| | By Ed Graney
Special to ESPN.com
What if the flight had not been diverted? What if the weather was normal rather than nasty? What if Oregon State athletic director Mitch Barnhart never landed in Seattle that December evening?
Go ahead. Say it. You can use the F word.
"Fate," Barnhart said. "It worked for us that time."
It worked like it hadn't in 29 years, like a dreary little town of 50,000 awakened daily by trucks loaded with precut logs slashing through rain-soaked streets ever dreamed it could. It worked because Dennis Erickson was greeted like a prophet and coached like a savior.
|  | | Dennis Erickson led Oregon State to first winning record since 1970. |
Oregon State's football team is once again counted among the living, a program that overcame its pathetic history last year behind one of the game's master motivators. Erickson, the man who won two national championships at Miami before being soaked in mediocrity during four NFL seasons in Seattle, steered the Beavers into uncharted waters.
Those of a winner.
"Someone upstairs was looking out for us when we got Dennis," said Barnhart, who scheduled his first interview with Erickson while delayed on that trip last winter. "He came in and immediately got us going in the right direction."
It makes sense. He actually knew how.
Erickson was a head coach for 17 seasons at the college and pro leve before arriving at OSU. He won 74 percent of his games, recognized at times for
tutoring hoodlums and yet also for producing champions.
In the Beavers, he instilled more than just an exciting offense. He -- and those two national championship rings he wore to the first team meeting -- offered hope, building on the small gains produced by Mike Riley, the popular Corvallis-raised coach who left after two seasons for the San Diego Chargers.
"I think you just go and coach and everything is relative to where you are at and what you're trying to accomplish," said Erickson, 53. "But when we won those sixth and seventh games last year ... I've never seen anything like it. Men and women in their late 70s and early 80s were crying like babies. You would have thought we just won the Super Bowl."
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Making a diffference
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Before Dennis Erickson arrived, the Beavers were just another team in ugly uniforms. Now, even the uniforms don't look so bad. Here's what Erickson accomplished in just one year:
The three coaches preceeding Erickson won a total of seven games in their debut seasons.
Erickson guided the Beavers to their first winning season since 1970 and their first bowl game since 1965.
If OSU finishes above .500 this season, Erickson will be only the second coach in OSU history to begin his career with back-to-back winning seasons (Tommy Prothro was the first in 1955-56).
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They might as well have in the moist eyes of those who suffered so much for
so long. Camelot at Florida State is an annual journey to the BCS championship game. At OSU, it is a 7-5 record and berth in the O'ahu Bowl.
Said junior quarterback Jonathan Smith: "(Erickson) just has something about him. You believe what he says. You want to win for him."
The hard part now: Keeping him around.
Erickson admittedly has never been big on establishing roots. His head coaching path is cluttered with stops, from Idaho to Wyoming to Washington State to Miami to Seattle to Corvallis. He stays long enough to have a favorite restaurant, but not enough to befriend its cook.
Controversy has found Erickson's current program, as three wide receivers are suspended for the season's first three games in the wake of charges they assaulted another student last month.
Still, OSU is doing its part to make even the thought of Erickson walking away from the Willamette Valley, from those homely brown and orange uniforms, a laborious one.
Erickson received a new five-year contract last November, hefty raise (by OSU standards at $480,000 annually) and all. Season ticket sales and booster contributions are at record highs. There are plans for a new $8 million practice facility.
The long term plan is in place and the troops are committed for a march into college football's upper echelon.
Is their general?
"Regardless of what you say, they're going to believe what they want," Erickson said. "I realize my track record hasn't been great in this respect. I've come into places and left. But I hope they believe I want to stay, because that's what I'm planning on."
And yet ...
"Nothing is etched in stone."
Not even the F word. Not even fate.
Ed Graney covers college football for the San Diego Union Tribune.
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