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It’s been a long, long week for those in Corvallis, but the Beavers earned a victory lap around their stadium.
CORVALLIS — Scott Barnes began the unveiling of Reser Stadium with a Hail Mary.
“Today is a media tour of Reser — not a press conference for conference realignment,” said the Oregon State athletic director. “So with that, just let me say this about conference realignment: We continue to work 24/7 to put our student athletes and Beaver Nation in the highest and best position we can. And that’s all I want to say today. I hope you can respect that.”
And maybe it’s because the national media who enjoy opining about Oregon State’s future without stepping foot on campus weren’t there, or the fact that Barnes had arranged for margaritas, gimlets and hot dogs at nearly every turn for the dozens of local media who were, people mostly obliged. One would barely notice the ground shaking beneath the feet of this program four days after being abandoned by its peers.
The new Reser is just that impressive.
Seriously. Oregon State nailed it. The $161 million project immediately positions itself amongst the best college venues on the West Coast and Barnes seems to know it. Buzz words like excited, premium and first class would have blown Thursday’s two-drink limit to bits had things been competitive.
The new west grandstand is intimidating from the field, yet nearly every seat from front row to nosebleeds feels intimate. There’s less seats here than in previous iterations, and Barnes will quickly tell you that’s by design. They’re better seats, he said. He’s also quite fond of Beaver Street, the open-air concourse connecting the north and south ends of the stadium with modern conveniences like grab-and-go concessions and flat screen TVs.
Total bathroom count: 160 — up from 127 on the previous west side.
Total concession count: 84 — up from 42.
There’s also a pretty rad suite area that starts on the outside with reclinable lounge chairs in pods and gets progressively gaudier until reaching the Founders Club at the 50-yard line, which feels like a whiskey lounge with monster chandeliers.
You knew the Beavers were really feeling themselves when they openly encouraged more people to ride in the same elevator up to the press box — a move akin to laughing at the Gods at old Reser.
Formerly a weak point among those who groan the most, the press box itself is magnificent, with sweeping views of the Willamette Valley and, more importantly, full views of the actual field. I was so struck I may have temporarily ruined the mood upon forgetting to compartmentalize the last week.
“This is the nicest press box in the Pac,” I said, earnestly, before catching myself, “four.”
Not the first time I’ve been shushed in the press box.
That’s fair. Oregon State had earned a day of respite from the doom and gloom of the last week — especially Barnes, who led Tuesday’s hour-long tour less than five months after an April medical event left him hospitalized. There haven’t been many stress-free days since, especially in the last week as the Pac-12 dismantled with the departures of Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah.
And Barnes would be flying a little too close to the sun if he thought his next public appearance wouldn’t be accompanied by a flurry of realignment questions. Some of which may even pertain to this very stadium:
This renovation, which began 615 days ago, was funded with $100 million in private donations and $45 million in bonds. OSU athletics projects the debt service to be $2.6 million annually, over 35 years.
Oregon State received $37 million from the Pac-12 in FY2022.
See where I’m going here? The Beavers’ financial future is hazy.
That’s where this gets frustrating, again, because walking up and down Oregon State’s new Reser Stadium, everything feels right-sized. The Beavers now have a modern facility that isn’t lacking for anything. They rebuilt the opposing locker rooms, added a campus-wide health facility and tacked on a new student welcome center which Barnes said will serve 10,000 prospective students each year. And all of this is home to a football team that has a real chance of contending for the final Pac-12 Conference title, against some teams that will see their budgets double in the coming years because the type of money that can get you a stadium like the one Oregon State unveiled on Tuesday just wasn’t good enough.
I should have grabbed one of those drinks.
— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor
