Did Chip ever have a recruiting class rated in the top 20?
he had three: 12th, 12th, 14th. Even though he was coach for four seasons, because of the timing of his promotion to HC and then him leaving for the NFL, he practically had just 3 recruiting classes. (those were composite rankings of the three recruiting services)
Chip is a bad comp for anything though. He made his success with almost all Bellotti recruits. If you look at the 2-deep for the national championship game against Auburn in Chip's 2nd season, 39 of the 44 players were Bellotti recruits. And Chip just caught lightning in a bottle. He was running a spread-power offense when defenses had no clue how to defend it; and, he was running high tempo when again, defenses weren't prepared. He also had Oregon on top of fairly weak Pac-12. Stanford was the only team that was consistently good in the 4 years Chip was coach. Besides that, Chip's recruiting success was mostly on offense. His defenses got progressively worse over his 4 years
and of course, if Chip was such a genius he wouldn't have had a 28-35 record in the NFL and a 18-25 record at UCLA. At UCLA he found out what it was like to have to build a program instead of inheriting a highly talented roster like he did at Oregon. In fact, Chip's situation at UCLA kind of mirrors Cristobal's situation at Oregon. Mario inherited a roster that was weak from Helfich's last couple of recruiting seasons, and had lots of holes because of decommitments after Taggart left. Mario had to rebuild just like Chip did. They have both been head coaches for 4 seasons; Chip's record is 18-25; Mario's is 35-12. And Mario's record against Chip is 3-0 (I don't count the bowl game when Mario had been HC for a week and had 3 practices before the game)
I think people trashing Cristobal are full of shit. Or at least they have no grasp on reality. By that I mean, contrary to hype, Oregon is not a blue-blood of college football. They aren't an Alabama or Georgia or Ohio State or Oklahoma. They are not close to recruiting hot beds like the blue-bloods and they don't have the tradition. They are a lot more like Utah than Ohio State or Alabama.
so then, I don't know what you people expect. Being in the playoffs most of the time? That's not going to happen. National Championships every 5 or 6 years? Again...won't happen
as a Pac-12 coach, Mario's winning percentage is .744. How does that compare to other conference coaches?
John McKay .749 (USC. Won 4 national Championships, 8 conference championships, and 5 Rose Bowls)
Cristobal .744 (.729 if you want to be pissy)
Don James .712 (the Husky Legend)
Chris Petersen .679
Mike Bellotti .678
Kyle Whittingham .676
David Shaw .674
Chip Kelly .667
Terry Donahue .665
Jeff Tedford .590
what kind of coach do you guys think the Ducks will end up with if Mario leaves? Somebody like Peter Carroll or Nick Saban? Not going to happen. They'll be extremely lucky to end up with somebody like Bellotti or Chris Peterson. Coaches who averaged 8 wins in a 12 game season. Mario has averaged 9.
I think it's a decent chance Cristobal will leave for Miami. So you guys will get to see what kind of coach Oregon can land. If he does leave, the recruiting class will be gutted, the transfer portal will be full, and the new coach will have to start over. Then you guys can not only bitch about the coaching but the recruiting too!
