Report: USF coach Willie Taggart a ‘strong’ candidate for Oregon job
The next head football coach for Oregon Ducks coach could be South Florida Bulls head coach Willie Taggart.
With the college football regular season coming to an end last weekend for all but a few teams, the coaching carousel and rumor mill began to heat up. We’ve already seen LSU and Texas make big hires of Ed Orgeron and Tom Herman named to lead those programs. On Tuesday, we saw Oregon move on from Mark Helfrich after a 4-8 record in his fourth season in charge of the Ducks program.
The list of candidates immediately after the firing included former Oregon coach and current San Francisco 49ers head coach Chip Kelly, Western Michigan’s P.J. Fleck, UCF coach and former Oregon offensive coordinator Scott Frost, Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano and Florida coach Jim McElwain.
Kelly and McElwain have already refuted those rumors but a new name can be added to the Oregon wish list and that’s South Florida head coach, Willie Taggart, according to Fox Sports’ Bruce Feldman.
#USF's Willie Taggart is emerging as a strong candidate for the #Oregon HC vacancy, source told @FoxSports. USF is 10-2 this year.
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) November 30, 2016
Taggart is in his fourth season at USF where he led the Bulls to a 10-2 record and a 7-1 record in the American Athletic Conference, which was good for a first-place tie in the Eastern Division. This was a significant turnaround for the program that went 2-10 in his first year in 2012. The Bulls went from two to four to eight to 10 wins in his four years since leaving his alma mater, Western Kentucky where he went 7-5 in his last two years after a 2-10 first year bringing the program to the FBS.
Taggart previously coached under Jim Harbaugh as the running backs coach at Stanford where he was instrumental in the development of Doak Walker winner and Heisman runner-up, Toby Gerhart.
Next: Ranking The 25 Best Rivalries In College Football
Oregon would be a tremendous fit for Taggart should he get the job and would be able to recruit quarterbacks and develop them, which was a big part of Oregon’s downfall the last two years after the graduation of Heisman winner, Marcus Mariota.