College football

Oregon’s troubles are traceable to ‘the punch’

Blount's reinstatement told team that Kelly would tolerate bad behavior

Screen Grab / ESPN

Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount punches Boise State linebacker Byron Hout in a postgame altercation in September.

OPINION

By Matt Hayes

updated 5:14 p.m. ET Feb. 22, 2010

Matt Hayes

Six months later, the punch still is reverberating — through a suddenly controversial offseason, through public perception about a string of recent arrests, through the entire Oregon football program.

"I don't believe that," Oregon coach Chip Kelly said. "You can draw any conclusions you want."

OK, so I will. Had Kelly not allowed LeGarrette Blount to return from his horrific, public lapse of judgment last September, the Oregon football program wouldn't be in this situation. It wouldn't be analyzed and scrutinized and ripped and ridiculed; and yes, maybe it wouldn't even be dealing with this offseason nightmare of players gone wild.

When Blount punched a Boise State player after the Ducks' season-opening loss last fall, when he took swings at one of his teammates trying to pull him away from the incident, when he tried to go into the stands and attack heckling fans while walking to the locker room, he left Kelly—who just finished his first game as head coach — in a crossroads moment.

But instead of eliminating the problem, Kelly let it fester. And now he's dealing with it all over again.

"I'm really frustrated and really upset," Kelly said of the four Oregon players arrested in the last three weeks. "We don't accept this — and we won't accept this."

Let's make something very clear: Kelly hasn't lost control of his program because of a handful of offseason arrests. He has lost a piece of it, in the locker room and especially in the court of public perception — but he lost it long before knuckleheads decided they were bigger than the team.

When Kelly allowed Blount to return to the sidelines last November — instead of extending his suspension through the season and preventing him from enjoying Oregon's Pac-10 championship and Rose Bowl game — the fine line of personal accountability and responsibility was all but eliminated for every Ducks player.

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So a few players get into a fight at a frat party; so what? Blount started a fight on national television and still was allowed to practice with the team and eventually play with the team — and now has that sparkling Pac-10 championship ring to show for it.

So two players have been accused of hitting women; so what? Blount went to the Senior Bowl, will participate in the NFL Combine and, if he runs a fast 40, will be a first-day draft pick for the NFL, where some owner will pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars because he can push a pile and get the tough yards.

"His behavior improved," Kelly said. "He was truly remorseful. He's a different person today."

And Oregon is a different program.

Look, these off-field problems happen everywhere in college football — from heavyweights (Texas, Alabama, Florida) to lightweights (Washington State) to the non-BCS leagues. It's as much about controlling the message as it is controlling your players.

Oregon lost control of the message when Kelly reinstated Blount, and when Oregon president Richard Lariviere — who now, miraculously, is incredulous about the team's offseason behavior—signed off on it. That one decision, with these new arrests as the backdrop, now overshadows one of the best coaching jobs of the last decade — and one of the game's best young coaches.

More important, that one decision now overshadows everything Oregon does to fully vet its athletes and teach them about personal behavior. This isn't some slapstick-for-show process Kelly uses at Oregon.

The team has a life-skills coordinator who works with athletes, and Kelly spends 30 minutes each day during fall camp on "character education." When recruiting high school players, Kelly's assistants have a list of 12 questions they ask every high school coach, principal and guidance counselor associated with the student. Has he ever been arrested or been in trouble; how is his classroom behavior; how teachable is he; what's his attitude like toward constructive criticism?

It's an invaluable process that helps weed out potential social misfits. Yet, in the end, it comes down to personal decisions. That means 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds away from home for the first time, with the pressures of going to class and competing for a starting job and newfound celebrity, doing the right thing 24/7.

"Whether you have the spotlight on you or a flashlight on you, if you're doing things the right way, you've got nothing to worry about," Kelly said.

That spotlight became a floodlight last September.

And instead of Oregon doing the right thing, the punch still is reverberating.

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