There were some ups and downs to Mark Massari’s senior year at Cal State Sacramento. Athletically, a knee injury ended his final season of football for the Hornets. Academically, he wasn’t sure as to what he wanted to do upon his graduation as a history major.

“I studied history and government, but I wasn’t going to do anything with it,” he recalled.

Over and over again, Massari kept asking himself, “Should I be a teacher? Should I go to law school? What’s my path?”

He was done with football, but he stayed close to the sports scene. Later that year he got an internship in the athletic department’s fundraising office. Massari’s work in that area opened his eyes to another world of athletics.

“It really woke me up,” he said. “There’s a business side to this. People gave money and supported Sac State, whether in large or small amounts. That money came from somewhere.”

He used his work with the Hornets as a springboard into the administrative side of college athletics. Today, he’s the senior associate athletic director at Oregon State, a Pacific-10 Conference school that will be playing against Maryland in Emerald Bowl VI Dec. 28 at AT&T Park, the home of the San Francisco Giants. The Emerald Bowl is the lone bowl game to match Pac-10 and ACC teams.

“What’s kind of cool about it is that I never left sports,” he said. “I’m really lucky.”

It’s a homecoming for Massari, who went to Vintage High School in Napa and played on the Crushers’ 1986 CIF Sac-Joaquin Section Division I championship football team as a linebacker, fullback and tight end. He still has family and friends in town.

“If you break all of that down, it’s a unique experience playing at AT&T Park,” Massari said in a telephone interview from Corvallis, Ore., last week. “It’s a great area. It’s a great city. There are a lot of hotel choices and transportation options. It’s a pretty good bowl in those regards.”

The Beavers concluded the regular season winning six of their final seven games, including defeating No. 18 Oregon at Autzen Stadium in Eugene in double overtime in the 111th Civil War, 38-31, on Dec. 1. Oregon State finished third in the Pac-10 with a 6-3 mark and 8-4 overall record. It was the Beavers’ first Civil War victory in Eugene since 1993. Maryland ended the regular season tied for fifth in the Atlantic Division of the Atlantic Coast Conference and was 6-6 overall with notable victories over then No. 8 Boston College and then No. 10 Rutgers.

“Once again, the Emerald Bowl is able to bring together two outstanding, nationally-known programs,” Emerald Bowl executive director Gary Cavalli said. “Oregon State has a reputation as a team that travels well. The school has a ton of alumni in Northern California and they are anxious to come to San Francisco. Under (coach) Mike Riley, they have consistently challenged for the league championship.

“In Maryland, we will have one of the ACC’s most prominent names.”

In two tours of duty (1997-98, 2003-present), Riley will have taken the Beavers to bowl games in four of the past five years. He’s won all three of his previous bowl trips, including a thrilling 39-38 triumph in the 2006 Sun Bowl over Missouri. The Beavers aided their postseason chances considerably by winning their final three conference games.

“I’m excited for our team and our fans,” Riley said on the OSU athletic web site. “I’m really proud how this team battled and finished third in what was a very hard-fought conference race. I’m thrilled for our team, especially our seniors, who have worked so hard for this opportunity. We’re looking forward to the challenge of playing a very good Maryland team from a BCS conference.

“We are very excited to be in a bowl game and I think it’s really good for our program. It’s good for the seniors to get to play their last game in a bowl game representing Oregon State. It’s really good for the rest of the team as far as ending one year and getting into the next. It’s really good for the redshirts that get more time to develop. We’ll try to make all of those a part of what is our bowl preparation. We’re playing in a great game.”

Already, Oregon State has sold 7000 tickets, and Massari estimates that close to 10,000 Beaver fans to be on hand for the bowl, which will be broadcast by ESPN starting at 5:30 p.m. Last year’s game between UCLA and Florida State attracted a standing-room-only crowd of 40,331 spectators, setting an Emerald Bowl record.

This is the seventh bowl game in the last nine seasons for Oregon State.

“What the bowls are about are the players and the fans celebrating a pretty good season,” said Massari. “It’s so close for us to get to, our fans can drive or fly. It’s kind of in the middle of our hotbed of recruiting, the Bay Area and Sacramento. We’ve got a lot of kids from that area. We’ll be able to play for recruits and families.

