BOULDER, Colo. -- Look, Oregon State fan. I'm not telling you to move to Europe today, but a friend of mine who was a sportswriter at the Denver Post for 23 years picked up a few years ago, quit his job and bought a one-way ticket to Rome.

John Henderson flew back this weekend to clean out his storage locker, give away his belongings and take in the Colorado-Oregon State football game. You know what happened while he was away?

The Buffaloes got good. Really good. Top 25-good. Also, Henderson adds, "They legalized marijuana."

It was Colorado 47, Oregon State 6 on Saturday. It's not worth dissecting the variety of ways in which the Beavers lost this game, got beaten, and looked lost on both sides of the ball. The Beavers performance really wasn't one. Let's just say I don't believe a move to Italy is far enough away for Oregon State fans.

Madagascar might do it.

Colorado is good enough to win the Pac 12 South. The Buffaloes looked gifted enough for the second-straight Saturday to make the conference title game. This came after Washington put Stanford in a headlock on Friday and dragged the Cardinal off the deep end of the docks. We also find Oregon fighting for its future, and USC begging. But be sure, the Buffaloes are now a Top 25 team.

Said Henderson: "It's like I went to sleep on a barstool in Barstow and woke up in Barcelona."

The conference has been tossed on its head. It happens. Doormats become winners. Winners become cream puffs. If you work hard, make the right hire, recruit well, coach 'em up, and wait... wait... wait... some things change.

It's the painful and frustrating waiting part I want to focus on. Because die-hard Beavers fans are feeling today as if they're not seeing a lick of progress. They're demoralized. They're frustrated. They want out. And they're struggling with why they should watch Oregon State, now 0-10 in Pac 12 games under Gary Andersen, play another game this season.

"You know," Henderson said on the sideline in the closing minutes of the Beavers loss, "Oregon State is not as far behind everyone else as Colorado was a few years ago."

In his first season, Mike MacIntyre lost 44-17 to Oregon State, lost 57-16 to Oregon and 59-7 to Washington. In season two, the Ducks beat him by 34, USC beat him by four touchdowns and he went winless in the Pac 12. In fact, Colorado -- now riding high in the South Division -- was 1-20 in MacIntyre's first 21 conference games.

After the game, the Colorado coach said, "I think the less teenagers you have playing the better off you are. All of you who have teenagers know what I'm talking about.

"For a while there, I had about 118 of them."

The Buffaloes feel older, wiser, and better. They're still playing a few teenagers, but they left the field after the game, winners at home in a conference game for only the second time since MacIntyre was hired in 2013. Outside the visiting locker room a Colorado security guard waiting for the Beavers coaches to emerge from a silent locker room remarked, "We don't get to see this very often."

Relate with that yet?

So, are you willing to withstand that kind of rebuild? Are the Beavers players? Is Andersen ready for it? Or do you just want to move away tomorrow and check back in 18 months? Because it's a total rebuild that Oregon State finds itself mired in.

The Beavers ditched the pro-style offense for the spread. They've changed defensive coordinators. The players look lost, and also, not talented enough to play with Colorado's athletes. And Andersen didn't quite know the level of futility that MacIntyre endured until I asked him post-game if he had what it took to withstand a 1-20 conference start. He was holding a bottle of water, but suddenly looked like he wanted to trade it for bourbon.

"I'm willing to go through it for these kids. I will battle for these kids until they won't have me anymore. I promise you that much," he said.

Oregon State is not very talented. No way around that. The offensive line can't block and the defensive line can't get a pass rush. Anyone who knows football will tell you that everything after that hardly matters. Blame the quarterbacks, but they were like pinballs in a machine. Blame the defensive backs for giving up three homerun balls to Colorado, but they were like four guys running around an airport tarmac trying to corral a fleet of F-16s. Blame Andersen, but know he's already blaming himself.

"What they've been through has fortified them as a group of men," MacIntyre said of the Colorado upperclassmen. "It's also given them an unbelievable depth of character. I used to tell these guys when I recruited them, 'Come on with me, but know we're getting on a roller coaster at the bottom.' They stayed with me. Now we've gone up the long climb uphill.

"Click. Click. Click," he continued. "Now, we're going to ride that roller coaster."

Andersen will win games again as a coach. I'm sure of it. It's what he does. I don't know if it will take another season, or two. I don't know how much patience OSU will have with him. The impending Athletic Director hire is a wildcard in the equation. But everyone can see there's growing frustration outside the program. People want measurable progress. Nevermind Colorado, which won a lone conference game last season, against, ahem, rebuilding Oregon State.

"I hear all that stuff," Andersen said. "I don't read it, but I hear it. Some fans got some pretty good jokes and some things."

Colorado used to be the conference joke. Now it's Oregon State.

I write that sentence with Henderson, my old sportswriter pal, sitting down the way in the press box. He's working on his travel blog, typing away, while eating potato chips. He's an Oregon grad, incidentally, who said he's pleased Colorado has figured things out. Now, he's mostly worried about the Ducks future and coach Mark Helfrich.

Henderson flies out of the country on Wednesday, far away from any of it, though. Rome waits. Football moves on without him. Henderson's new girlfriend Marina, a "voluptuous Italian woman," (his words), will pick him up at the airport. Then, they're headed on holiday. Destination: Budapest.

So if you're tired of seeing the Beavers serve as doormat, join him there. Or escape to Paris, Athens or Madagascar. But know that Oregon State is picking itself up, dusting off, and trying to find its own way.

"We move forward," Andersen said, "we move ahead."

-- @JohnCanzanoBFT