Oregon Ducks athletic director Rob Mullens joined me on the Bald Faced Truth radio show (12-3p on 102.9-FM in Portland and 95.7-FM in Eugene) to talk about his new football hire Mario Cristobal, the future of defensive coordinator Jim Leavitt and whether Mullens was chapped about ex-coach Willie Taggart using the company jet to interview for his new job.
"I don't know. You know. Yeah," Mullens said of Taggart interviewing with Florida State while on a recruiting trip for Oregon. "Obviously I'm disappointed in a lot of pieces of this. I'll leave it at that."
On retaining defensive coordinator Jim Leavitt:
"He does want to be a head coach. He's passionate. Boy, has he had a tremendous impact on our defense and our team. We'd love to have Jim stay... we'll do everything we can. We've showed our commitment last year when we paid $1.15 million. It's funny, I spoke at a luncheon today and the first question I got was, 'Pay him whatever he needs to keep him,' and I said, 'That's interesting, I came here a year ago you said how can you pay $1.15 million for a defensive coordinator and know you're telling me to do whatever I have to do. We want to make sure we do everything we can to convince Jim to stay but in the end, it's obviously his choice."
On Taggart leaving after one year:
"You don't know that Florida State is going to come after somebody with a 47-50 (overall) record but you understand the recruiting prowess, what had happened here over the past year, so you're attentive to it. Right as those dominoes started to fall we put together our contingency plan."
On what a job interview for a coaching candidate is like:
"I prefer it be conversational. You really want to get to know the person. Obviously, there's some areas where you really want to understand - commitment to student-athlete experience, recruiting, how you build a staff, leadership style, but I prefer to get to know the person so you can make sure it's a good fit and you can really work well together."
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