I don’t know if the Beavers themselves are going to play as if the Sun Bowl is a letdown after being one game from the Rose Bowl. I do know it is a media obsession for the local coverage.

The 24th-ranked Beavers may in fact be excited to play No. 18 Pittsburgh, but it’s hard to dismiss a loss that figures to resonate for years.

Oregon 65, OSU 38. Beaver Nation wishes that was a misprint.

A 27-21 upset of then-No. 1 USC on Sept. 25 — the Beavers were 25-point underdogs — altered the landscape of OSU’s season. A third straight 2-3 start was followed by a six-game winning streak, and the Beavers were one win away from their first Rose Bowl game in 44 years.

OSU took momentum and home-field advantage into the Civil War on Nov. 29. What followed was a defeat that ultimately dashed the Beavers’ Rose Bowl dreams and sent them to El Paso, Texas, for the second time in three years.

More of that “what might have been” stuff. The coach and players say they have moved on and there should be no whining. There doesn’t seem to be much buying of it.

The Oregon State fans sure are treating the game as a letdown (though, it doesn’t help that this is the 2nd time in 3 years that they are in El Paso).

T here seems to be a feeling among some Oregon State fans that the Sun Bowl isn’t quite good enough, which goes to show if you live long enough anything is possible.

Ten years ago, Oregon State was a college football punch line. The Beavers had wrapped up a 28th consecutive losing season. Mike Riley, considered some sort of miracle worker for guiding Oregon State to five wins in 1998, jumped at the opportunity to coach the San Diego Chargers.

The day Riley bolted, the idea of Oregon State ever being successful enough to reach a mid-level postseason game such as the Sun Bowl seemed as remote as a trip to the moon.

Then came Dennis Erickson, the Fiesta Bowl romp over Notre Dame, Riley’s return and four consecutive bowl victories. Now, this whole late December in west Texas thing seems sort of anti-climactic.

Two years ago, the Beavers brought somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 fans to El Paso for a memorable Sun Bowl victory over Missouri. This time there might not even be 1,000 Oregon State fans in the stands, if you don’t count the band members, the athletic department employees and their families.

If that underwhelmed feeling carries over to the football field, this could get ugly fast, because Pittsburgh is making its first bowl trip since the 2004 season. The Panthers want to be here.

Oregon State fans, meet Rutgers fans that feel offended that at 7-5 they had to go to Birmingham after years of not even sniffing the possibility of a bowl game by late September.