The title is intended to be humor rather than pretense. I have no standing to make proclamations on anything, and chances are, after yesterday, whatever good will and credibility we had here is seriously damaged.
First of all I want to apologize for my rant on Sunday. I got carried away, and as I am wont to do, took things too far and too personally. I want to thank all of you for your comments and feedback, and I am sorry if I offended anyone.
At its best, this blog has always been about passion, and at its worst it's been about passion carried too far.
On the subject of the defensive coordinator search, I read every scrap of information I could find about reported, rumored and possible candidates. and I was thoroughly shocked by Oregon's choice. Not because Don Pellum isn't a good man and a good football coach; he absolutely is. But Pellum's been a position coach for 20 years with no coordinator experience, and his group was a source of frustration this last season.
On December 27th Rob Mullens said the Ducks would be conducting a national search, and it was surprising that he and Helfrich reached the conclusion that Oregon's linebacker coach was the best available defensive coordinator in college football. They're paid a lot of money to make decisions like that. It will be interesting to see how it pans out, because expectations for this program don't leave a lot of room for error or learning on the job. The growing pains you might expect from a first-year defensive coach have to subside quickly: they play Big Ten Champion Michigan State on September 6th, currently the #3 team in the country and fresh off dismantling Stanford in the Rose Bowl that the Ducks were blase about playing in.
As for me, I started a new job on Monday in an electrical warehouse. It's intense and physically demanding, with a 4 a.m. start. On my first day on the job I wore socks that were too thin. My workboots rubbed a blister the size of a quarter on my right heel.
While this experiment for me hasn't ended, it has to be reevaluated. My goals when I started were vague, but I knew I wanted to write more like Mitch Albom than Dwight Jaynes.
I learned a lot. I took big risks. Sometimes I nailed the story and brought fresh insight to something we all love intensely. And sometimes, I got things absolutely dead wrong.
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