The decision to fire MH and bring in a new Head Coach, and presumably a new staff indicates to me that, finally, Oregon has acknowledged that incrementalism and micromanagement in coaching selections is no longer acceptable for a team with genuine, elite level pretensions. That form of management is simply not consistent with the level of investment made in the program by PK and other significant donors.
Many of us are caught up with romantic notions that Oregon should remain the "little engine that could", run by the Walton family and clinging to well meant, but unproductive loyalty to coaches who have run their course. There is nothing wrong with romance or loyalty, but when the price of these is a plunging fall from grace it's time for them to go in the face of a PAC 12 arms race that is coldly indifferent to anything but success. And welcome to the requirement of success as a condition to coaching employment above all else, including the lingering affections of a fan base that has kept their feet in the past.
Football, like it or not is Big Business...a business far more important to the school as the source of funding for multiple other sports but also as a major source of notoriety to the school. Sometimes the price for joining the Power Elite produces the exquisite pain many of us feel for the loss of innocence associated with our reminiscences of the "old days." These days were gone with the replacement of capital investment in place of merely acceptable performance on the field and the hope of doing better "next year."
Like it or not, the powers that be have decided to go head to head with the Washington's, SC's and others in the Pac 12 and nationally. The reality of that makes a reverie over the past an indulgence over a single barrel bourbon nightcap before bedtime, sic transit gloria the days of innocence.
