The job is open yet again. Chip Kelly left after 2012. Mark Helfrich got fired after 2016, Willie Taggert left after 2017, and now Mario Cristobal leaves after 2021.
It will be very interesting if they open up the Nike vault for a splash hire or if they go the up and comer/ace coordinator route. Some pressure to make a splash given what USC did.
I wonder if Lane Kiffin signed that contract extension yet.
I think what you do is identify candidates. Get your top choice. It doesn’t have to be a sitting head coach. But if it is, you are going to have to pay more. I don’t think you set the price and go looking. I think you go looking and then pay what it costs. I’ve always heard the mission is to find the right guy, then pay what it takes. Oregon can pay a lot. But they should get who they want and figure the pay later.
I’m thinking Bill O’Brien makes a lot of sense, particularly as a graduate of the Saban Fired Coach Rehabilitation Program. But they could go for Chip Kelly or Kalani Sitake or any number of directions. Including trying to get Bryan Harsin back out West.
Wonder if Oregon did not break out the check book to keep their coach, would they spend the type of money that Ole Miss paid Kiffin? Maybe they did not think Cristobal was capable of getting it done. I suspect Oregon can do what they want and seems a perfect place to really leverage NIL with Nike, so it might be interesting to see how this goes.
In addition to Nike’s influence, Oregon built its program by promoting from within. Mike Bellotti, Chip Kelly and Mark Helfrich were all offensive coordinators there.
Because of Nike, the brand Oregon has developed along with the facilities, the Ducks can recruit nationally but man ole man, if you’re Cristobal, you have to like driving in S. Fla and being able to recruit.
I’m sure he’s getting a commitment to improve the facilities at Miami which are very subpar.
I guess we should have know something was up when Joe Moorehead, the OC, was so desperate to get out of town he took the head coach’s job at Akron.
I mean when you ask a guy: “Would you rather be the Oregon OC or get Zip?”-and he takes Zip-that tells you a lot about how things were going with the Ducks.