Fresno State’s 2001 Oregon State upset still stirs passion. So, who has the goalposts?

It was nearly 20 years ago, not to the day, but close enough. A Sunday, not a traditional college football Saturday … Sept. 2, 2001, and Fresno State absolutely dismantled Oregon State, a team that went in ranked No. 10 in the nation and No. 1 by Sports Illustrated, that was coming off an 11-1 season capped by a scintillating 32-point Fiesta Bowl rout of Notre Dame.

The final score: 44-24.

The Bulldogs took them apart in pieces big and small behind quarterback David Carr, wideouts Rodney Wright and Bernard Berrian and a defense that allowed the Beavers and Heisman Trophy-candidate running back Ken Simonton a total of just 27 rushing yards on 30 plays.

As Fresno State girds for a fall without football due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Bee takes a look back at one of if not the biggest game ever at Bulldog Stadium, starting at the end with 0:00 on the clock and just about everyone who crammed into Bulldog Stadium that night on the field.

“I had never been a part of an atmosphere like that, not in that stadium,” strong safety Vernon Fox said. “It became the norm after a while, but that was the introduction. … It was the best feeling ever.”

Center Mike Stovall, on the field with the offense at the end of the game, said he looked up after the final snap and there were hundreds of people running at him.

“We kind of looked at each other like, ‘I don’t even know what to do with this,’” Stovall said. “We had the idea that we were going to throw buckets of water on the coach if we got back to the sideline, but we never made it back there … it was a good time.”

“Surreal,” safety Anthony Limbrick said. “It’s hard to explain.”

Some soaked up every second of it that they could.

Running back Paris Gaines, who had scored the Bulldogs’ first touchdown, said he stayed on the field long after the game, shaking every hand, slapping every high-five, signing every autograph.

“I missed Coach Hill’s after-the-game speech,” he said.

A special souvenir is out there, somewhere

Gaines out on the field even offered up one of the more unique souvenirs from that might – and, as it turns out, not the only one.

“I just remember hearing, ‘Hey, can I have your mouthpiece? I thought about it for a couple of seconds and said, ‘Sure.’”

Safety Cam Worrell said, “I actually got my helmet stolen. I got hit on a punt and didn’t play maybe the last half of the fourth quarter. They had taken my helmet. It was on the sideline, and it was just mayhem after the game.

“I had to get a new helmet when I returned to practice on Tuesday because my helmet was nowhere to be found, so someone is sitting in Fresno with a No. 29 Fresno State Bulldogs helmet that they got off the sideline after that Oregon State win.”

As souvenirs go, that one is up there.

“Right?” Worrell said.

“I’ve heard a lot of stories about what people were doing after that game, taking portions of the goal post down Cedar Avenue, being a part of ripping the goal post down. But I have yet to hear if anybody has a Fresno State helmet they took off the sideline that night.”

At some point, the goal post came down. Bulldogs’ fans were jumping on it, tugging at it and then after it fell taking pieces of it up the hill leading out of the stadium and into the night.

“We tried to hold it and we had no chance,” said Tom Kane, who at the time was in charge of Fresno State’s athletics facilities.

“There it goes, right up the ramp … Fresno Neon really came through on that one. Oh, man, they were the godsend. Bill Kratt and his staff did a hell of a job putting that thing back up.”

Somewhere in that scrum, Derek Carr, then just the quarterback’s little brother and not the Las Vegas Raiders’ quarterback, went missing momentarily in the crush of people.

“My mom was so mad,” David Carr said. “Get Derek! Find your brother! We turn around and Derek is in the middle of this pit of people, just screaming and getting thrown up in the air like a mascot.

“It was a lot of fun. It was a cool moment. I wanted to share it with everybody.”

Pat Hill: Anyone, anytime, anywhere

For coach Pat Hill, it was everything he had promised when he was hired to take over a program that had started to stumble a bit.

Anyone, anytime and anywhere this time just happened to be Bulldog Stadium.

“It was a culmination of everything that Pat had built,” Carr said. “It was his vision. I remember when he came and recruited me in Bakersfield. He talked about putting together teams that could play teams that were nationally ranked and in the Top 10 and even playing them at home, and fast forward five years and we were right there on the field with it.

“It was really cool, man.”

