Augduck

Respectfully, I will disagree. Chip was calling the plays. When MH was the HC he called most of the plays as well , because quite honestly Helf and Frost did not get along at all and Helf did not trust Frost.

This is consistent with what I have heard and to DL's credit, he's far more patient with JC than Mario ever was. The veins in Mario's neck were bulging Everytime JC opened his mouth.

He sure shut Crepea down today and I'm there for it!

I am mixed on Wilner. There are some aspects of his reporting that are good and others that are weak. His deal with Oregon goes back to the Chip days when at one P12 media day he asked Chip a really, really dumb question and well, we all know how Chip disliked that sort of thing and he dissed Wilner. Jon never moved on from that. He referred to Chip as the Darth Vader of the P12 and oh boy, did Jon love the l'affaire de Willy Lyles. I believe at one point he predicted the death penalty for Oregon as a result of that dalliance. The nadir for Jon was the game at Stanford when Andrew Luck was in the running for the Heisman and Oregon was playing them on the farm. The Ducks came out in the first half and were very lack luster and based on accounts from various players Chip 'lit them up' at halftime and that included tipping over a table in the locker room. The Ducks came out on fire in the second half and won. Wilner never got over that because he predicted a blood bath for Oregon with Stanford running all over them. Every year when the Ducks make their annual pilgrimage to the Bay Area Jon sees a big win for either Cal or Stanford.

He always predicts that Oregon will lose to Stanford or Cal. That's his deal. It's like clockwork.

What article????

Here again- it's tough to cast aspersions on this. He was at the Univ of Chicago before coming to Oregon so this is an opportunity for him to go back 'home'. Let's also be fair, Northwestern is a very prestigious institution and this is likely an opportunity he could not pass up. He will be missed. He was always an academician and grew to love sports. While he will be greatly missed at a time when his leadership on the P12 Presidents Council is vital, this sounds like it is a great opportunity for him.

The other side of this is that other than Mirabal , Salavea' and Feld no other coaches from UO joined him. I know that Bryan McClendon was there for a minute before moving on to Ga but Mario did not take much of the former UO staff. There was some 'word on the street' that some would have not gone with him even if he had offered. Of course both Wilson and Moorehead got head coaching jobs and Jim Mastro chose to stay on the west coast due to some family health issues so there were some extenuating circumstances but I think there were some frayed nerves there at the end.

Part 2 is up but is behind a pay wall.

Very sad.

Well as a manager who has hired a lot of people I can tell you it ain't easy. Some people interview very well and I heard that Mario did interview well. I would actually expect that. And let's not forget his Alabama experience carried a lot of credibility with people and that's fair. In my world there was a time if you could get someone from IBM or one of the big consulting firms that was golden. One of the things that some people forget that is not widely spoken about is that Saban demoted Mario a couple of times while at Alabama. Don't know any details and water under the bridge now but heard it from a former customer of mine who works at the Univ of Alabama in the finance office . We still keep in touch and she recently reached out and was asking what I thought about the whole situation. (She's a passionate Tide fan) He was liked in Alabama, no issue there.

Keep 'em coming. Look forward to reading these.

Not trying to split hairs here but this seems like a bit of an odd comment from JC's column: I didn’t want to like Lanning. But how can you not? Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

You hit upon something I immediately noticed when I listened to some of the interviews from media day last week. Specifically Bennett Williams said 'football was fun again'. That is very interesting to me. Bradyn Swinson also said something similar. In my post about MC I mentioned my friend who was not in favor of MC being hired, the one thing he would reiterate to me over and over was that he thought the team played tight because that's how MC coached them. My friend who played football at UO said teams that are tight lose focus and make mistakes. He also said he did not think MC was the developer of offensive line talent that he (MC) thought he was. Yes, Penei Sewell was good but also what we might consider 'generational talent'. All intersting fodder for debate for sure. As I said, I appreciated MC for his passion and the fact he truly did care about the university and the players. I did not always like his 'sideline' behavior at times as referenced in my post. There was a reason Feld was always near by him.

