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Mike Riley exits as Washington fans rush the field last season.

(Associated Press)

Forgive me for interrupting the solemn mourning over the dismal performance of the Oregon State football program on Saturday. It's been a slow and curious procession of orange and black since Eastern Washington ran circles around the Beavers defense. And while I am not going to use this space to call for the head of coach Mike Riley, what I will do is call for an end to the complacency that Beaver Nation has shrouded itself in over the last three-plus seasons.

Riley doesn't need to go. What needs to go is the defeatist mentality that's infected the entire fan base.

Oregon State has lost to two Football Championship Subdivision opponents since its last bowl victory in 2008. The Beavers have lost five straight times to their in-state rivals. The team is 17-21 since 2009. And when Eastern Washington was celebrating the upset of a ranked Beavers program, what was missing was widespread outrage and a refusal to accept what has become a disappointing win-some, lose-some pattern.

Riley probably will rebound and make the season palatable. It's what he usually does. But what most needs to change is the culture of Beaver Nation, especially as it eyes Oregon 55 miles away. Because unless the Beavers dramatically raise their expectations, demand more, dream bigger and alter the course at OSU, they're going to remain in a comfortable corner of oblivion, awaiting a slow slide back into irrelevancy.

The Beavers and Ducks haven't just parted ways on the football field, the mentality and outlook of two programs that were once closely linked have peeled away from each other. It's difficult to watch.

Oregon is blazing an imaginative trail to the top on and off the field, and the ambitious expectations of fans and boosters, particularly Phil Knight, are fueling that. The Ducks are playing in Bowl Championship Series games and unveiled their $68-million football haven this season. They're wearing who-knows-what uniform, working hard to sell out the stadium, and creatively marketing themselves and thinking national championship. Meanwhile, OSU is acting and thinking like a business that is just happy to have its doors open.

Oregon is Disneyland. Oregon State is the state fair.

This summer I spoke with Drew Gereb, the inventor of the technology behind the Ducks LiquidMetal helmets, which they debuted in the Rose Bowl in Jan. 2012 against Wisconsin. Turns out, Gereb got his education at Oregon State, and loves the Beavers. In fact, before the Ducks even knew what the shiny, cool, chrome-looking helmets were, Gereb took the technology first to the Beavers. Riley agreed prior to the 2011 season to have two players wear the helmets as an experiment one spring. In the end, though, "Oregon State told me they decided it just wasn't them," Gereb said.

It needs to be them next time.

Instead of taking rank in the shadow of Oregon, the Beavers need to be bold, daring, and raise the expectations. It wasn't that long ago --- 2009 --- that a Civil War football game was played in which the winner got to go to the Rose Bowl. The Ducks won and went to Pasadena, the Beavers lost and went to Las Vegas. It feels like the programs never stopped moving away from each other, and that mentality doesn't begin on the football field. It's born much deeper.

The Pac-12's television deal gives each conference member a minimum of $21 million in fresh revenue annually. Oregon is spending that money, and telling fans and boosters it needs to push the pedal to the floor to keep pace with Alabama and others. Greg Byrne, the athletic director at Arizona, pushed to build a new football operations building. Washington opened its new football stadium last Saturday. And while the Beavers desperately needed that windfall, too, what we haven't seen is a hint of a dynamic plan to stay in this conference arms race, especially in football.

Fans at Oregon State should be furious with the loss to Eastern Washington. It's especially aggravating because it feels like the Beavers worked so hard to erase a 3-9 season with last year's inspiring 9-3 finish. But the truth is, there isn't a program in the conference that feels more tolerant of a setback like losing to Eastern Washington. From the fan base to the coaching staff to the administration, Oregon State behaves like it's content to stay in the black financially and try to make a bowl game every year and be happy that its not still mired in a 28-year bowl drought.

That bad run still haunts Oregon State.

The coaching staff is promising it will work hard to figure out what went wrong defensively on Saturday. There weren't enough adjustments, enough tackles, or enough pride. The Beavers offense was so good it might have just put this game away if the defense had made one little stop. But even if OSU had hung on and won, the real problem would still exist.

There's too much tolerance of mediocrity at Oregon State. The demands of the fan base aren't ambitious enough. The plan in general isn't dynamic enough. The marketing, while it has stepped forward in the last 18 months, is still light years behind others in the conference. And while there's been some outspoken fans in the last few days, the cries for an adjustment pale to what you'd hear from most other places in the conference.

Oregon State will not fire Mike Riley. Not a chance. Won't happen. And I don't think that would fix a thing today.

The athletic director and university president know he'll qualify for bowl games in most years and putter along in an unfinished stadium, keeping fans buying most of the tickets and the boosters writing steady checks. But I wonder how much edgier the Beavers would feel if everything didn't feel so comfortable.

I wonder if Riley would put more pressure on his defensive coordinator to perform. I wonder if the entire athletic department would dream bigger, and vow to, "Make no small plans." I wonder if Riley himself would experience the renaissance moment of his career, and make a leap forward as a head coach.

The change for Oregon State doesn't start with the football coach figuring out what went wrong last Saturday. It begins in the hearts of Beavers fans. When you've had enough, please let the rest of us know.

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