But I wouldn’t quite go this far yet:

I think it’s becoming clear to us that the Beavers may never win another National Championship again. They may never get the right pieces to the puzzle in terms of leadership they enjoyed in Mitch Canham and Darwin Barney, and they may never get that spark at the perfect time to ignite a late season run.

I totally agree with your overall assessment here about the need for leadership, but at the same time we have the same main leader—Pat Casey. So yes we shouldn’t expect trips to Omaha every year, but at the same time shouldn’t overlook Coach Casey’s leadership.

Really when you get down to it Casey is the person driving these teams and yes a person like Barney also helps with his natural leadership (and the other coaches of course too). But Casey was instrumental in bringing that and channeling that for Darwin. I believe as long as Casey is here and he is bringing in the recruits he has been bringing in, OSU will be a top-tier team. Like a Georgia, Rice, North Carolina, and Arizona State we won’t win every year but we will be making runs at it and we should (underline and bold “should”) win a National Championship or two before Casey leaves.

Oh and this team underachieved. I believe we should have finished better in the regular season and had a shot at hosting the Regional, and as it was should have reached the Super Regional by beating TCU twice. But to come around and show that yes I really do agree with you Jake, I’ll end on what I think really sums it up perfectly:

Let’s relish our back to back National Championships, but not hold this year’s team up to those standards. While they might have been capable of doing what the teams of 2006 and 2007 did, it takes a whole heck of a lot to go right— all at the right time.

There are other teams who have lofty expectations. Teams like Kentucky and North Carolina expect Final Four every year, and anything less is unsuccessful. USC and Florida expect a BCS game and nothing less. Texas and LSU expect Omaha. All I’m saying is, with the program that Pat Casey had built, maybe we should expect Omaha. Yes, winning 1 National Championship takes a lot of luck, leadership and many X factors you can’t define. Winning 2 in a row? Well now that’s just incredible. But I don’t think its fair for us to be just satisfied with a regional exit. This team was better and more talented then what they accomplished. Had they done what they were supposed to do, and won series against UCLA, USC, WSU, and UW and lost to ASU (instead of the other way around), we would be hosting a regional, and probably moving on to the Super Regionals next weekend. So no, Jake, I’m not satisfied. We were one of the better teams in the country this year, and vastly underachieved. Losing a 4-0 lead to TCU last night to be eliminated was not satisfying, and I’m going to be disappointed until we AT LEAST make the Super Regionals again. We have had too many good recruiting classes for this early of an exit.

But I agree with VD on this. We SHOULD expect to go to Omaha every year because we have earned that right to after winning two straight national championships. It seems to me that too much at Oregon State we are ok with just coming in second or third and saying “we can’t expect to win every year”. Well why the heck not? Every other major college program in this country expects to win and win big. You can’t always say well we don’t have the facilities, or the tradition, or whatever. Eventually you just have to go do it. That is one thing that I do admire about UO. They are not sitting around satisfied with coming in second or third, they are shooting to be the best at everything. They are whining about not having the tradition of a USC or UF but instead going out and trying to make that tradition. I believe that this mentality of ‘underdog’ will only get OSU so far and its something we need to ditch. Eventually we need to hold all 3 of our major sports (football, mens basketball, and baseball) to high standards and expect more than just low bowl games, CBI tournaments, and first round exits in a regional. Now I believe football and basketball will be there in the next 2-3 years but there is NO reason that baseball shouldn’t be there right now.

GO BEAVS!!!