side, rolled left and found some pressure, then spotted T.J. Houshmandzadeh across the field at the Beaver 42 and Smith's pass found its target.

Houshmandzadeh managed to turn upfield before hitting the right sideline and outran the Cardinal secondary to complete a 76-yard touchdown pass and give OSU a 14-3 lead. When he returned to the sideline, he got a mixed greeting.

"I ran the wrong route, went the wrong way, and it worked out for the best," Houshmandzadeh said. "My brain just went dead. Yes, they (the coaches) definitely said something to me about it."

The 11-point margin wasn't safe for long, as Ryan Wells returned the ensuing kickoff 80 yards to the Beaver 9. Oregon State's defense held the Cardinal and forced a 25-yard field goal by Bissell that made it 14-6.

"When we get down in the red zone, our backs are against the wall," safety Terrence Carroll said. "We can't let anybody penetrate that zone. It hurts us as a team, so we have to be sure nobody scores on us."

Said Stanford head coach Tyrone Willingham: "What we've done is missed opportunities. You can't do that against an explosive team."

The Beavers managed one more scoring drive before halftime, getting a career-long 49-yard field goal from Cesca to lead 17-6 at the break after the teams closed the half by trading turnovers, including OSU fumbling the ball away inside the Stanford 25.

"I think we were pretty disappointed, actually," Smith said of the Beavers at that juncture, when he was just 5-for-15 passing. "I was too excited early, throwing those balls. We had at least three touchdowns that I overthrew. So we felt at halftime we were kind of disappointed, but we felt confident we could make those plays and we came out in the second half and did that."

It took a possession to get going but the Beavers did just that after Biselli's punt was downed at the OSU 3. From there, Smith took the snap, dropped back, looked to his right and saw Chad Johnson outrunning his defender. Smith dropped the ball into his arms in stride and Johnson sprinted down the sideline for a 97-yard touchdown pass – the longest in Oregon State history – and OSU was up 24-6.

"I told coach (Eric) Yarber I can beat the man that was on me, so we need to come back to it," Johnson said of the play. "So I just knew I had to do what I was taught, get in his technique and just keep on going. Just catch it and go. That's what I did."

Added Smith: "It felt real good. I didn't think they were going to come up with a play call like that. Obviously, 3-yard line, a lot of times teams just run it. But that's the play they called, I was excited and Chad obviously made a great play."

Johnson came perilously close to stepping on the sideline on his dash to the end zone; after being told by teammates how close he came, he asked the official.

"He said he could call it either way, so that's how close it was," Johnson said.

The play seemed to knock the wind out of the Cardinal. Said Stanford defensive tackle Willie Howard: "Any time you give up a big play, it changes the atmosphere of the game."

After scoring passes of 76 and 97 yards, the Beavers got another notable reception later in the third quarter – this one from an unlikely set of hands. On third-and-six from the Cardinal 25, Smith had his pass deflected and the ball ended up in the hands of center Chris Gibson, who had been slowed by an ankle injury in the first half.

"He ran pretty quick," Smith said of Gibson. "Because it got tipped and bounced right to him and I'm all, 'Run, Chris!' … I was pretty surprised. I think if his ankle wasn't hurt, he might have had a first down."

Gibson managed to turn the play into a five-yard gain, close enough for McCall to carry for the first down on a fourth-and-one play. The drive ended with Simonton's 10-yard touchdown run for a 31-6 lead with 4:55 left in the third quarter.

Oregon State added a one-yard touchdown run by Antonio Battle in the fourth quarter to make the final score 38-6, and the Beavers finally had the complete game and blowout they'd been seeking.

"When our offense plays as well as it did and our defense plays as well as it did, nobody can beat us," Houshmandzadeh said. "If we play like this together, nobody can touch us."

The Beavers outgained the Cardinal 471-333, with much of the Stanford yardage coming early in the game before OSU clamped down. The teams were within a yard of each other in rushing yardage – 148 for Stanford, 147 for Oregon State – but the Beavers threw for 324 yards.

With Smith completing 14 of 26 passes, OSU averaged over 23 yards per reception.

"The first few weeks of the season, people played us with two safeties, but the last couple weeks, there's been nobody back there," Erickson said. "That's why it's happening. We knew they'd move eight and nine people up into the box to stop the run, and we have to make those plays."

Houshmandzadeh had five catches for 120 yards and a touchdown and Robert Prescott had four catches for 81 yards, while Johnson's lone reception was that 97-yarder for a score – and that was just fine with him.

"I don't want the ball much – that's not what I'm here for," Johnson said. "I do big plays; I can open up the field. I don't need to touch the ball eight, nine, 10 times."

Simonton had a rare sub-100-yard game, rushing for 81 yards and a touchdown on 14 carries before sitting out much of the second half. McCall had 10 carries for 61 yards and a touchdown and Battle 10 carries for 33 yards and a score as the Beavers spread the ball around both on the ground and in the air.

"With this offense, you'd better know anything can happen," Simonton said. "This is not the Ken Simonton show."

Carroll had a fumble recovery and an interception to go along with his seven tackles, while linebacker Darnell Robinson had 11 tackles and defensive end Dwan Edwards came up with two quarterback sacks, Grant had another sack and cornerback Ricky Walker picked off a pass.

Now one win from a second straight season of bowl eligibility, Oregon State faced a tougher task than what the defending conference champion Cardinal turned out to be: traveling to play nationally ranked UCLA in the Rose Bowl.

"We're not trying … just to go to Hawaii again," Seigler said, referring to OSU's Oahu Bowl trip of 1999. "We want to take it all."

That would mean the Beavers making another trip to Pasadena to finish the season, playing in the Rose Bowl game, not just the stadium.

"We're still in the hunt until they tell us we're not," Erickson said. "They haven't told us yet we're not."

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