Sign of the Times? / Dom Bio page at UK

They don’t like legal weed. Got it.

Hmmmmm.
The good friar William of Ockham is credited with the Law of Parsimony or Occam's Razor - when presented with competing explanations for some issue, the simpler one is usually true.
I could certainly tell that the team loved competing, and expressed excitement when faced with a challenging opponent. This would suggest some concern over a perceived downgrade in competition or conference or schedule. You can only compete if you are on the floor, so playing time would also loom large.
The large expense of attending college and Maslow's hierarchy of needs might suggest they would be interested in NIL given we all have material needs and large differences in personal enrichment opportunities might get a player's attention.
There has even been discussion here about how tight or loose of reins coach SR imposes on the team, and his playing/coaching style, so coach-player dynamics could be a causal factor.
The team proclaimed "We are Family", so proximity to family could also be a factor. Or losing that family feeling with the decision of one or two players to bolt could have a cascading effect.

As the previous poster indicated, most of us (or at least I) don't really know the player's stances on other issues polarizing the country, be it what went on during Jan 6, open carry, culinary preferences in Springfield, access to family planning, lifestyle diversity issues etc. and from my more than a decade attending/teaching at Oregon State I can tell you that extremely opposing views and lifestyles coexist very peacefully in the campus environment. I have in turn been the most liberal and the most conservative person in a room at OSU, but didn't feel at all threatened by either circumstance. So while I allow for the possibility that *those* factors could have swayed the players to become the Elite 8 Runaways, the complexity of that explanation makes me look for simpler alternatives. But I also have absolutely NO idea what the player positions were on those sorts of topics, so perhaps others with more visibility and access to the players can continue to enlighten us. I would also submit that with the large diversity of landing spots for the players and the numbers involved, a large diversity of reasons for departure might be a possibility.

At some point it doesn't matter why they left, they are gone. As a Beaver "lifer", I have my loyalties, and they have demonstrated theirs.....

Go Beavers!

There is one player and her family who has not been shy about stating their political beliefs and it is not one shared by the majority of folks in Corvallis, or the University.   I am not making any other statement about all of the players, just one player.

You shouldn't just believe me.  If it's important enough to you then you should always check it out for yourself.  And again, the Boneyard folks figured it out in couple of days.

And on knowing what kind of town Corvallis is.  Your kid wants to go to U of Georgia, is Athens a liberal/conservative or middle of the road town?  I have no clue and I lived in Atlanta for a couple of years.  Why would they know what kind of town Corvallis is?

If a player isn't happy at OSU/Corvallis, for whatever reason,he/she should transfer. No coach wants unhappy players. They're a cancer to the happy ones.