With all the stuff swirling around the Trail Blazers right now, this story slipped under a lot of people’s radar. It seems pretty incredible to me that Mike Bellotti, after just one year as the school’s AD, gets a check this big just as a going-away present.

I like Bellotti a lot and have all kinds of respect for the job he did there as the football coach. But he was well paid for that. But what really disturbs me is this part of the story:

Bellotti signed the agreement on March 16, the same day he announced the dismissal of basketball coach Ernie Kent and the day before he signed a deal with ESPN to provide analysis and color commentary for college football games.

So he signed an agreement (yeah, I bet it was a tough negotiation to get him to accept this deal — and by the way, WHO signed him to this sweetie of a deal?) on one day and left the next day? I should have checked the Eugene Register Guard before I wrote this. Ron Bellamy has the whole story of this thing. The university president signed the deal and it’s pretty obvious — he was basically paid off for vacating his job as the head football coach a year ago.

Wow.

At a time when the school is looking to give a huge contract to its next basketball coach? And may have to give the football coach a bump to match the basketball coach?

Man, athletic directors aren’t expensive to hire, they’re expensive to get rid of. This is the same school that had to give Bill Moos $2 million to buy him out three years ago. And now, $2.3 million to say goodbye to Bellotti?

That’s just crazy.

Tweet This Post

I’ve been hearing it for days and sort of refused to believe it.

I expected Oregon (or rather, Nike) to have a big-name ready to go for this job. The behind-the-scenes manipulations have probably been going on for a long time.

I don’t know that there are too many people around here who are as familiar with P.J. as I am. I covered him during his time coaching the Trail Blazers and had an up-close look.

Let me say first, as a man, I don’t think they come any better. And he’s the best at working a room that I’ve ever seen. He never forgets a name, knows just the right thing to say and I believe, is a very caring person.

As a coach, I’m just not sure about him. He’s had a tendency wherever he has been in the NBA to get on players’ nerves. He’s a talker, one of those east-coast guys who has an opinion on everything and isn’t shy about sharing it. I found him usually very charming and bright.

But among the guys who played for him the feelings aren’t the same. He wore on them. They found him pedantic and often overbearing. Don’t forget, this is the man Latrell Sprewell tried to physically choke during a practice. And the story around that team was that there were plenty of other players who were rooting for Sprewell in that altercation.

I just don’t know about this hire. Will P.J. make the kind of splash that the Ducks are looking to make? I’m not so sure he would. He’d charm money out of people’s wallets for the program and make them feel good about themselves — but how good a coach is he?

Not sure. I’m not sure how good a coach you need to be at that level. A lot of college coaches are posers — they look the part but are exposed when you put them in a situation, like the NBA, where you actually have to coach players rather than bully them.

In college, it’s all about recruiting. That’s why John Calipari, a total failure at the NBA level, is so successful. The guy can get players onto campus like nobody else. Can P.J. recruit? I don’t know but he better be — and with the Nike muscle and new arena behind him, he certainly ought to be able to recruit.

It’s a fascinating idea that I still can’t quite come to grips with. And I’d love to see him succeed because I like him a lot. Can he succeed? That I’m not so sure about. And I’m not even convinced he’s the impact hire that I expected.

Is he a guy you’re excited about?

Tweet This Post

No.

I’m taking some heat from a few long-time friends that I’m not in the middle of the fight to keep PGE Park as a combination baseball/football/soccer venue. But really, it’s not worth fighting for.

It’s never been a ballpark. It’s been a stadium. And I’m just not going to settle for a stadium any longer. If we have to lose baseball yet another time, in order to get a real ballpark built, I’m all for it.

The University of Oregon, for $21 million, has built PK Park, a gem of a ballpark — a facility that may be the best ballpark anywhere between Seattle and San Francisco. And Portland, in like 100 years, can’t build a new ballpark? Ridiculous.

And I sit back and watch politicians criticize Randy Leonard and Sam Adams for what they’re doing with PGE Park, well — at least it’s SOMETHING. I mean, if you’re against the current plan for PGE Park, what exactly is your plan for professional sports in Portland? That’s what I thought — you really don’t care. You have no plan.

