Willie Taggart’s gotten off to a rocky start at Oregon for, among other things, some trouble with the strength and conditioning program that resulted in the S&C coach being suspended for a month and Taggart losing direct control over the S&C program.
Taggart has responded in the most professional way he could.
Head coach Willie Taggart, whom Oregon hired to replace Mark Helfrich in December, said he is no longer speaking to The Oregonian reporter who broke the story, claiming that the reporter’s characterization of the workouts as “grueling” and “akin to military basic training” were inaccurate, unfair and directly contradicted what Taggart told the reporter before the story was written.
Keep in mind that the words used by the reporter were suggested to him by several sources and that a faculty athletics representative who investigated said the story was fair and that coaches made mistakes in the first workout. Oh, and let’s not forget that three players were hospitalized due to the workouts.
So when you boil it down, Oregon’s head coach has decided to get pissy with the paper covering his team over semantics. That certainly bodes well for his public relations skills. Better win big and win fast, my man.
Get The Picture 
Media is the enemy of Oregon Ducks
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The Oregonian reporters can write their stories from seat 37F
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Back in the 1940s and 1950s the Yankees were smart about media relations. The teams travelled by rail then, and the Yankees provided accommodations for its beat reporters on the team train, including food and drink and a lot of it, and accommodations with the team at the team hotels. The Yankees made stars such as DiMaggio, Mantle and Berra available to the regular beat writers for interviews nation writers could not get. The writers considered the Yankees beat the best job in journalism.
In return the Yankees monitored the beat reporters’ columns and papers. If the team was displeased it would mention to a paper about how expensive it was to provide travel and maybe next season the paper’s reporter would have to meet the team in St. Louis or wherever due to cost cutting. As a result the nation got fed the legends of heros such as DiMaggio and Mantle and learned nothing of the warts. The Yankees got tons of free promotion through glowing news articles.
That is how a sports team handled the press. Tag great has a lot to learn.
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Sad!ly that’s a pretty popular approach to things these days.
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What? Somebody say something?
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That wasn’t right. It was a bad deal,” Oregon coach Willie Taggart said. “And it will forever be in the mind of Willie Taggert and in the mind of our football team. … So we’ll handle it. And it’s going to be a big deal.Go Ducks! Quack Quack.”
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Taggart sounds salty…like someone told him they could only have 297 uniform combinations or something.
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You think someone is ready for a prime-time job…
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Taggart is a good coach at the wrong school.
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I realize Taggart has had success at lower level programs but that doesn’t mean he will at the P5 level. So I think it is more like Taggart may be “the wrong coach at a good school.”
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considering how low the us army requirements for a 17-21 Male are (Push-Ups:35 / Sit-Ups: 47 / 2-Mile Run :16:36), ain’t really saying much when comparing the S&C program as “akin to military basic training”.
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Oregon has problems? Who’d a thunk such a thing? Brother Bluto certainly has his finger on the pulse of cfb.
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It’s almost like he watches C-SPAN or something.
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When all is said and done, daddy Phil will have the final say.
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