Last week, Oregon State was three outs from winning the final Pac-12 baseball championship and entering the conference tournament as the No. 1 seed. Instead, they dropped their final regular season game, earned the No. 2 seed, and after their bats went cold against Stanford, got bounced from the tournament in pool play.

But like with all things at Oregon State, Beaver baseball faces bigger questions.

The Beavs will likely still host a regional next week and have a shot to return to Omaha, but what about next year and years to come? On this week’s episode of the Oregonian Sports Podcast, columnist Bill Oram and Brenna Greene of KOIN discuss the recent story from The Oregonian/OregonLive that paints a rosy picture for the future of the program in the face of realignment.

Other topics discussed:

• A call for compassion and decency in conversations about trans athletes in sports

• Brenna is back from vacation. Did she commit a Portland faux pas before even leaving PDX?

• There is an arms race among billionaires when it comes to the pursuit of a WNBA expansion team

• Bill (maybe) wants to bring back the name of a defunct Portland sports team for the WNBA when it comes

• What are the Thorns waiting for when it comes to removing the interim tag from Rob Gale?

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