Kalen DeBoer

[57reasons]

Looks like Haener is staying at Frizno St after all. Get ready for another exciting QB competition between Morris and Huard this Spring.

Haener made the right call. First, Tedford is taking the job at Fresno. Second, since he has already transfered, he wouldn't be able to come here until the Summer, and he would miss all off season and Spring Ball.

Personally? I think it is horseshit that a kid can commit somewhere, not like it, transfer, and then, decide he wants to transfer again! Enough is enough. Make their scholarships one year deals then...that way? If they stink, the coach can tell them he doesn't want them anymore. I bet that changes this whiney portal bullshit real fast.

I may have shared this, but heard a guy on the radio talking about Tom Brady. Said he was buried on the depth chart at Michigan, and after a meeting with Brady Hoak he decided he was going to transfer, most likely to Cal. He went to some administrator's office and was discussing it and the guy basically didn't care. Said, what ever, you ain't done shit here anyway! Tom decided at that point? He was gonna stay at Michigan and prove them wrong.

Today? Kids just leave every other year because it is hard!

actually from what i've heard, EVERY scholarship is a one-year deal anyway already, just that you dont often hear of them being pulled. but i do recall toward the end of Sark's time here (or was it Willingham?) that there were some upperclassmen that the coach dismissed even though they still had a year or two of eligibility due to previous redshirt years. obviously doesn't happen to frontline players so maybe that's how it's able to fly under the radar.

[Michael K.]

actually from what i've heard, EVERY scholarship is a one-year deal anyway already, just that you dont often hear of them being pulled. but i do recall toward the end of Sark's time here (or was it Willingham?) that there were some upperclassmen that the coach dismissed even though they still had a year or two of eligibility due to previous redshirt years. obviously doesn't happen to frontline players so maybe that's how it's able to fly under the radar.

I could be wrong, but the bold up there is important. It wasn't pulled after a year. They were academic Seniors. So, they got four years of school paid for, and if the program didn't want them anymore, that means they got four years of school paid for for mediocre to poor football play. Hardly jumping ship after a year because for once you had to earn a spot.

[Hasslecracked]

Has anyone heard how he is as a recruiter?

[57reasons]

Has anyone heard how he is as a recruiter?

Can't be any worse than Lake for the last two years. Consider that he inherited a talent-laden program with a previous winning tradition coming into what is likely the all-time greatest back-to-back classes in state history, and ended up with only a few of them to show for it, and the early returns on the top-rated of those (Smalls, Huard, Adams) is not even all that great. The in-state OL class this year in particular was absolutely loaded, and we barely got a piece of it. and few of those top tier-guys were linked to the Dawgs even before the Montana meltdown or other coaching missteps.

should also help a bit that Mario's gone from Nike U. Maybe we can even can get back the two DL recruits he flipped from us now that there's new coaches at both schools.

[D-train]

By Larry Stone
Seattle Times columnist
For too long, the Pac-12 has been college football’s punch line or cautionary tale — a reminder of how far, and how fast, a conference can fall without competent leadership or the requisite commitment to success.

By and large, the Pac-12 has become increasingly irrelevant on the national stage, part of a never-ending cycle of decline: It loses too many recruiting battles with other conferences for five-star recruits from the region. Its national footprint has shrunk because of the inadequacy of its television network and its woeful record in out-of-conference showdowns. It continues to be shut out of the College Football Playoff, completing its fifth consecutive year without a representative in the sport’s showcase event.

All this leads to the Pac-12 losing too many recruiting battles with other conferences.

But here’s some good news: It feels like the Pac-12, through a variety of circumstances both calculated and unforeseen, is getting a new opportunity to reposition itself as a conference to be reckoned with. And it’s vital to get it right this time.

The changes over the past year — and especially the past two weeks — have been cataclysmic. The three most prominent football schools in the Pac-12, historically, have all have hired new coaches since Nov. 28: Lincoln Riley at USC, Kalen DeBoer at Washington and Georgia’s 35-year-old defensive coordinator Dan Lanning at Oregon. Lanning’s hiring was initially reported Friday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and confirmed by multiple sources Saturday.

Throw in the decision by Washington State to take the “interim” tag off Jake Dickert and make him the permanent replacement for the fired Nick Rolovich, and you’ll have 33 percent of the Pac-12 schools with new regimes entering the 2022 season.

