Do you need me to tell you or do you already know? You know. I know. We all know. What we could only dream of a decade ago, and have longed for this last half decade under Jonathan Smith is finally here. 

The stakes have gotten incredibly fucking real. 

The autumn of 2022 has been a season full of milestones and firsts for Smith and the Oregon State football team. The honors have come in shapes and sizes both big and small, and Friday night in Seattle will mark one of the bigger occasions in Smith’s tenure as head coach. Tonight, at 7:30 pm Pacific Time and on national television, the Beavers will take the field for the first time ever as a ranked team by the College Football Playoff Committee. 

Banners aren’t hung and parade routes aren’t planned anytime a mysterious group of people labels you as the 23rd best team in the nation. There’s a ton of football left to be played and as Smith so famously said on that warm Los Angeles night 14 months ago, ‘Hear this, we ain’t done yet!’ 

No, we’re not done yet, but Oregon State finding themselves as a ranked football team (for the first time since 2013) almost five years to the day after Gary Andersen uttered the words ‘it doesn’t matter who they hire,’ as he left Corvallis with the program in shambles and just a handful of wins to his name, is significant. No matter what happens next.  

And speaking of what’s next, this game against Washington is one of the more massive games we’ve seen in quite some time. If only the Dawgs hadn’t screwed up against the Sun Devils a few weeks ago, both teams would have little numbers next to their names on the scoreboard tonight and the entire Friday night spotlight would be focused on Pac 12 After Dark. 

Hiccups in the desert aside, this is a very good Washington team (one that should be ranked). The Huskies hold an identical 6-2 record and boast one of the most explosive offenses in the country. Michael Penix Jr has been spectacular at quarterback for the Huskies and poses one of the biggest challenges this Beaver defense will face in 2022. 

The 28 points Washington put up in last week’s victory against Cal marked the fewest they’ve scored in a game all season. Trent Bray and his stout defense no doubt studied every second of film from that game. Any formula for an Oregon State W in Seattle almost certainly includes keeping Penix and the Dawgs under 30. The Beavs held Caleb Williams and the Trojans to 17 points in Week Four and effectively ended Williams’s Heisman campaign in doing so. That game may have ended in heartbreaking fashion for Oregon State, but the template is there for Bray and Brian Lindgren’s offense has evolved in the four games since then. 

At the time of this writing, both teams have narrow paths to earning a December date in Las Vegas and a chance to play for the Pac 12 Championship. At the end of the night, only one team will. If any team outside of the current top four in the Pac 12 hopes to play conference spoiler, it can only be whoever claims victory tonight in Seattle. 

To find the last time Oregon State and Washington met this late in the season, with this much on the line for both teams, you have to go back to… well, never. There’s really never been a game in the previous 105 meetings between the two teams quite like the one we’re getting tonight. 

*Part of this is due to the multiple decades-long dark ages of Oregon State football when any stakes were almost always pretty one-sided, but that’s not the point. 

A couple past games have come close. Both teams held records of 6-4 in 2013 when the Huskies came down to Corvallis and put the smack down on the Beavs to the tune of a 69-27 blowout. The year before, Oregon State’s magical climb up the rankings in 2012 reached as high as No. 7 in the nation before the Beavs tasted defeat for the first time that season thanks to the Dawgs in Seattle in late October. In 2002, the Beavs rolled into Washington on Nov. 9 with a record of 6-3, but that’s a day Beaver fans would rather forget as Derek Anderson tossed five interceptions in a 41-29 loss. 

There’s of course the heartbreak in Seattle in 2000. A 33-30 loss to a powerful Husky team the only blemish on the record of the eventual Fiesta Bowl Champions, but that game came in early October before anyone really knew how good both teams could be.

I’m not liking the theme we’re seeing here. History has not been kind to the Beavs in games against Washington that matter. This season, however, has been the year of Oregon State exorcizing its demons and marching further and further into unchartered territory. Territory that felt like an unreachable dream land as recently as five years ago. 

So enjoy it, Beaver Fam. Put your faith in the defense and the ground game and let the black and orange optimism flow through your veins. 

And if that’s not enough for you, if you can’t find enough evidence in this magical ride so far to convince you to believe, remember you can’t spell ‘Chop Em,’ without hope.