• Oregon State will play its final game of the season against Washington State in the only official Pac-12 Conference game of the year.
• The Beavers previously defeated the Cougars 10-7 in a non-conference matchup earlier this season.
• Interim head coach Robb Akey views the game as a chance for OSU to become Pac-12 champions and end a tumultuous season on a high note.

Oregon State football has finally reached its final game of the season.

After a long, tumultuous few months, the Beavers (2-9) have the chance to finish on a high. OSU is travelling to Pullman, Wash., to take on Washington State (5-6) in the one, and only, official Pac-12 Conference game of the year.

“It’s the last time this group of people is ever going to be together again,” OSU interim head coach Robb Akey said. “That’s it.”

For numerous Beavers, Saturday’s contest against the Cougars will be the last college football game of their careers. For some, it’ll be their last in Oregon State uniforms and for others, they’ll be back next season.

But Akey said it’s valuable for these players to be able to close out their careers in the fashion they are. A rivalry game, a conference matchup against a team Oregon State’s already beaten this season.

“It gives us the opportunity to be Pac-12 champions,” Akey said. “That means a hell of a lot, in my opinion.”

A Pac-12 rematch

Oregon State hosted Washington State on Nov. 1 at Reser Stadium. The Beavers, at the time, had just rattled off their first win over FCS program Lafayette and were sitting at 1-7 through a bye week.

The Beavers came out on top in a low-scoring, dramatic affair, 10-7. It was Akey’s second win in as many games in charge and a high point of the Oregon State season.

It wasn’t technically classified as a Pac-12 contest, but rather just a typical regular-season matchup. Regardless, the win meant that OSU had pulled off two wins in a row for the first time in 2025. But those are the only two wins the team has garnered so far.

Having the opportunity to play, and beat, the Cougars again is exciting for Akey and the Beavers.

“It’s a cool situation that you get to go about. So we’ve tried to approach it as a cool situation,” Akey said. “You’ve got two teams that are going to know each other pretty well and two teams that fought their tails off against each other the last time they were together.”

WSU is 1-1 since the the earlier meeting. The Cougars beat Louisiana Tech, 28-3 at home, then travelled to Harrisonburg, Va., where they lost to a ranked James Madison squad, 24-20.

OSU is 0-2, with losses at home to Sam Houston (21-17) and at Tulsa (31-14).

On the season, Oregon State averages over 356 yards of offense to Washington State’s 308 yards. The Beavers outrank the Cougars in nearly all significant offensive statistic categories, especially in the run game.

Defensively, the script is almost completely flipped. Washington State gives up nearly 70 fewer yards per game, over eight points per game less, and are superior in nearly all significant categories.

It presents the opportunity for a fun, crazy contest, Akey said.

“They’ve got a good defense, they play well,” the coach said. “It’s got the makings to be a hell of a game.”

Two teams looking to end the season with a smile

Neither Oregon State nor Washington State has delivered the season it had expected back in August. Both teams have undergone one of the rockiest, unpredictable conference realignment transitions in the NCAA to remain with the Pac-12.

For Akey, some of the main takeaways from this season are off the field.

“Life deals you adversity, and you deal with it,” Akey said. “What I will take from this is these players. We’ve built some cool relationships with them and those are going to last forever.”

And for the players, it’s one last chance to enjoy this specific group’s company on the field together.

“It’s the last chance they’re going to get to play together,” Akey said. “They’ve spent a ton of time working … and it didn’t play out the way that everybody had hoped that it would.”

Since his inaugural press conference, Akey has has emphasized that he’s in Corvallis to help the Beavers have fun, smile and produce a season they can look back on and be proud of and enjoy. He said this week that he believes this is a great opportunity for that.

“They get one last chance to be able to compete together and to fight for one another,” Akey said. “That’s an unbelievable deal.”

Landon Bartlett covers high school sports and Oregon State for the Statesman Journal. He can be reached at lbartlett@salem.gannett.com or on X or Instagram @bartlelo.

Design flaws caused a Tesla Model 3 to suddenly accelerate out of control before it crashed into a utility pole and burst into flames, killing a woman and severely injuring her husband, a lawsuit filed in federal court alleges.

Another defect with the door handle design thwarted bystanders who were trying to rescue the driver, Jeff Dennis, and his wife, Wendy, from the car, according to the lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

Wendy Dennis died in the Jan. 7, 2023, crash in Tacoma, Washington. Jeff Dennis suffered severe leg burns and other injuries, according to the lawsuit.

Messages left Monday with plaintiffs’ attorneys and Tesla were not immediately returned.

The lawsuit seeks punitive damages in California since the Dennis’ 2018 Model 3 was designed and manufactured there. Tesla also had its headquarters in California at the time before later moving to Texas.

Among other financial claims, the lawsuit seeks wrongful death damages for both Jeff Dennis and his late wife’s estate. It asks for a jury trial.

Tesla doors have been at the center of several crash cases because the battery powering the unlocking mechanism shuts off in case of a crash, and the manual releases that override that system are known for being difficult to find.

Last month, the parents of two California college students killed in a Tesla crash sued the carmaker, saying the students were trapped in the vehicle as it burst into flames because of a design flaw that prevented them from opening the doors. In September, federal regulators opened an investigation into complaints by Tesla drivers of problems with stuck doors.

Jeff and Wendy Dennis were running errands when the Tesla suddenly accelerated for at least five seconds. Jeff Dennis swerved to miss other vehicles before the car hit the utility pole and burst into flames, the lawsuit says.

The automatic emergency braking system did not engage before hitting the pole, the lawsuit alleges, even though it is designed to apply the brakes when a frontal collision is considered unavoidable.

Bystanders couldn’t open the doors because the handles do not work from the outside because they also rely on battery power to operate.. The doors also couldn’t be opened from inside because the battery had shut off because of the fire, and a manual override button is hard to find and use, the lawsuit alleges.

The heat from the fire prevented bystanders from getting close enough to try to break out the windows.

Defective battery chemistry and battery pack design unnecessarily increased the risk of a catastrophic fire after the impact with the pole, the lawsuit alleges.

___

Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska.

Copyright
© 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Alaska Airlines said it does not expect any disruption in operation through this holiday week because of a leak in a pipeline in Washington, which is raising concern it could impact jet fuel supplies at Seattle and Portland airports.

“We are working to mitigate a potential impact from the Olympic Pipeline fuel leak,” Alaska Airlines wrote to Alaska’s News Source Sunday. “To ensure our scheduled service is maintained without significant disruption, we have implemented contingency plans.”

The contingency plans include tankering in fuel on inbound flights to Seattle, and tech stops on certain routes to conserve fuel. It’s also maintaining and expanding its trucking operation to bring in additional fuel, the airline said.

The airline said tech stops are “a stop at an airport along a flight’s route to add more fuel onboard. The passengers stay onboard.”

The Associated Press is reporting that officials say Portland International Airport does not expect any problems because it can bring in jet fuel on a barge.

The pipeline system has been down since Monday, but there have been intermittent shutoffs since Nov. 11, the Associated Press reported.

See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com

Copyright 2025 KTUU. All rights reserved.