EUGENE -- The mood, at first, was surprisingly light. Some Ducks players swapped jokes as they waited in leather-backed seats. Others checked their phones.
Then, around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, Willie Taggart walked into the theater at Oregon's Hatfield-Dowlin Complex, and the room went silent.
Everyone looked up.
Tuesday, 363 days after Taggart stood in the very same room and energized administrators, boosters and players by imploring them to "buckle up," the coach announced to players a change of plans that was both expected and stunning -- accepting Florida State's head coaching position after one, 7-5 season in Eugene.
"It felt like it was just yesterday when he first walked in," a source said.
Taggart broke down, in tears, in front of players Tuesday, multiple sources present said. He told players that the night before, as he mulled his choice, his oldest son had asked him why he wasn't following the advice he tells his players, and chase his dream.
Because Florida State was his "dream job," Taggart had told players last week, the very program he'd grown up rooting for in Bradenton. The opportunity to coach the Seminoles was extremely rare. Its head-coaching job had not been filled from the outside in Taggart's lifetime -- 41 years.
But sources who spoke with Taggart throughout his decision-making process since being contacted by Florida State on Thursday called him "torn" because he felt strongly about UO's rebuild.
It just was not strong enough to balk at Florida State's reported offer of $30 million over six years, as detailed by Yahoo Sports.
Oregon had offered just more than $20 million over five years prior to the Nov. 25 Civil War and had continued to negotiate with him through Monday evening, as UO administrators worked well into the night to try to retain their coach.
Their work will continue now, as the Ducks begin their second coaching search in as many years.
"He said hey, this is a family decision, it pulls at my heart-strings and I feel like I gotta go be the coach at Florida State," said athletic director Rob Mullens, who was informed by Taggart of his decision after lunch. "We've moved on, ready to start the search.
"...What he explained to me was (FSU) was a place he admired as a youngster and early on in his career. It held a special place in his heart from a young age."
Taggart, who owes a $4.5 million buyout, will arrive in Tallahassee with a 47-50 career record and the distinction of coaching three programs in the past calendar year: South Florida, UO and now Florida State.
Oregon is in a scramble to find a replacement capable of holding together a recruiting class that saw several players decommit Tuesday, just 15 days before recruits can sign letters of intent as part of the NCAA's early signing period.
Co-offensive coordinator Mario Cristobal is the interim coach and multiple players want him to remain as the permanent coach beyond UO's appearance in the Dec. 16 Las Vegas Bowl, sources told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Taggart was first identified as a potential favorite to succeed Jimbo Fisher at Florida State last week, and was contacted by the school Thursday, Mullens said. (Publicly, on Friday, he said he had yet to be contacted.) That began a courtship that played out publicly as Taggart met with FSU officials in the Phoenix area on Monday while out recruiting for the Ducks.
He returned to Eugene that evening and kept college football observers updating their smartphones for updates for hours as the process dragged. Unverified reports of his departure began swirling after UO's recruiting coordinator, David Kelly, was found to have begun following Florida State players on Twitter. (Kelly, Mullens said, will continue to coordinate UO's upcoming recruiting weekend.)
On Facebook, one fan even posted pictures of Taggart's whereabouts Tuesday morning at a school and Starbucks.
"I understand that it got clumsy at the end," Mullens said. "We've been in plenty of conversations for the past five days. He knew that we were aggressive in trying to retain him and he knew the support that was here, he knew what a special place this was. But just came down to heart-strings."
Players were summoned to their team meeting on 45 minutes' notice.
"When we all got the text," safety Brady Breeze said, "me and all my roommates were like, 'Are you kidding me? This is actually happening.' We were just hoping everything was rumors and we didn't want to believe anything."
Central Catholic High School's Elijah Winston, the younger brother of UO linebacker La'Mar and a 2018 recruit who committed to the Ducks just last week, tweeted: "I didn't know it would've been handled so ugly. Respect the decision 100% but leaving us clueless was messed up." Several others, such as all-Pac-12 left tackle Tyrell Crosby, tweeted they respected his decision.
Taggart's brief tenure was marked by a surge in UO's national recruiting profile, a rocky beginning and increased buzz for a UO program that had stalled upon his hiring.
Oregon had long been one of college football's most stable programs, an outlier that prized its coaching continuity in an industry of short leashes and greener pastures. Taggart was UO's first football coach hired from outside the program in 40 years.
Now the Ducks will begin their second coaching search in as many years.
Taggart is the first Ducks football coach in 75 years to last just one season.
"I was disappointed," Mullens said. "We sat down a year ago and we made a commitment to him, he made a commitment to us. We have done everything to support our commitment to get here today and I'm disappointed.
"... When we sat down a year ago there was a pledge for a commitment and a vision for long-term. It was one that we believed. Obviously that's not what happened. We'll be back out there again and we'll have those same conversations. We might have to take a little deeper assessment on how we view those conversations."
There is no timeline for the search, Mullens said, calling Oregon a "special place" that would attract interest. Potential candidates could include Cristobal, defensive coordinator Jim Leavitt, former Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin, Cal coach Justin Wilcox, who played at UO, and Boise State coach Bryan Harsin and former Florida coach Jim McElwain, both of whom garnered interest during UO's search a year ago and boast Northwest roots. In addition Steve Greatwood, the former UO player and longtime Ducks assistant who just finished his first season at Cal, has made his interest in the opening known to UO officials, a source told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
It will be a "bonus" if a candidate has ties to the Northwest, Mullens said.
