Bob De Carolis gave his annual SOB story —- State Of Beaverdom —- this past Tuesday night before a smattering of Oregon State boosters at Dutch Bros., on Monroe Avenue.

It wasn’t a high-profile event, like the Bennys. The OSU athletic director’s comments were often drowned out by the grinding and gurgling of the barista’s coffee machines. Customers seemed more interested in mocha, latte and smoothies than is thoughts on football scheduling, Raising Reser II and other relevant topics.

As an appropriate venue for a Pacific-10 Conference coaches show, Dutch Bros., makes a great coffee shop. Bill Doba and Dick Bennett probably don’t address the Washington State faithful from a Pullman Burgerville or the Whitman County Grange hall.

But that’s just back story, a couple throwaway paragraphs to set the scene before relaying De Carolis’ real message.

Which was: Despite losing records in football and men’s basketball, OSU athletics had a solid year, with more accomplishments yet to come this year by the baseball, softball and gymnastics teams, each contenders for conference and national honors.

And: The building boom that has improved OSU’s facilities from the middle of the Mid-American Conference to the midpoint in the Pac-10 will continue unabated in the foreseeable future.

The highlights, for those who couldn’t attend or listen via radio:

• Raising Reser II will happen. De Carolis said 70 percent of the necessary $30 million has been raised or is committed, and he usually estimates on the low side.

Barring holdups in the Byzantine state bureaucracy, you can say adios to the existing end zones after the Civil War game.

• The $30-35 million Gill Coliseum overhaul will follow, on a pay-as-you-go basis. Features are the long-proposed annex for wrestling and volleyball; a university academic center; a training/medical center; refurbished offices, locker rooms, stairwells, entrances, and the like.

Dare we dream that the ugly box shrubs and scraggly trees on the 26th Street side of the state’s most historical athletic venue will be removed, too?

• The crew team’s boathouse will be refurbished. An on-campus track will be built. Lights will be installed at Lorenz Field and some of the end zone bleachers could end up there as well, replacing a wooden grandstand scavenged from the abandoned Valley Track a decade ago.

• The Beavers need one point to clinch the Civil War Series for the second year in a row. They lead Oregon 8-5, with four points remaining. OSU prevailed 12-5 in 2005, the most lopsided margin in the competition’s six-year history.

• OSU athletes earned unprecedented national, regional and conference athletic and academic honors.

OSU’s place in the Pac-10 pecking order is debated frequently, by Beaver Believers, by their Pac-10 brethren, and by Gazette-Times sportswriters, none of whom are graduates and thus aren’t blinded by blind allegiance to their alma mater.

We’ve concluded is that OSU is a mid-major in the Bowl Championship Series subset. It’s the Pac-10 equivalent of Clemson, Oklahoma State or Illinois, a competitive member of an cut-throat conference, right down the orange color scheme.

Even its biggest advocates must agree that OSU has much to overcome.

* It battles seven conference members located in four of the most desirable places in the country; a sister school with a billionaire benefactor, and a land-grant cousin in a neighboring state with a firm commitment to higher education and an endowment that exceeds OSU’s by more than $200 million.

* It doesn’t have the historical, economic and geographical advantages of USC, UCLA, Washington, Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Stanford, Wisconsin, LSU, Texas or the other perennial all-sport powerhouses.

* Its endowment (roughly $310 million) ranks 58th among BCS universities and ninth among Pac-10 schools, according a recent study by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

* It doesn’t have a huge student body and corresponding alumni base, compared Washington, Arizona State, UCLA or the mega-universities of the Big Ten, SEC or Big 12.

* Oregon’s population is among the smallest of the states whose flagship public universities compete in BCS conferences. Its legislative commitment to higher education ranks among the worst in the nation.

That doesn’t mean the Beavers shouldn’t aim high, or that they can’t ever win. They’ve won before, did this year in some sports, and will again in football and men’s basketball.

But it’s absolute lunacy to expect the Beavers to capture five or six conference championships every year. It’s equally crazy to expect them to always be a top-tier program, without an occasional down cycle, in any sport.

There’s a big difference between making excuses for losing, and listing legitimate reasons to explain why it’s harder to win here than at many other BCS schools. College athletics isn’t NASCAR, where every car meets the same exacting specifications.

De Carolis said the department had a good year. We don’t always agree, but on that point we see eye-to-eye.

Could he have named a 2005-06 highlight film “As Good as it Gets”? Of course not.

But it’s closer to that than “The Way We Were.”

Brooks Hatch can be reached at brooks.hatch@lee.net