The end result, that also was all about Hill and what he brought to the program.

“Coach Hill, we were a good reflection of him and he was a good reflection of us,” cornerback Juan Bautista said.

The Beavers, national ranking and all, on that night couldn’t match it.

“Completely dominated the game, in all phases,” Hill said. “It was a great win. I don’t know if there has been a bigger one in Bulldog Stadium.

“There might be, but that has to be one of the biggest ones. They were a Top 10 football team, and there was no doubt about the outcome.”

There were big plays, right from the start in all three phases of the game.

Carr passed for 340 yards and four touchdowns.

Oregon State struggled to block defensive tackles Alan Harper and Jason Stewart. Defensive end Nick Burley was busting up plays all game and ended up with a team-high three of the Bulldogs’ 12 tackles for loss.

Oregon State’s Simonton, who entered his senior year as a top Heisman Trophy candidate after rushing for more than 1,000 yards in each of his first three seasons, was a primary target. He rushed 15 times and on eight carries was held to 2 yards or less.

“All of our prep was, ‘This guy is not going off on us on national TV,’” Worrell said. “Whatever happens, Simonton is not going to have a game.”

Advantage, Rodney Wright

The offensive line kept Carr clean, allowing one sack, and Gaines and Josh Levi rushed 27 times with just one play going for a loss.

Throughout, a standing-room-only crowd announced at 42,410 roared.

“It was my first home game that I played in,” said tight end Stephen Spach, a redshirt freshman. “What a cool experience. Some of the guys that I came in with, Duncan Reid, Brett Visintainer, I can remember us looking at each other like, ‘Look what we got ourselves into.’”

It started on the Bulldogs’ first series. Carr hit Rodney Wright up the right sideline for a gain of 27 yards to the Oregon State 1-yard line, beating press coverage from corner Terrell Roberts.

That would become a recurring theme.

“They would play a Cover 4 with really low safeties and they would press the outside receivers and try to get physical with them and for the most part they could do that,” Carr said.

“But we thought we had an advantage there because if we did any kind of action in the backfield or occupied the eyes of that safety it would basically be one-on-one and we liked our chances with Rodney.”

Wright made seven catches for 182 yards and two touchdowns, beating that same coverage on just about all of them.

Berrian, the Bulldogs’ other receiving star, came down with a 28-yard touchdown catch in the back of the north end zone, beating corner Dennis Weathersby to give the Bulldogs a 24-10 lead in the third quarter.

“Same press coverage, same aggressive play by those corners and they just kept playing it,” Carr said. “They never got out of it and I was like, ‘You’re going to play one-on-one? I’ve got two of the best receivers in the country. If you can’t get to me we’re going to tear you up …”

Oregon State kept playing it.

The result, predictable, really. “Rodney Wright had an awesome game, just torching their secondary,” Limbrick said.

Later in that third quarter, after the touchdown from Carr to Berrian, the Bulldogs broke open the game on a 70-yard pass to Wright.

Fresno State had a second-and-9 from the 30, and Oregon State corner Aric Williams walked up on Wright, lined up to the right.

Wright beat him off the line, untouched, but the Beavers’ safety got over the top so Carr did what he had started to do that week in practice.

“We got a ton of looks of press coverage on Rodney,” Carr said. “He would try to win over the top if he could, but, honestly, a lot of it was kind of the back shoulder before the back shoulder was popular. If he got a release and he didn’t win over the top, I would just throw it behind him.”

Carr did that and Wright made an adjustment, reaching across for the football as it, the Beavers’ corner and their safety converged.

He made the catch, kept his feet and took off. Oregon State linebacker James Allen gave chase, but caught up too late, latching on as Wright made a dive into the end zone.

But that pursuit proved what the Bulldogs were up against that night. “They were really fast,” Hill said. “That linebacker almost caught him from behind. They could really run on defense.”

“I was behind Dave, back there seven yards deep, and I got to watch it all happen,” Gaines said. “Great release off the line, he hit Rodney and Rodney outraced a linebacker – I was actually in training camp with that guy (James Allen) in New Orleans. That was crazy. We talked about that play.

“But I got to watch it almost like it was in slow motion … talk about a play that just broke the will of a team, I think that was it.”

Kendall Edwards, and a special play

Actually, Kendall Edwards might already have taken care of that.