Am I big soccer fan? Obviously not. But for me, it is serving a purpose. It’s forcing this city to face up to its sports future. Will we ever build that ballpark, that gem, here? Maybe not. Probably not. At least not in my lifetime.

But at least we’re no longer fooling ourselves into thinking PGE Park is a real ballpark. It’s a stadium. And if you don’t know the difference, well, that’s maybe why we’re in the fix we’re in.

Tweet This Post

Mike Bellotti officially moves into the big office tomorrow. I have no idea what it takes to be a good athletic director and I have a feeling not many others do, either. There are plenty of incompetent ones around and they seem to keep their jobs.

But I think Bellotti has a great blend of charm, poise and intelligence. I always thought he was a very bright guy who was a hell of a football coach. I believe his wit, charm and smarts just have to make him a very good AD.

I wish him the best of luck in what, in these times, cannot be an easy job. I hope the job makes him happy.

Tweet This Post

In Eugene, they’re all on the same page: Ernie Kent decided he needed to dump an assistant coach who had been with him all the way to sign Dunlap, obviously a very high-profile assistant coach. And I’m sure Ernie also decided he’d give him the title, “associate head coach.”

Right?

Sorry, I’m a cynic. I think this was just too good of an idea for Ernie Kent to have thought of it. I’m just guessing here, but I’d bet this idea was actually “suggested” to him. And I’m also guessing that what Kent has done is this — he actually hired his own successor.

It’s the same thing the new athletic director once did!

Tweet This Post

I don’t pretend to have the kind of sources I used to have at the local colleges but I’m getting this from enough people in the know that I feel pretty comfortable going with it (hey, for a long time yesterday, people were saying I was wrong about that MLS thing but you got the story pretty early right here).

I’ve heard Pat Kilkenny will pull the plug on Kent soon, probably within a week. It’s being called a “hit job” by many people, who are saying it’s coming from the “heavy hitters” among Ducks boosters. Honestly, I don’t know who these people are, but Kilkenny is apparently doing their biding. He’s said to be not excited about making the move.

Comment away, Duck fans. Just don’t blame the messenger.

Tweet This Post

I’m not big on succession plans for coaches. It’s kind of stupid to annoint someone as the next big thing without going out in the real world and looking around for someone better.

In the case of the Oregon Ducks, Chip Kelly damn well be the second coming of Bear Bryant to justify the school — with all it has going for it — not putting that head football coach job out there for anyone who wants to apply for it. I believe, given all the money and facilities on hand, some of the best coaches in the country would have been interested in the job.

Now I realize Kelly comes from the cradle of coaches, University of New Hampshire, but how do we know he’s the best available candidate? I mean, he’s NEVER been a head coach and I’m not sure how a university can feel totally comfortable handing over the keys to a program to someone who has never soloed before.

There are so many things that occupy a head coach’s time that an assistant coach doesn’t have to deal with — from discipline, to media, to big-time donors, to recruiting decisions, to practice planning for the entire squad. Kelly is a man who wants to run the offense. It’s his deal. How much time is he going to have to run his defense? His special teams? How well will he do it? How well will he choose and maintain his coaching staff?

Of course, the school got lucky when it elevated Bellotti from a coordinator job and hopes to duplicate the feat. I’m just not so sure it’s always that easy. A couple of years from now, in fact, this is either going to look like the greatest hire in school history or the biggest mistake.

I can’t for the life of me understand what’s gotten into Bellotti. I think the guy is a heck of a coach. And I don’t think he understands what a lousy job it is to be an AD in today’s world of college athletics. The constant begging boosters for money, the compliance and Title IX issues, the facility problems — ugh. It’s all the bad parts of sports without the rewards of being with the athletes and winning games.

Athletic director jobs these days are for pencil pushers. Number crunchers. Or hucksters. They’re not for solid coaches accustomed to the adrenaline rushes you get from winning games in front of 100,000 people at Michigan. I think Bellotti, on the whole, will grow to hate that job after a few years.

And then what?

Tweet This Post

Oregon’s idea of handing a job to Chip Kelly before it’s open seems stupid to me. The closer he gets to being athletic director, the less Mike Bellotti is going to like that job.

Man, I bet Chris Peterson — a great coach at Boise State and former Ducks assistant — just about passed out when he heard that news.

Tweet This Post