Never chant overrated again.

While reading to post-USC win mania I came across a great entry by Ryan White of the Oregonian in his blog. He makes a great point on a subject that's bothered me for years. The "Over-rated" chant. Why? It belittles the accomplishment that your team just did.

OregonLive.com: In Conclusion

The celebration was on and the stadium began the chants of, "Overrated," which is something that's never made any sense.

Why, folks, would you want to belittle your team's accomplishment? Because that's what that does. If Southern California was indeed ranked higher than it deserved to be, than Oregon State's win wasn't as impressive as it appeared on Saturday.

But if the Trojans were correctly placed in the national order behind Ohio State and Michigan, than what the Beavers did here was huge.

The overrated chant is like running to the mountaintop and shouting, "We beat a team that wasn't nearly as good as other people thought they were! They were so not as good as other people thought they were that even our inferior team was able to win!"

There's no fun in that.

USC was absolutely the third-best team in the country. Oregon State definitely beat the Trojans on Saturday. Barely beat them after holding a huge lead, but barely counts just the same.

I totally agree. The ONLY time a chant of overrated is warranted is when you're the better team and you beat a ranked team close to you by a ton of points. If the #5 team in the country destroys the #10 team in the country (Fiesta Bowl 2001 anyone?) then you can chant overrated.

However, how about a new chant? "Under-rated!, Under-rated!" I think that would be more appropriate. It say hey, my team is better than you thought they were. We deserve some props for this huge win.

Let's start that when we beat Oregon in November. :)

OK, OK, no more looking ahead. Let's focus on ASU. They always give us trouble and seem to eek out wins even when we are controlling the game. This year we need to finally take them down.

Go Beavs!