This is consistent with some things I heard. One of the "RUMORS' making the rounds was that the Miami people, namely John Ruiz (if you are not familiar with him, do yourself a favor and Google him) wanted to see how Oregon did when they played Ohio State. The word on the streets was Ruiz contacted MC on the flight back to Eugene from Columbus. I don't know this to be 100% true but it has been repeated by more than a few people over the last several months, some of whom who do have credible connections. Take it FWIW.

I debated the merits of responding to this for no other reason than I am now a bit conflicted on MC. I very much liked the hire when it happened. I thought he was the right guy at the right time and I honestly felt his passion about Oregon was real. A Duck friend and I had a very vigorous debate at the time. He did not think MC was the right guy but is a die hard Duck like all of us and supported him. My friend said there were 'things' about MC he just didn't like. He said he wanted to keep those to himself because he knew I liked MC and didn't want to turn it into a point of contention. Fast forward- I was chagrined when I saw MC engage with the Stonybrook coach at the end of that game. That was not a good look. I was at Stanford and MC was out coached and out schemed by a team with far less talent,. Frankly the ducks looked totally unprepared that day and I get it that things were unsettling because of Moorhead's health emergency. But that was not good in any way. The next unsettling thing for me was Mario's dressing down of Kris Hutson on national TV. I don't in any way agree with Rod Gilmore's accusation of racism but it was a very bad look and I was told some of the major donors were not happy with that either. We've sliced and diced the Utah games ad nauseam so no need for more of that. But, all of these things altered my views of MC. I will say I don't in any way think he was being deceptive when he went to Miami to see his mother, she obviously was seriously ill. I do think though based on some partially confirmed rumors that MC was talking to Miami earlier than he said though. The bottom line here,.MC could recruit, his coaching skills are questionable. Maybe he will grow. I do not wish him any I'll will. BTW- my friend finally told me his thoughts on MC and I have to give him credit, he nailed it.

Couldn't agree more!

This is a very telling quote IMO: One thing I've always said is if you're good enough, you're old enough. I don't really care if your kids are freshmen or seniors," said Lanning. "We want the players that are good on the field. If you're if there are 35 guys on offense that can impact us and make us a good team on offense then I want to use all 35. I don't want to be there playing with a letter guys. And you know what the 30th guys good enough to make an impact for us in some way. And we're not doing that. And so I spent a lot of time thinking about personnel." My perception of the past couple of years was playing time was allocated based on seniority. Again nothing confirmed, just an observation.

I am always a bit dubious of these types of articles. I get the whole anonymous thing to an extent. I just have to say that I personally would be reluctant to do something like this. There's some interesting stuff in there for sure but for me the whole premise is unsettling. I am sure there are some coaches in the conference who really don't like one another. It was always interesting to me that there seemed to be a dislike of MC by some of the other coaches. Don't know who specifically did not like him or what the rationale was but heard from multiple connected sources that some were not sorry to see him move on. My two cents.

This is very interesting. This is the guy who first broke the story that DL was the new coach. Word was DL was not happy as he had not yet had a chance to tell the team at that time. Will be interesting too read his write up.

Sorry if this has already been discussed but is Bill Oram new at the O? Crepea is still there obviously but is Oram taking JC's place?

Totally agree. He will look around and USC will push hard.

I am very worried about Dickey. I think (no sources, no special insights) he is very vulnerable to being flipped. I won't be one bit surprised if he opens his recruitment up and I am dubous of the story that the move to SoCal is for family reasons. I hope I am wrong.

There seemed to be many who blamed Feld's training methods as a big reason for all the injuries. I'm no expert on this sort of thing but I heard many say they thought Feld's training style was the #1 reason for alot if the injuries. A couple of the people most vocal have experience in this area so maybe there is/was some truth there.

I never consider anyone a lock until there is ink on paper. Just me but I don’t assume anything. These kids change their minds on a dime and off course that is part of being young but until he signs I have concerns.