FanPost

The Mike Riley Era is Over, (and the sooner that is realized the better)

Believe it or not, I have friends who are Beavers fans. These days, the conversations are no longer about the pending Civil War, they are almost entirely debates about the "Riley/BDC/Fear of the Unknown" conundrum.

To be brief, I don't think there is an argument at all. The longer OSU stays with the status quo, the more damage is being done. It's not necessarily irreparable damage, but the hole being dug gets deeper with every losing season put up.

OSU needs to beg, borrow, or internally steal, any amount of money necessary to fire both BDC and Mike Riley simultaneously. Right after the championship weekend in December.

Is that the "family friendly" thing to do? Not a chance. It is the business minded thing to do. The business that is Beavers football is on the skids and the losing pattern is now established to the point where it is not anomalous. Mike Riley is not a bad coach, or complacent, or lacking for competent assistants. The times have passed him by as thoroughly as they once passed by Dee Andros before the multi-decade futility truly set in. BDC, Riley, and the Beavers program, are mired in an approach to football that will no longer yield consistent success. The sooner this is realized, the less damage is done.

First, the football landscape has shifted beneath Riley's feet. At the high school level, some flavor of the spread rules nearly everywhere. Running a pro set offense at that level is increasingly uncommon. This shift narrows the talent base for game ready talent for pro set college offenses. Then, out of the kids who are versed in pro set concepts, the Beavers are a distant third choice within their own division for pro set talent, behind Stanford and Washington. With the time limits on practice and football related activities, there simply isn't enough time to take fliers on spread raised players and convert a two deeps' worth of college manufactured pro set players.

As it is increasingly difficult to find decent pro set players, it compounds the difficulties already inherent to recruiting to Corvallis. If you are a pro-set versed player of great talent, Corvallis is not in your top five unless you have family ties. There are simply more attractive choices. The same dynamic exists for spread players, but there are far more of them these days. That's where the diamonds in the rough are now found. In the declining high school use of pro-style concepts is the doom of staying the course with Riley. The Beavers are becoming a talentless bunch of pro-set leftovers from a paltry and picked over banquet. In the Information Age, anyone with pro set talent no longer remains undiscovered by those elite college programs still using the offense.

Then, as recruiting gets more difficult, the misses become more glaring, the depth gets shallower, the results on the field suffer, which then negatively affects the recruiting and the fan support. As the smaller talent base to draw upon becomes even more problematic, kids who won't consider OSU are their own problem, and the ones who still will visit or sign are marginal talents who offer little prospect of a quick turn around. With some flavor of spread offense, the larger high school player pool can still yield hidden gems that are vanishingly rare in the shrinking pro-set world.

Andros' Power T was going extinct when OSU started foundering. Likewise, the "pro-style" using leftovers, cast offs, slim pickings, and academic JC cases, has pretty much run its course too. However, Riley only pays lip service to the idea of "modernizing" his offense with spread or HUNH principles.

And that lack of commitment to the radical change that is necessary should be all that is needed to show Riley the door, graciously or not. Since no stalwart OSU fan would want BDC making that very critical hire, he needs to go too.

It frankly doesn't matter whether a successor AD or HC is identified right now. Finding a more creative AD is the University's job, and finding a more dynamic and open minded HC would be the new AD's very key first decision, as it would be clear that their fortunes would be linked.

But can OSU afford to radically chart a course into the unknown? I say the more weighty question is how can OSU afford not to? Riley staying even three more years would be an utter disaster.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of SB Nation or the Building the Dam staff. FanPost opinions are valued expressions of opinion by passionate and knowledgeable Oregon State fans.