“In the bowls, at the end of the day, it’s about tourism. It’s a business decision for those bowls and those cities.”

Oregon State’s offensive line is anchored by center Kyle DeVan, a 6-foot-2, 306-pound senior who starred at Vacaville High, where he was selected as the Monticello Empire League’s most outstanding lineman and First-Team All-Northern California, All-Sacramento area and All-Solano County. He was also a PrepStar Magazine all-region selection.

DeVan, a third-year starter who was on the Rimington Trophy preseason watch list, was Honorable Mention All-Pac-10 and Honorable Mention Pac-10 All-Academic for the Beavers, who led the Pac-10 in defense against the run, permitting just 899 opposition yards, an average of 2.1 per carry and only 74.9 yards per game.

“Getting to go to San Francisco, a lot of us are from there, I grew up going there all through my life and I’m excited,” DeVan said on the Beavers’ athletic web site. “In this class (of seniors) a lot of us are from Northern California, it’s a good way to end our career down there in San Francisco. I really look forward to playing Maryland, it will be great. They’re a tremendous football team. It will be a great challenge for us. I look forward to the bowl experience, it’s going to be completely different from what we’ve had, and I think this will be awesome.”

Prior to his arrival at Oregon State, Massari directed the broadcast network for the San Francisco 49ers, managing all media sales, affiliate stations and player and coaches’ on-air programming. Before working with the Niners he spent one season with CBS Radio Sports in NFL sales.

Massari started out his career in college athletics, working four years at the University of Miami (Fla.) as sports marketing and sales director. Prior to that, he was a graduate intern for two years at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga.

“I’m in college sports and I love it,” he said. “I love that atmosphere of the student athlete and the youth and watching these kids come in as a freshman and grow into being seniors. At the end of the day, the passion that’s in college and the pageantry that’s in college sports, I love it.

“What I like about it is that we’re in a power conference. At 6:30 I can put on my badge for my ID and walk across to Gill Coliseum and watch Arizona play basketball. I love that. That’s great.”

Massari is OSU’s senior associate AD for external affairs. As a member of senior management, he directs several important units for athletics, including ticket operations and sales, sports marketing, video and television production, communications, branding and merchandising, and other revenue-producing efforts. He also serves as liaison with multi-media rights holder-Beaver Sports Properties.

During the academic year he also teaches a course in sports management at the school.

“What we’re selling is a small college town where there is a rabid fan base,” he said. “It’s a great college setting — we have that here. Up here on a Friday afternoon you’ve got Beaver flags coming up and down I-5 to get to our games. You sense that there’s a big game coming in town and in the state. We’re real lucky, so we position that, we sell that.

“We’re telling kids, you’re going to come up here and make friends and have teammates for life. Also, it’s a chance to play in great facilities. We have a great football stadium — it’s one of the best right now in the Pac-10. We have the biggest video board in the Pac-10. Our baseball stadium is sold out every game.

“It’s a beautiful campus. It’s a very New England feel up here with the look of the buildings and the architecture.”

Massari left Truckee after his junior year and moved with his family to Napa. Here, he played at Vintage with his cousin, Steve Buccellato, the MEL Player of the Year and Sacramento Bee’s Superior California Player of the Year who as a running back gained 1,630 yards and scored 26 TDs for the 13-1 VHS team.

“We had a magical season in football,” said Massari, who was named All-MEL and All-County after making 77 primary tackles and 23 assisted stops. The Crushers won four straight playoff games that year, defeating Grace Davis-Modesto (13-7), Lodi (15-8), Tracy (7-6) and Christian Brothers-Sacramento (14-0) in the finals.

Massari played college football with Buccellato at Sac State. He played outside linebacker, but was moved to tight end for his senior year.

Emerald Bowl tickets, priced at $75, $50 and $40, are on sale through the Giants box office at AT&T Park, via the Bowl’s website, www.emeraldbowl.org, at www.tickets.com, or by calling (415) 947-BOWL or 1-800-225-2277.