The offseason … through Riley’s eyes

For the casual Oregon State football fan, the football season lasts from September to November. For Mike Riley and the rest of the Oregon State coaching staff, the season lasts 365 days a year.

Riley knows what happens from January through August gets highly unnoticed by the 40,000-plus who flock to Reser Stadium for six or seven Saturdays in the fall.

"A lot of people always say, ‘what do you do in the offseason?'" Riley said. "They either think we're on vacation or something. It's … really an all year-round deal."

As soon as the Civil War ended back on Nov. 26, a different season started for the coaches. Recruiting and player evaluation picks up in full once the games end.

"It's a whirlwind right until Signing Day," Riley said. "You get through that and then immediately you're on to two things: you're getting ready for spring ball and you're starting to look at prospects for the 2013 class."

Recruiting is a year-long process. After the season, the months of December and January are the times when the coaching staff travels a lot and makes home visits for their recruiting targets, and also closing in on what that year's class will look like.

"We divide our day up," Riley said. "We use the morning kind of for research and development and football. Looking at the Beavers … evaluating our own team as to what we need to work on. We're always working on personnel within our own team. So we spend our mornings doing that, and then we spend the afternoons basically evaluating and recruiting."

In May, assistant coaches have an evaluation period of four weeks to look at their targeted group, scout them, and offer scholarships to the players on their eventual narrowed-down list.

"By the time the summer rolls around, we've got it narrowed down to probably... 25 guys (to sign), we're probably still recruiting 75 to 100 at that time," Riley said.

This year, Riley could have felt some added pressure to up the ante with recruiting, following two losing seasons, including a 3-9 record in 2011. But the head coach stayed even-keeled with his approach, and actually ended up getting, by all accounts, one of the team's best recruiting classes in a while.

"We always try to do a good job in both areas that we really focus on, which is football and then recruiting," Riley said. "Obviously we failed at football last year and didn't have the kind of year that anybody wanted, and so we've got to work on that. And in the meantime, we always work hard on our recruiting. I was real proud on our process of our recruiting and then I was really excited about the kids that signed with us."

The Beavers were ranked 39th for their 2012 recruiting class by Rivals. They were on the fringe of the top 25 before three likely recruits pulled out toward the end and sent their letters of intent to different schools on National Signing Day. Still, the ranking was a step up from last year when they didn't crack the top 50.

Having an on-the-fence recruit going down to the last minute is one of the most stressful things going into Signing Day for a coach. Most of the commitments are locked down, but the occasional guy on the fence is always nerve-racking.

"It's very hard," Riley said. "The one area that we didn't like in recruiting is that we had four corners committed, and we ended up signing one of them. What we had in hand, and then what we ended up with on Signing Day, was less than we anticipated. It's very disappointing. We had one kid (cornerback Cleveland Wallace) committed for eight months and then at the very, very last minute he signed with Washington."

For Riley, and probably every other college football coach, nothing rivals the Saturdays in the fall. The long Oregon winters are spent looking at tons of film, evaluating players and deciding who to start looking at offering scholarships to. It is still another seven months until Riley and Oregon State will take the field at Reser (Sept. 1 vs. Nicholls State). The entire process in the offseason is just one long build-up until the games are played.

"We spend like 99 percent of our time not being in the games, but those Saturday afternoons are very, very special to everything you do."

The grueling, long hours spent day in and day out by the coaches of a football team often go overlooked. Building the team that fans see out there 12 times a year is a tedious process that requires a lot of diligence.

It isn't just the on-field performance that coaches earn their keep from, it's the grind of getting through winter, spring and summer that will make or break the team who fans are yelling for on Saturday.  

Warner Strausbaugh, sports writer

Twitter: @WStrausbaugh

sports@dailybarometer.com