Bellotti bails on UO

Mike Bellotti steps down as AD to join ESPN. Guess he thought he'd actually get some say on running the department.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/behindducksbeat/2010/03/oregon_athletics_mike_bellotti.html

 

Maybe he was afraid that he was going to get mugged or robbed at gun point.

 

Nike and Phil Knight run that athletic department. Anyone who has the audacity to believe that the athletic department of a public university shouldn't run operated in that fashion is fired (Moos) or resigns less than a year after taking over (Bellotti).

Those who grovel to king Phil (Frohnmyer, Kilkenny) get along just fine.

Maybe Bellotti didn't want to be Knight's yes-man. If so, then good for him.

UO will make sure his successor knows to genuflect to Beaverton three times daily.

 

Crap. Sorry to see this happen.

Half the football team's been arrested and he just had to fire a basketball coach that was his colleague for what, 13 years? Can't imagine his job has been a lot of fun lately.

John Canzano is predicting ESPN for a year, then back coaching. I'd hate to see him coaching somewhere else, but I wish him luck.

 

I've always thought highly of Bellotti. Making him can Kent and then hand over the coaching search to Nike was classless.
It's not like ESPN hired him to replace Herbstreit or Corso - he's going to be just another guy in Bristol, behind Holtz and May, a third-liner at best. I'm thinking he'll be back on the sidelines somewhere (Colorado?) soon.

 

Maybe the Holtz thing is over, seeing as he has become senile and an embarrassment in so many ways

 

I dealt with him a handful of times. Always seemed like a pretty good guy.

 

The takeaway from the presser - he's leaving to save his soul. It's not like ESPN is desperate for coverage help for spring college football (especially when your "debut" is on ESPNU). He could have easily stayed on until things settled down in Eugene, but instead he gave the school the minimum two weeks notice.

 

ESPN really did not have a Spread guy on staff. Bellotti will add a lot.

A little sooner and he might have ended up at ND.

 

I can hear Bill Moos laughing from here.
If WAZZU struggles again in football in 2010, I'm predicting Moos fires Wulff and hires Bellotti.
So UO has a football team camping out at jail, no men's basketball coach and now no AD. Yikes. The good news for applicants is if you don't get hired for one job, now you have a chance at another job. ;D

 

Has become? That would imply that he wasn't at one point.

 

Be funny as hell - and a giant FU to Oregon - to see Ernie Kent and Bellotti coaching at Wazzu in 2011.