It’s no surprise that Manny Diaz won’t be coaching the U next season, but it is shocking that Mario Cristobal is leaving Oregon to take the job at Miami.
Since 2017 at Oregon, Cristobal holds a record of 35-13 with wins in the Redbox and Rose Bowl. For Manny Diaz, since 2019 at Miami he has gone 21-15 with losses in the Independence and Cheez-It Bowls.
What’s wild is, currently Miami does not have an athletic director and they are making a run at Clemson AD Dan Radakovich.
So that means that a bunch of boosters and the university made the run at Cristobal and pushed Diaz out.
This is somewhat of a homecoming for Cristobal as he was an offensive tackle from 1989 to 1992 with the Hurricanes and hung around as a graduate assistant from 1998 to 2000 with Miami.
Cristobal returned years later and was the tight ends and offensive line coach from 2004 to 2006 before taking the job as the FIU head coach.
While Cristobal gets his homecoming, Oregon is in disarray. They have the number nine recruiting class in the nation for 2022 which is headlined by five star tackle Kelvin Banks. We could see a repeat of what happened in Oklahoma with Lincoln Riley where recruits jump ship and either follow Cristobal or reopen their recruitment.
Oregons 2022 class has one five start, nine four stars, and nine three star players and as of right now they haven’t opened up their recruitment yet.
For Oregon, they have no head coach and no offensive coordinator as Joe Moorhead took the Akron head coaching job this weekend.
The Ducks will be hunting for a new head guy and I think there are three legit possibilities. The first being Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell. Since 2016, Campbell has gone 42-33 and led the Cyclones to a Big 12 Title and wins in the Fiesta Bowl and Liberty Bowl.
He’s a great character coach that seems like he loves and cares about his players, which will make it difficult to pull him from Iowa State.
The next candidate would be Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliot. Elliot has been with Clemson as a player from 2000 to 2003 and as a coach from 2011 to now. With the Oregon job opening up, there is no better timing for the former Tiger wideout as Clemsons athletic director has his foot out the door and Brent Venables just took the Oklahoma job.
Elliot is a hell of a recruiter. He brought Sammy Watkins, Amari Rogers, Tee Higgins, and Hunter Renfrow to Clemson and he’ll be able to recruit like a mad man at Oregon.
The last candidate that I think everyone fan wants to see, and would cause mass chaos is Chip Kelly to return to Oregon. This would be awesome. Kelly was 46-7 in his first stint with the Ducks and is a top notch recruiter with one of the best offensive minds in the game.
Pure chaos that I don’t think will happen…but you never know.
As for Manny Diaz, this man should be flipping burgers at Wendys instead of coaching a college football team. Just an absolute joke of a coach. What a wild day.