In case you haven’t heard, which means you don’t like college football much and thus this is an odd place for you to be reading right now when you could be doing something more your preference, like castigating people’s political beliefs or looking at pictures of cats, Oregon and Notre Dame weren’t good this year.
That’s led to much hand wringing regarding their current coaches, Mark Helfrich and Brian Kelly, respectively.
So before the body was cold in the ground on each season, the second season … the one of rumors, “sources,” and “reports,” leaked out over the weekend that for Oregon’s part, they were conducting preparations for a coaching search before even firing Helfrich and then one from the Notre Dame side about Kelly being free to have wandering eyes at other jobs if anyone will have him.
And these aren’t from “Joe’s Ducking Oregon Football Blog” or “Irish Upon A Star” free ND message board. Those are outlets like USA Today and Forbes, the former of which you’ll only find slanted news when it relates to the 2016 election. Sorry, had to take a shot.
We’ll start with Oregon, mostly because it’s just more mean. Regardless of who leaked the information, a ticked off Helfrich who doesn’t want to lose his job or Oregon, which would be a little grave-dancey and thus you doubt they did it, the optics of it are oily and terrible.
If Oregon wants to move on from Helfrich, that’s fine. That’s the nature of the business. Helfrich makes $3.8 million presumably to not have losing seasons, and the Ducks had some internal issues with guys allegedly not being all invested in winning. Helfrich has also done a poor job finding a quarterback in an offense that NEEDS one to be successful for the engine to run.
Instead, they’ve turned to FCS graduate transfers that just haven’t worked out.
But to let the guy get wind that his replacement is being panned for while he still has his nameplate on the office is just bad business. No one deserves that. If the Oregon program wants to get started as soon as possible, by all means, hit the ground running, but why not at least let Helfrich know in a formal setting first?
The only worse thing is Tweeting out some sort of news about someone to which they find out from the news or Twitter.
Hell, even when Auburn decided to go all clandestine, “meet you out for drinks when he leaves for the night shift” on Tommy Tuberville for Bobby Petrino, they had sense to keep it under wraps … until it leaked out some time later.
And then there’s Notre Dame, whom I cannot imagine if they told Kelly to go ahead and chase other skirts, would leak the news. Still, someone did, and that means a conversation of that sort happened.
The whole situation is bizarre, mostly because they know they are probably a year off and another bad season from firing Kelly, but it’s like telling your girlfriend to go ahead and go meet other people, and if something works out, just send a text and let you know when she’s coming by to get her stuff.
Kelly even moving on of his own accord would be somewhat odd, considering he referred to the ND job as his dream come true when he got it. It’s hard to imagine thumbing around at Baylor or Houston (two open jobs currently) would do the trick, but things have gotten undeniably salty in South Bend.
Whatever ends up happening with both programs is yet to be determined in so many ways, and ND will always mostly be successful and Oregon we can safely assume is on the same path.
But man, can’t a transition plan go a little better than this?