In a game of big plays, Edwards made two in one that the Bulldogs nearly 20 years later bring up just as often as the 70-yard touchdown pass from Carr to Wright.

It was, Fox said, what they were all about.

Fresno State was leading 17-3 In the second quarter when Jason Simpson launched a 50-yard punt. The Beavers’ Roberts settled under the ball, but Edwards drilled him just as the ball arrived, and that was not the end of it.

“He hit the guy that was catching the ball,” Fox said. “He fumbled. Someone else on their team picked it up, and Kendall got up off the ground and went and smacked that guy, too.”

“That’s one of those plays that will be in Bulldog history forever,” Limbrick said. “They’re always going to talk about Kendall Edwards.”

The play resonated all of the way across the county, Carr said.

“I was at the NFL Network probably two or three years ago and Ike Taylor, who was a safety for the Steelers, was doing a show with me. He says, ‘Who was your special teams coach in Fresno?’ I was like, ‘What? That was 20 years ago.’ But I told him it was John Baxter and he said, ‘That dude must be crazy. What you guys did to Oregon State …’

“I was like, ‘How do you know about that game?’ That was two decades ago.’ And Ike said, ‘Everybody knows that game.”

Gaines was in camp later with the Denver Broncos and had a conversation with running back Clinton Portis, who played collegiately at Miami; his Hurricanes went on that season to win the national championship.

“He said they were watching that game and hoping that we would win out to have an opportunity to play them,” Gaines said. “The rest of college football had no clue where Fresno was, and who the Bulldogs were, but that kind of let everybody know that we’re one of those teams … we come to play.”

A direct line can be drawn from that play to Hill. In his fifth season at Fresno State, that team was full of his recruits. They had grown up with “Anyone, anytime, anywhere.”

“He meant it when he said, ‘Nah, we’ll play these guys in the parking lot if we have to,’” Bautista said. “That’s the way we all felt.”

“Our mentality,” Worrell said, “was his mentality.”

The Beavers, then the goal posts fall

But, like this story, the end came at the beginning for the Beavers.

“What I remember most about that game is how they came into the stadium,” Hill said. “They were very cocky. You know, they were waving their towels and pretty boisterous coming down the ramp.

“I gathered up all our players and said, ‘Just watch these guys. Just see what they think of you.’ They just acted like they owned the stadium, like we were going to be a pushover.”

It was the Beavers’ style, but it didn’t sit well.

Carr chuckled, again. “I don’t know that it helped us any, but it fired Pat up,” he said.

In his first season Hill and the Bulldogs lost at Colorado State 41-3, the Rams calling a late timeout to kick a field goal to add on three more points to their total.

“I told the team after the game, ‘In two years they’re coming to Bulldog Stadium and when they come to Fresno we’re going to beat them by 40,” Hill said.

They almost did – it was 44-13.

“They probably would have been better off coming out a little more respectful,” Bautista joked.

Slights didn’t go unnoticed, and if it helped the Bulldogs it also helped the Red Wave, which crammed Bulldog Stadium well past capacity.

“I mean, our fans wanted to see us demolish Oregon State, because Oregon State really struck a flame coming down that ramp,” Hill said.

Now, they’re all on the field.

Carr, after taking a knee with the final snap, pumped a fist and was mobbed by teammates and fans.

“When you talk about the coolest football moments for me, there are three that stand out,” he said. “There’s that game. The chance to beat my favorite team growing up, the Cowboys, when I played my first game in Houston. Then being on the field and winning a Super Bowl.

“Those three games stand out, but I don’t know that I could pick either of those two over the Fresno game. That started it off. That was the first time I had any of those experiences with that environment and that feeling and the best part was my family and friends were all there.”

As he made his way into the mass of bodies, an official came running up to Hill and handed him the football.

“I still have it,” Hill said. “It’s in my office. It says ‘Biggest win in Bulldog Stadium history.’ I guess at the time, it might have been. I don’t know if they’ve had a bigger one since, but there was a lot on the line that night.

“Our kids just got after them, big time. It was Bulldog football at its finest. They weren’t going to take any crap from them, that’s for sure. It was a great scene. It was a great night. They tore out the goal posts …”

This story was originally published September 6, 2020 at 5:00 AM.