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With Cristobal-to-Miami rumors swirling, the Ducks fail to show up in the Pac-12 championship game and enter bowl preparation on unstable ground.
(GoDucks.com photo)
LAS VEGAS — Before things got out of hand, Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens looked to be having a pretty nice time on Oregon’s sideline.
Why wouldn’t he be? Dressed in the same green blazer he wore during his summer athletic director of the year acceptance speech, Mullens spent much of the early part of Friday’s Pac-12 championship game strolling the sidelines, waving to fans and bumping shoulders with this conference’s movers and shakers.
He is one of those, of course. Mullens’ Ducks were in the Pac-12 championship for the third consecutive season, spent much of the year ranked in the College Football Playoff top four and Friday was supposed to serve as a little bit of revenge for what many thought was an anomaly in Salt Lake City two weeks ago. Marcus Mariota was even on the sideline, serving as an honorary captain and a good luck charm harkening back to the days when it was Oregon’s offense that was worth the price of admission alone.
Of course, there was more below the surface. For most of the day, Mullens’ coach was trending on Twitter. The Miami leaky faucet turned into a full-blown ruptured fire hydrant as rumors that began earlier in the week with Mario Cristobal’s last-minute trip to see his Mother in Florida dovetailed into numerous reports that made it seem like the Hurricanes alum was all but headed back to the beach.
Miami would aggressively pursue Cristobal, said one report, and Oregon was ready to counter with a contract extension on-par with the near $100 million contracts that have been handed out this week, read another.
It certainly couldn’t have been an easy day for Mullens, now in his 11th year as Oregon’s AD, but everything lined up for UO to stick the landing. The Ducks could have become the first three-peat winner of the conference championship game since it started in 2011, and Cristobal’s third contract extension in four years could have been rolled out with a wheelbarrow filled with cash to be signed at midfield.
Again, could have.
But that’s not what happened. By the fourth quarter, as Oregon trailed by four scores for the second time to Utah in three weeks, Mullens had moved down toward the end of Oregon’s bench. He leaned up against equipment boxes, and glances up to the field were mixed in with increasing looks to his phone. By the end of Oregon’s 38-10 loss, the largest loss in the title game since 2016, Mullens had his hands on his hips as Kirk Herbstreit took full swipes at a program that doesn’t get humbled often.
“I’m a huge fan of the Oregon program and I have been for a long time,” the ESPN analyst said during the broadcast. “But this is embarrassing.”
Embarrassing — on the most meaningful stage Oregon will have this year, in a week where its primary rival in the Pac-12 shook the entire sport’s landscape.
On Sunday, USC poached Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley for its vacancy. Riley is 38 years old, has been to the playoff three times to Oregon’s one, and quickly followed up the signing of his reported $110 million contract by landing three five-star commitments just this week. Oregon, home of the conference’s best recruiting class three-years running, has one five-star committed in its next two classes.
Regardless of what happened Friday night, the Ducks were looking at a legitimate fight for conference supremacy on and off the field against one of college football’s long dormant super powers. And while Oregon’s playoff run came crashing to a halt against these same Utes two weeks ago, a conference title followed by a Rose Bowl appearance would have added a healthy boost to Oregon’s momentum, especially in fertile recruiting grounds of Southern California.
But before any of that, the Ducks had to get by Utah. And for the second time in three weeks, the Ducks didn’t show up. Utah scored on its first drive, pick-sixed Anthony Brown Jr. on Oregon’s second, and while that 14-0 lead after 10 minutes could have stood for the win, the Utes weren’t done rubbing it in. Utah sacked Brown four times, picked him off twice, limited the Ducks to a 74 rushing yards and did everything it did to Oregon two weeks ago, again. Utah came with more fans, filling the expansive Allegiant Stadium in a sea of red. The Utes also brought more energy and, frankly, the better football team.
Oregon has 12 10-win seasons. In those seasons, the Ducks have lost by 28 points or more four times. Two of those have happened in the last three weeks.
“It’s tough,” Oregon safety Verone McKinley III said. “We pride ourselves on being physical, being the better team, executing and we didn’t do that tonight.”
Added center Alex Forsyth: “We were hoping to fire on all cylinders. I thought pregame looked good. I thought we were prepared. We just didn’t execute. This one hurts.”
It pained Cristobal, too. The fourth-year Oregon coach was brief during his postgame press conference, taking 40 minutes to appear and then speaking for about six. All questions about Miami were met with brief and similar responses.
“I haven’t talked to anyone, so let’s not create narratives as we sit here in this press conference,” he said. “Oregon is working on some stuff for me, and that’s what I have right now and that’s the extent of that conversation.”
If this feels at all familiar, it’s because this is the third time Oregon’s gone through this dance. Before the Ducks played in the 2018 Redbox Bowl, Cristobal’s name dominated a day’s worth of press when the Miami job opened up the first time. Miami instead went with Manny Diaz, the Ducks beat Michigan State for the team’s first bowl win since the 2014 season and Cristobal was rewarded months later with a one-year contract extension.
Last December, after Oregon’s stellar 2019 season and a 2020 campaign that again placed the Ducks in the conference championship game, Cristobal’s name started being floated around for the vacant Auburn position.
“We seem to get a lot of rumors at this time of year,” he said then. “This is what I can say, I can say that I haven’t been contacted. I don’t know of my agent being contacted, and I talk to him every single day. I trust Phil Knight. I trust Rob Mullens. I trust our administration, and I trust people here at Oregon.”
Three days later, Cristobal signed the richest contract ever given to an Oregon coach, a 6-year, $27.3 million deal that pays him $4.55 million annually.
He’s 35-13 at Oregon and has unquestionably been a strong hire coming out of the Willie Taggart fiasco in 2017. He’s replenished Oregon’s talent pool. He’s made good hires. The Ducks have won a lot of football games.
But is that worth $7 million annually? Maybe $8 million? Because that’s the going rate this week, and likely the type of numbers Miami is trying to put together to bring Cristobal home. And he would certainly be worth that to them. You think he’s a good recruiter in Eugene? Stick him down in South Florida, throw in the carrot of rebuilding his alma mater, and no program in the country will have a harder worker.
That’s what he’s done for Oregon. And that now presents, perhaps, the greatest challenge of Mullens’ tenure. Mullens took a chance on Cristobal back in December of 2017, handing the keys over to a coach with a losing record and then watching him drive it beautifully. But if Oregon is actually prepared to compete financially with the checks that have been signed throughout college football this week, Mullens is going to have to be the one to decide whether or not that money moves Oregon forward, or if it just keeps the Ducks above water.
— Tyson Alger