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Yes, that’s a startling amount of turnover. To have three coaches fired in the middle of the regular season is something no one could have foreseen. And, yes, it leaves open the possibility that “opportunity” is little more than “disarray.” There’s never a guarantee that coaching changes will equate to soaring success.

But with new staffs in place with new vision and fresh ambition, it brings new possibilities of reshaping the narrative of the Pac-12’s place in college football’s hierarchy. And not just for USC, Oregon and Washington, all of which are not far removed from being significant players on a national scale. Washington State has been a perennial bowl team as well, and the remaining eight in the conference, no matter how downtrodden they have been, will no doubt look at this as a sort of “Get of Jail Free Card.” It’s a chance to reassert themselves while the new dynamic of the conference sorts itself out.

As Seattle Times reporter Mike Vorel put it in a recent tweet: “The conference is essentially up for grabs. Will be fascinating to see who takes it.”

Much of the initial excitement revolves around USC’s ability to lure Riley from Oklahoma, where he went 55-10, made three appearances in the College Football Playoff and was able to make major inroads into the Pac-12’s recruiting base, particularly in California.

The thought is that Riley is the perfect person to restore USC to the prestige it had under Pete Carroll. The Trojans by themselves made the Pac-12 a top-tier conference in those years, winning 34 consecutive games at one juncture and playing for three national championships (winning one) from 2003-05.

USC has since fallen on tough times under a succession of failed coaches, finishing in the top 10 just twice in the past decade. Riley has already provided a jolt to USC’s recruiting efforts, flipping several five-star recruits from Oklahoma to USC.

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The prevailing theory is that if USC becomes a perennial national power again, it elevates all the Pac-12 schools. Not only by pushing them to hang with the Trojans, but by restoring enough luster to the conference to entice top recruits to stay, rather than opting for the Ohio States, Alabamas and Oklahomas of the world.

What really makes this an exciting juncture for the Pac-12 is not just the flood of coaching changes. It also installed a new commissioner, George Kliavkoff, in May. He has a golden opportunity to rectify many of the missteps of his predecessor, Larry Scott, that greased the skids for the conference in many ways.

Kliavkoff has already prioritized an expansion of the CFP, which could result in an automatic berth for the Pac-12 champion. He has favored reducing the number of conference games from nine to eight to put the Pac-12 on an even playing field with other conferences.

But where Kliavkoff can make his most meaningful impact is with negotiations for a new media-rights package to replace the one that expires in 2024. That process will likely begin in a year or so, and if Kliavkoff can get it right it would be a game-changer. The Pac-12 has fallen far behind other conferences in revenue generated through its television packages and national exposure.

There’s a case to be made, in fact, that the conference recruiting woes can be blamed, more than any other factor, on the notion that high-school kids don’t believe they’ll be seen if they play in the Pac-12. Fix that, and suddenly it becomes far easier to entice kids to stay home or head West — and to reverse the cycle I cited earlier. Kliavkoff has vast experience in negotiating innovative television and streaming deals, so it’s possible to dream of a breakthrough in this realm.

Finally, this is all happening at the advent of the name, image and likeness revolution, the impact of which has not been fully realized. With new programs such as “Montlake Futures” in Seattle, “Division Street” in Eugene and others around the conference to facilitate the implementation of NIL deals for athletes, it could and should be an area where the Pac-12, with its vital urban markets, rises above the other conferences.

By no means is this all a guarantee that power and prosperity is headed the Pac-12’s way. Just that the stars are uniquely aligned for the conference to find a path out of the morass in which it has been mired.

[Walla Walla Dawg II]

Thanks for the posting D.

I truly hate that college students are getting so much power.

They can transfer at any time....the current day tantrum.

They can cash in to early in life just by how highly they are recruited, which all depends on how many camps and how well they do at these camps. This seems to favor the kids from wealthier families. At the very least, it favors the universities that have rich friends that are willing to feed the cash cow.....Nike!!

[57reasons]

Has anyone heard how he is as a recruiter?

Can't be any worse than Lake for the last two years... in-state OL class this year in particular was absolutely loaded, and we barely got a piece of it...

and sadly, now even that piece is gone, as Ioane decommits.

i guess the one consolation with the portal process now is that epic failing on any one year recruiting class perhaps doesnt mean as much as it used to - can perhaps backfill with transfers to make up for it. A bit akin to Free Agency in the pros when you've traded away your draft picks. Just cant afford to do that on a regular basis of course.