Mario Cristobal Discusses Coaching Carousel as Early Signing Period Approaches

Culture and clarity are more important than ever for Cristobal’s team before Utah rematch

Author:
Nick Battey
Publish date:
Nov 29, 2021 5:54 PM EST

Oregon Head Coach Mario Cristobal has had to deal with a lot in the last 48 hours. He flew back to his native Miami to see his mother who is "fighting" after coming down with an undisclosed sickness.

All the while there have been coaching rumors both about him and his Offensive Coordinator Joe Moorhead, who according to Pete Thamel of Yahoo! Sports is the leading candidate for the Akron head coaching job. Throughout all this, Cristobal’s team is preparing for the Pac-12 Championship game this Friday vs. Utah.

The rumors and outside noise are always going to be inevitable this time of year. It seems as if no coach is safe from leaving after the shocking hire of Lincoln Riley by USC. With such a big game this week, Cristobal spoke about the nature of having to deal with other programs attempting to pry away coaches from other schools while also keeping his team focused on the task at hand.

“We’ve got good coaches. We have a good staff. We've had success.” Cristobal said. “Naturally, people are going to come and try to poach our people. I think it's a compliment. It's a pain in the neck because year after year you’ve got to replace guys.”

While Moorhead could be on the move, that wouldn't change how the program is run. Oregon has lost a coordinator each year Cristobal has been the head coach. Jim Leavitt left after the 2018 season, Marcus Arroyo left for UNLV in 2019, and Andy Avalos left for Boise State last year. Yet each time, the program has moved forward, and it sounds like it won’t be any different this time around if faced with a similar situation.

“We're systematic. And we're systematic from a cultural standpoint as well.” Cristobal said. “We do things a certain way. And when you come here to Oregon, you have to do things our way. We tweak schemes. We make adjustments, we make advances, we progress. But we do things a certain way. So for us and our players, they know us. We’re honest with them. There are no concerns.”

All of this of course affects recruiting, and Cristobal talked about how he feels Oregon is still well-positioned for the early signing period that begins in just a few weeks.

“I think that we've shown that we're a consistent program.” Cristobal said. “Consistent in what we say that we're going to do, consistent in the way we validate our goals, consistent in the way our players are developing and going on to the NFL, for some really impressive accolades. Thorpe award candidates, Nagurski candidates -- We’ve had Outland winners, Morris Trophy winners.”

Cristobal continued to speak on just how important the culture he has built-in Eugene is and how when you build a program up with the right people around it, from the players to the coaches, people will see that and want to come to your program.

“This is a program that's built on hard work, toughness, physicality, and doing it right and when you do it right and you have the right people, those things become a reality.” Cristobal continued. “So the upward trajectory continues [in recruiting]. We expect another strong finish in recruiting. We work at it relentlessly and we have a lot of great young players as well. So we're excited for the present time. We're excited for the future. Proud of the past, but all eyes and every ounce of focus is really on this game and every ounce of preparation that goes into it.”

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