Oregon Football: Ducks Facing Hard Choices Ahead

Oregon Ducks Face Coaching Questions, but that’s just the beginning.

The world of college football is cruel and unforgiving, and not solely for the physical and psychological damage it inflicts on players barely old enough to vote. College football is an instant gratification sport, a sport that demands winning (lots of it) and demands it now. What happens when a program, especially one accustomed to winning, stops winning? It is an often ugly spectacle of chorusing boos, furious hand wringing, hair pulling, blood letting and cannibalization.

Whether the ensuing carnage when a team loses its way is right or wrong, and who exactly is to blame (fans, media, money hungry Universities, TV networks, etc) is mostly irrelevant. You see, College Football is also a world of hard and fast rules. Gain 10 yards and get a first down. Carry the ball into the endzone and score 6 points. Win lots of games and all is forgiven. Lose lots of games and face the guillotine

The problem with this model of operating is that College football is also an incredibly unfair sport. One where, outside the duo of Urban Meyer and Nick Saban, few teams can realistically expect to be in the hunt year after year. And when the reality of a down year (or as the Duck’s are facing, a Hindenburg-level disaster of a year) hits, most programs and their fan bases want answers. But mostly they want blood. Instant gratification.

"The trumpeteers are outside the Hatfield-Dowlin complex and they’re trying to bring those shiny glass and metal walls down. And no amount of ear plugs will (probably) keep the AD from hearing it."

That’s where the once mighty Oregon Ducks football program finds itself now. Staring at the very real possibility of a 2-10 season, just two years removed from an appearance in the National Championship game and a Heisman trophy winner at quarterback. The fact that Oregon ever found itself on the top of the college football world was nothing short of catching lightning in a bottle. It would be near impossible to replicate if it had to start from scratch. That’s why it’s so important for this program to not let that electric, buzzing energy slip away.

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The reaction from the fans has been fast and furious. Such a reaction is commonplace for any program suffering through an ugly losing season. And while most programs are adept at largely ignoring their fan base it’s much harder to tune out the noise when it’s coming from national writers (ESPN, Sports Illustrated and Fox) and the TV talking heads you rely on to give your program exposure and the big money boosters you rely on to pay your bills.

That’s the level that the noise around the Ducks has reached. The trumpeteers are outside the Hatfield-Dowlin complex and they’re trying to bring those shiny glass and metal walls down. And no amount of ear plugs will (probably) keep the AD from hearing it.

But no matter how loud the noise gets, Oregon is a program that can’t afford to make a rash decision one way or another. Whether that’s firing a head coach to appease the mob or retaining that same coach out of some misguided sense of loyalty and culture. The current landscape of college football is littered with cautionary tales of once great programs that made rash, ill-advised decisions and have since been stuck spinning their wheels.

"A program with Oregon’s limitations needs constant national exposure, good exposure, to stay relevant. They need high profile wins, dominant seasons and constant chatter by the mouths on ESPN and FoxSports."

The Coaching Carousel

USC was on top of the world in the early 2000s. But since 2010 they’ve had 4 different head coaches, only two 10 win seasons and have yet to reach a major bowl game. Since Mack Brown left Texas the program has a losing record and is in the midst of an embarrassing public airing of grievances between boosters, coaches and the athletic department. LSU, a powerhouse program in the middle of a recruiting hotbed, just fired Les Miles, a coach with a winning record, 2 BCS championship appearances and a BCS championship win in the last 5 years.

But those programs are much better equipped to deal with their current predicament than Oregon is theirs. USC, Texas, Notre Dame and the like are traditional powers that have 3 main things going for them that Oregon does not. Location, prestige and history. No matter how dire or long gestating the situation at USC has been they are only one good hire away from being back on top.

One need only look at fellow blue blood program Michigan for proof. After suffering at the hands of Rich Rodriguez and then Brady Hoke (inexplicably now Oregon’s defensive coordinator) they turned to former San Francisco 49ers head coach and Michigan alum Jim Harbaugh. Two short years later and they are ranked #4 in the country and in prime position to make the CFB playoffs.

Oregon on the other hand has no prestigious lineage to fall back on and outside of recent history, they have no long standing legacy of winning. To top it off they have arguably one of the worst locations in all of College Football, the perpetually wet and talent bare confines of Eugene, Oregon. A slide back into the depths of mediocrity will not be an easy one for Oregon to climb out of.

A program with Oregon’s limitations needs constant national exposure, good exposure, to stay relevant. They need high profile wins, dominant seasons and constant chatter by the mouths on ESPN and FoxSports. Slipping out of the limelight means an already incredibly hard job getting top recruits becomes even harder. That in turn means winning games against your peers becomes harder, which in turn means losing seasons and then less exposure and on and on and on. The circle keeps spinning and it spins right down the drain.

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That’s why it’s so imperative for Oregon’s Athletic Department to get their next move, or lack of move, right. Not only will the wrong move send the fans towards an even higher plane of hysterics but it will (and this is what really matters to the AD’s office) cost the school millions of dollars in lost ticket sales, lack of conference incentives and declining revenue from merchandising. So whichever of the following options they choose, they best choose wisely.

The two immediate options are as follows –

Fire Mark Helfrich, effectively blow up the coaching staff and the culture that’s been built over the last 10+ years and hope the replacement hire is a home run and can serve as an immediate tourniquet to stop the bleeding. A whiffed hire, one that comes at the expense of tearing down an iconic and successful culture, will only deepen Oregon’s woes. Musical chairs being played by inept football coaches is something Oregon cannot afford. When you factor in that Oregon is not a destination job, (sorry illogical fans, it’s not and never will be) that there is no long line of proven winners lined up with resumes in hand, it becomes even more apparent why Oregon can not make another (Brady Hoke, Don Pellum) bad coaching hire.

The other immediate option is to do nothing. Keep Helfrich in place and hope that the painfully obvious problems within the program will right themselves and that he’s the man to get them back to winning. If they keep him around and the team continues to steadily lose games and lose them in embarrassing fashion (see: Washington, WSU, TCU, Ohio State) then Oregon will only be digging themselves into a deeper hole.

Either way, if they make a move and come up short or make no move at all and continue their decline, should Oregon fall back into the mire of college football purgatory, perpetual 6,7,8 win seasons, punctuated in equal measure by the occasional 9 win and 2 win season, they might not ever get out of it.