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.