Local OSU fans revel

Two dozen or more Sisters area residents were among the estimated 40,000 Beaver football fans who made the long trek to Tempe, Arizona, to watch Oregon State University trounce the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame 41-9 in the 30th Annual Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.

Assembling 40,000 Beaver fans in one place is no small accomplishment, especially considering that such a number surpasses the entire capacity of Reser Stadium, the Beavers' home field.

"I've never been to a game like this in my life," said Sisters area resident Rod McClain, who made the 3,000-mile round trip with his family. "We stayed in nearby Scottsdale, and there was orange everywhere you went."

Local news announcers made the prevalence of Beaver orange the talk of the town. Helicopters hovered over the pre-game festivities, and everyone seemed fascinated by the sea of orange swirling around the Arizona State University campus.

Notre Dame fans were very much in evidence, too; but the abundance of orange made the ratio seem roughly similar to the final score.

Notre Dame was clearly unprepared for what they encountered. One South Bend, Indiana, sportswriter had complained about their Fiesta Bowl match-up with the Beavers by comparing it to winning a shopping trip to a luxury car dealer, only to come away with a Hyundai.

That Hyundai took them for quite a ride.

OSU student and Sisters resident, Mitch Eisenbeis, is a member of the Beavers' football staff and flew to Arizona with the team, which spent 11 days of on-site preparation before the game.

"Coach Erickson did an incredible job of getting the whole team focused," he said. "By game time, everyone was ready and absolutely confident."

Prior to assuming his present role with the OSU team, Eisenbeis worked each of his college summers as a member of UO Duck fan John Keenan's wait staff at the Hotel Sisters.

Jack Magruder of the Arizona Daily Star characterized the Fiesta Bowl match-up as "The king of college football (Notre Dame) in one corner. Cinderella (OSU) in the other."

Nothing about OSU turned into a pumpkin, however, unless you count the colors. In the end, everything turned orange.

Media coverage of the Fiesta Bowl heaped overused adjectives like "storied," "fabled," and "legendary" onto Notre Dame; but no one seemed quite sure what to say about the Beavers. After all, it was only last year that OSU ended its NCAA record run of 28 straight losing seasons.

When it was all over and done with, however, Notre Dame looked like they had been run over by a truck and Oregon State was ranked fourth in the nation in the final Associated Press poll.

Many football fans from east of the Mississippi saw Oregon State play for the first time. Some sportswriters suggested that no team in the country -- including consensus champion, Oklahoma -- could stop OSU at this point in the season.

"All the hype and excitement of the fans was really something," said McClain. "After years of sitting in the Corvallis rain and drizzle and losing, I would never have missed a game like this."

McClain was impressed with Notre Dame's 300-member band, which put on quite a show, and he had nice things to say about their fans, too. However, when the Irish fans started to stream out of the stadium during OSU's 29-point third quarter, his 13-year-old daughter, Mackinzie, was puzzled.

"Why are these people leaving?" she wondered. "They pay all this money to come to the game, and then they leave?"

Good question. Especially coming from the young fan of a team which made its last major bowl appearance more than 20 years before she was born.

Even at her age, she patiently sat through plenty of those drizzly losses.

Like most of the Sisters contingent, the McClains attended the Fiesta Bowl Block Party on New Year's Eve.

Billed by USA Today as one of the top eight places in the nation to ring in the New Year, the event reportedly attracted a crowd approximately 150 times greater than the population of Sisters.

McClain was quick to point out the contrast between Tempe and his hometown:

"You take little-town boys like me and put us in that block party with 150,000 people and it's kind of overwhelming. With all that noise, I don't think I could hear for about three days."

He also observed that Mackinzie liked it so much in Arizona that she wanted to buy a convertible and stay.

The New Year's Eve Block Party followed a Beaver pep rally that filled ASU's Wells Fargo Arena with an estimated 14,000 OSU orange-clad fans.

The evening block party included eight music stages, feature performers Hootie and the Blowfish, carnival rides and games, and a multitude of food and beverage opportunities -- including (separate) Beaver and Fighting Irish beer gardens.

Not content with a single fireworks show, Tempe party planners staged two spectacular twenty-minute displays at 10:30 p.m. and again at midnight.

Still, it was all about the game and the game left the Beaver fans elated -- although not necessarily surprised.

Notre Dame fans, however, were stunned.

"Boy, you guys are good!" said an astonished Fighting Irish fan to McClain, as he was leaving the game.

Back in Sisters, McClain was still basking in the glow of the whole thing.

"I'll go again if I get the chance," he said. "It's an event that I wouldn't ever want to miss."