"We want to have a diverse pool, a broad pool and we will have that," he said. "I'm very confident we'll find someone who wants to be here long-term and build on the foundation that's here."
A top priority is now holding together as much of UO's seventh-ranked 2018 recruiting class as possible ahead of the Dec. 20-22 signing period, a source told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Complicating that goal, however, is UO's bowl berth, the timing of which will force the Ducks to alter their plan of hosting a massive recruiting weekend Dec. 15.
Taggart had spent time with recruits as recently as Monday, when he and co-offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo visited the home of four-star quarterback commit Tyler Shough in Arizona before meeting with Florida State officials.
It was fitting Taggart met them after spending time recruiting, because he was hired at UO in part thanks to his reputation as a master in that regard -- especially in his home state of Florida -- as well as a program-builder from previous stops at Western Kentucky and South Florida.
Taggart won over donors and amassed goodwill by poaching in-demand assistants such as Leavitt and Cristobal. He littered his public comments with catchphrases, telling UO fans to "buckle up" in his introductory press conference and challenging players to "do something."
In January, three players were hospitalized and UO's head football strength and conditioning coach was suspended without pay as a result; less than two weeks later, co-offensive coordinator David Reaves was arrested on a charge of DUII and later pleaded no-contest. Jimmie Dougherty, a UO assistant in the car with Reaves at the time of his arrest, left for UCLA shortly thereafter after being encouraged to find a new landing spot. In July, star receiver Darren Carrington was arrested on a DUII charge in downtown Eugene, and was dismissed from the program two weeks later.
But through it all, Taggart kept recruiting -- both players and fans.
Shortly after arriving he retained much of UO's existing 2017 recruiting class and then added to it; UO finished 19th in the 247Sports rankings less than two months after Taggart arrived in Eugene. The Arizona Wildcats alone saw four of their 2017 recruits flip to UO after Taggart's arrival.
By the summer, his 2018 class was ranked among the nation's top five and remains on pace to become Oregon's highest-ranked, ever.
Taggart also benefited from bringing fans closer to the program. Throughout his time in Eugene, he kept fans updated on his thoughts and whereabouts by keeping a steady presence on Twitter.
On national signing day, assistants scattered across the state to meet with fans at events from Medford to Bend and Portland. In April, for the first time since early in Chip Kelly's tenure, the public was invited to practices, including an open scrimmage at Beaverton's Jesuit High School, the first regular UO practice believed to be held outside of Eugene in a decade. And in July, in a new move for the program, Oregon hosted a recruiting camp inside Autzen Stadium that was open to the public. Several thousand showed up.
"So often we ask all of those folks to come here and to support us on Saturdays," Taggart said after the scrimmage at Jesuit. "I just think it's right that we go to them at some point and be able to bring our team there and work out for a lot of our alumni and fanbase."
The moves were well-received by fans who'd felt shut out in recent years as Oregon closed practices and became tight-lipped about program information.
Players also felt close to Taggart and his staff. After inheriting a disjointed roster still feeling the sting from finger-pointing following UO's 4-8 season in 2016, Taggart called improving team chemistry a top goal, and by the end of preseason camp in August, players declared the offseason a resounding success and the roster very close.
The team met for 6 p.m. dinners three times a week in the offseason where a player would be randomly chosen to stand and discuss a current world event. To bust cliques, the roster was divided into nine "player accountability groups," each led by an assistant who drafted players from all positions. There were team-wide tournaments in softball, ping-pong and Madden, the video game.
"We've got to learn to like each other," Taggart said in the spring, "and love being around each other."
Oregon began 3-0 and was ranked for the first time in a year behind an explosive offense that led the nation in scoring and a defense, led by a first-year coordinator in Leavitt, that became one of the country's most disruptive after spending 2016 as one of college football's worst.
Everything changed after starting quarterback Justin Herbert fractured a collarbone Sept. 30 and missed the next five games, a stretch in which UO went 1-4 and saw its quick-strike offense devolve into a shadow of itself. The low point came Nov. 4 in a 38-3 road loss at rival Washington, when UO failed to score a touchdown for the first time in a decade, a streak stretching 130 games.
Upon Herbert's return Nov. 18, however, Oregon routed Arizona and Oregon State by a combined score of 117-38 to finish with a bowl berth having regained its early-season momentum.
But in a year of extreme highs and lows Tuesday was, to borrow a Taggart pet phrase, the program's ultimate "sudden change."
Hired Dec. 7, 2016, Taggart smiled broadly as he arrived at Eugene's airport. While being whisked from the plane to a waiting SUV with UO officials, Taggart told reporters within minutes of arriving that he'd come to Oregon believing he could win a national championship.
Taggart inherited a 4-8 team. Twelve months later, Oregon has one of the country's top young quarterbacks and one of its most improved defenses. Last Friday, before Oregon took the practice field amid rumors that Florida State would target him in its search, Taggart said that Oregon is "headed in the right direction."
As for Taggart, he's now headed in a southeasterly direction: home.
Before 7 p.m. Tuesday, Taggart emerged from a maroon SUV onto a tarmac at Eugene's airport and up the stairs of an idling 12-seat Cessna. The jet quickly whisked him on an overnight route to his future home in Tallahassee.
But not before he passed by one last billboard on Highway 99, at the airport's exit. On it, UO running back Royce Freeman stares back, flanked by Autzen Stadium and Taggart's personal slogan: "Do Something."
On Tuesday, he did.
-- Andrew Greif
agreif@oregonian.com
@andrewgreif
Tyson Alger of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed reporting.