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By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings December 12. 2014 8:42PM SOU at top of its game An SOU football fan clutches a cow bell as he celebrates the Raiders' success. Photo by Al Case Bill Seymour’s stellar 31-year Marine Corps career included three combat tours in Vietnam, and he retired as a colonel in 1989 after having earned the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, the Navy Commendation Medal and the Combat Action Ribbon. So the former Southern Oregon University — then (Class of 1957) Southern Oregon College — quarterback and team captain has seen and done a lot, and knows what real rock-in-your-gut, hard-to-breathe pressure feels like. For that reason, Seymour’s reaction to the Southern Oregon football team’s march to the NAIA national championship game may come across, to some, as slightly disingenuous. But Seymour’s tone of voice, steady and devoid of irony, reveals the truth. He’s nervous. Very. “I’m not going to sleep the night before,” he said Wednesday, nine days before the Raiders will face Marian (Ind.) at Municipal Stadium in Daytona Beach, Fla. “And I’ll have butterflies worse than the players do. I remember when I played, the players were nervous before games but the first time we’d get roughed up all the butterflies would go away. I don’t have a way to get rid of them. It’s going to be nervous time. I want them to win so badly.” Seymour isn’t the only one. Southern Oregon’s spectacular run through the NAIA’s Football Championship Series, which has already included the first home playoff game in 12 years, an upset of No. 1 Carroll in blizzard-like conditions in the quarterfinals and the program’s first-ever semifinal appearance, has stirred up a renewed interest in the team from both students and alumni. The payoff, they hope, comes Friday in Daytona Beach, where the eighth-ranked Raiders (12-2) will play the seventh-ranked Knights (11-2) before a live television audience on ESPNU, a station which reaches some 75 million homes, starting at noon Pacific time. While it may be too soon to tell to what extent the university will be able to capitalize on the football team’s success, both in terms of enrollment and donations to the Raider Club, the athletic department’s fundraising arm, what is clear is that interest surrounding the team is at an all-time high. Local sports bars which have held public viewings of SOU’s three playoff games have reported huge crowds showing up in Raider red and black, and souraiders.com, the school’s sports website, has experienced a tremendous spike in page views since the NAIA postseason began three weeks ago. And the Raider bandwagon has stretch well beyond the Rogue Valley. In Portland, former SOU receiver and current ESPN Radio host Dusty Harrah (Class of 2007) and his former SOU teammate Nate VanderKley (2003) have been busy tracking down alums and fans who want to watch the game together at Blitz Ladd, a popular sports bar in the city. “As of right now we have 25 confirmed, but we think that number will be upwards of 60 to 75 former players,” Harrah said. Walt Bateman, who played defensive end for the Raiders between 1983 and 1986, will be attending a similar SOU fan/alum viewing in Eugene. For him the game has taken on a special significance. In 1983 the Raiders won their first five games and finished the regular season 9-2 but, he said, were robbed of a playoff berth thanks to an eligibility-form gaffe. Bateman’s pretty sure that team would have fared well in the playoffs had it been given a chance, so watching this year’s Raiders finally break through the quarterfinal barrier has been especially satisfying. “There’s a level of redemption for guys like myself, and especially for the guys that built that program,” Bateman said of the Chuck Mills-coached SOU teams of the 1980s. Like many SOU alumni, Bateman has been able to enjoy Southern Oregon’s postseason run online through live streaming video. And the numbers suggest that many of those Raider fans, and small-college football fans in general, are also navigating to souraiders.com after games to read about what happened. According to SOU sports information director Josh McDermott, the university has experienced a spike in traffic in recent weeks. Prior to the team’s playoff surge a typical SOU football recap would attract about 2,000 page views. The last two weeks, says McDermott, that number has skyrocketed to 40,000 page views. Each. And the number of followers of the team’s Instagram page has jumped from 200 to 760 in the last three months. Facebook likes are also up. A typical story during the regular season picked up about 200. The last game story, which detailed SOU’s 62-37 win over Saint Xavier (Ill.), had 1,467 likes. “The exposure of the university as a whole has gone through the roof,” SOU associate athletic director Bobby Heiken said. “This is publicity that you can’t buy. We’ve got people all around the Rogue Valley talking about SOU, and that’s huge for this school. Just getting those three little letters out there is big. And for those of us who have been around the department for a long time – Matt Sayre, Brian McDermott, Mike Ritchey, Berk Brown, Nathan Chin – you just sort of sit back and shake your head and say, ‘Wow, we’re really doing this.’” What was it like to follow the Raiders through the dark days of the mid-2000s, when they endured 22 losses in one particularly painful three-year stretch, then watch them climb, under current head coach Craig Howard, to unprecedented success on the shoulders of the most prolific quarterback – Austin Dodge – in the history of NAIA football? One can listen to Heiken try to put it into words, or go to instagram.com/souraiders and see those emotions expressed in full color. There, a short video clip shows Raider fans, packed shoulder-to-shoulder in RedZone Sports Bar & Grill, reacting to Melvin Mason’s game-winning touchdown run against Carroll. As Mason plows into the end zone the place erupts. The camera shakily pans left to right, capturing high-fives, hugs, giddy laughter. “It was awesome,” RedZone owner Austin Loreman said. “People were cheering, yelling, clapping. Everyone was just glued to the TV.” The same scene played out at other local hangouts, including Oak Tree Northwest Bar & Grill, and Northwest Pizza & Pasta Company. It wasn’t that long ago that offering discounts for SOU fans wearing red and black (Northwest Pizza) would have seemed futile, a big waste of time. But times have changed. Just ask Seymour. He says only four years ago, SOU tailgate gatherings were a little sad — about 10 people showed up, and that was a good day. And now? “The last (tailgate) that we had before MidAmerica Nazarene we had like 300 people out there,” he said. “They were cooking everything Cajun potboils to whatever, and everyone was having a good time. Everything is growing and going in the right direction. I’m already thinking myself right now about next year. I’ve got to get myself a big awning. I don’t know if it’s going to rain, but if it does it’s not going to keep us away.” Joe Zavala can be reached at 541-776-4469 or [email protected]. http://www.dailytidings.com/article/20141212/NEWS/141219917 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->