Oregon State has added a home and home series with Colorado State to their future schedule, as well as making a couple of other adjustments.

Athletic Director Todd Stansbury announced that the Beavers will visit Fort Collins, CO, on Sept. 23, 2017, to take on Colorado State, and the Rams will make a return trip to Reser on Sept. 12 2020. That will be the only non-conference home game that season, as trips to Oklahoma State and San Jose State bookend the visit from Colorado State.

The trip to Colorado comes in an odd year, so it won't double up trips to the area north of Denver, as Pac-12 trips to Colorado come in 2016 & 2018 in the conference cross-division schedule rotation.

It will be a visit to a new stadium, as Colorado State will be opening their new on-campus 41,000 seat Colorado State Stadium in 2017. The Beavers' visit will actually be the second game there, as the Rams open their season and the new stadium against FCS Abilene Christian), and will play on campus for the first time since 1967, after moving back from Hughes Stadium on the west side of town. So it will be an attractive road trip destination.

However, the 2017 season, one that will only have 4 home conference contests (odd years are at Autzen for the Civil War), will now have only 6 home games instead of the 7 originally scheduled. The bye week will also come a week earlier, on Sept.. 16, after 2 games, instead of on the 23rd., and before conference play begins.

The reason was Nevada has cancelled their trip to Corvallis that was to be the beginning of a home and home series, due to a claimed scheduling conflict on the Wolfpack's part, which is really an as yet to be announced bigger non-conference opportunity.

Oregon State will still visit Reno on Sept. 15, 2018, but there are no plans at this time to ever retrieve the home date, which would be in 2019 at the earliest, barring other changes, and more likely at least 2021.

That's because Oregon State has also added a third game to their 2019 schedule, adding Big Sky/FCS Cal Poly on Sept. 14 to a non-conference schedule which will start with a visit from Oklahoma State, and include a trip to Hawaii.

The trip to Hawaii makes adding a 13th game to the schedule possible, and since that's another Civil War road trip year, one that currently only has 6 home games, and it would be fiscally prudent to do so, especially after losing the home date in 2017. And especially after in a similar but better opportunity in 2014, when there were 2 open weekends, former Athletic Director Bob DeCarolis inexcusably bypassed the opportunity for the 8 figure revenue stream that adding an extra home game would have produced.

Finding a team to fill in a date just 3 years away when there is already one FCS game on the schedule could be difficult though, and highlights the problem with DeCarolis not having included a sufficiently high buyout to prevent Nevada leaving Oregon State in a scheduling bind when something more attractive to them became available.

Nevada does have schedule openings in 2019, but also already have a game at Oregon that year, and 2 trips to the Willamette Valley in the same month isn't something they are going to be interested in.

The push to better strength of schedule for those contending for the College Football Playoffs and NY6 bowls could produce further changes that in turn have the ripple affect of other scheduling opportunities, so nothing should be considered to be set in stone!

Andy_Wooldridge@yahoo.com