Have you ever seen the end of a relationship coming from a mile away? Felt that anxious, nervous energy build up inside you, dreading the moment you have to confront reality, while simultaneously wanting to just get it over with as soon as possible and move on?
That’s pretty much how I, and a lot of other Oregon Football fans have felt for the last 72 hours or so.
Willie Taggart, the now-former Head Coach of the University of Oregon Football Team, has accepted the Head Coach position at Florida State University less than one year into his tenure in Eugene. The rumors have been circulating across forum boards and Twitter for weeks, as they tend to every late November. With so much money at stake in Division I-A Football, schools tend to not put up with mediocre coaches for very long. It’s gotten so bad, that Universities are firing coaches with winning records, coming off successful seasons simply because they weren’t winning enough.
So it’s no surprise that rumors would begin to swirl surrounding Oregon’s Head Coach once the FSU job became available; Taggart is from Florida, he’s known far and wide as one of the best recruiters in the business, and he has demonstrated success in breathing life and excitement back into a program that expects to compete for championships year in and year out.
Talking with my friends, colleagues, and forum users, you could see the denial creeping in on everyone as rumors started to become more substantial and the silence from the administration became more deafening.
“I don’t see Taggart leaving any time soon. Best recruiting class in the nation, best facilities, more money than he can spend, and he has every player bought into his system.”
“They should be going after bigger names than Taggart.”
The angst was palpable. “Sure, he’s already bolted from two other programs like this before but he just wouldn’t do that to us!”
The last time a coach ditched a high profile school for another after just one year, it left a permanent stain on his reputation that follows him to this day. “Willie’s not like Lane Kiffin! Oregon is a DESTINATION not a Stepping Stone!”
It’s arguable that Tennessee, who incidentally, is also currently without a Head Coach, still hasn’t recovered from the shock and tumult of being discarded by their Head Coach for supposedly greener pastures; and that happened almost eight years ago. It paints a picture of your program as being a place that doesn’t compete for championships, but rather, as a place that will help you eventually get employed at a school that does.
It robs your program of identity and persona. Anyone familiar with Oregon football over the last decade and a half could describe the philosophy of the Ducks football team using only a few words; one of them is most likely the word “fast” and the others are probably related to their uniforms. But in 2017, all the people who helped create and establish that brand identity are gone, and as of this afternoon, the person at the helm of crafting the new identity has probably landed safely in Tallahassee by now. The program is rudderless, defined more by having to hire a third coach in as many years, rather than it’s penchant for fast, wildly efficient spread option football.
Honestly, I don’t really blame Willie Taggart for taking the FSU job. He’s rumored to be making $30 Million Dollars over 6 years and gets the opportunity of a literal lifetime to become the first Head Coach hire from outside of the FSU program since the 1970s. Taggart has stated before that his ultimate goal is to “..be the first African American head coach to win a national title,” and when you look at the legacy of Florida State Football in tandem with Willie’s already deeply established recruiting channels in the state, it doesn’t take much to see that he should have almost everything he needs to achieve his goal while at Florida State. Good for him.
But I cannot fathom a more precarious moment in time for the future of Oregon Football than this moment right now. All of the hope, energy, and excitement that was mustered from this previous winning season, what we all thought was simply the humble beginnings of a rapid return to greatness, has evaporated. With only a few weeks left before the early signing deadline, highly anticipated recruits have already started to announce their intent to decommit from the U of O. We don’t know which assistant coaches are staying, and who is leaving. What was supposed to be a celebration of the program’s return to some sense of normalcy in the form of a Bowl game appearance is now, for all intents and purposes, likely to be a 3 hour marathon of ESPN commentators rubbing salt in the wound; I can’t even begin to imagine how members of the team feel.
Speaking of salt in the wound, Taggart’s departure could not have come at a worse time. In the last week and a half, former Oregon Offensive Coordinator Scott Frost and former Oregon Head Coach Chip Kelly have both accepted Head Coaching positions at Nebraska and UCLA respectively. When the Oregon fanbase went through this exact same coaching carousel last year, the two aforementioned Head Coaches were on or near the top of everyone’s wish list. At this stage in the hiring/firing season, Oregon has showed up late to the dance and all the pretty girls and boys already have a dance partner.
So the breakup has finally come and gone. I’m glad it’s over with, but I’m still hurt and kind of bitter about the whole thing. After the ups and downs of this season, I can’t even say ‘it was fun while it lasted‘. All there is left to do is hope Oregon Football ends up in a better and more prosperous relationship, or it risks becoming the jealous ex that never lets this go.
ｓｃｏｔｔｓｃｒｉｖｅｎ 