Oregon’s reportedly making Mario Cristobal its permanent head coach

The Oregon football program is elevating co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Mario Cristobal to head coach, according to multiple reports. Cristobal’s been serving this week as the Ducks’ interim head coach, after Willie Taggart left after one season on the job to take the head position at Florida State.

Cristobal spent 2013-16 as the offensive line coach under Nick Saban at Alabama. He moved with Taggart to Eugene for 2017, and now he’ll be a head coach for the second time. He was in charge at FIU from 2007-12 and was at one point considered one of the fastest-rising stars in the coaching profession.

He’ll be a popular choice with Oregon’s players, who made public how badly they wanted him to take Taggart’s spot. Ducks blog Addicted to Quack writes:

I didn’t get a chance to watch many Ducks games this year, so I can’t speak in depth to the fit between Cristobal and Oregon’s head coaching gig from a football perspective, but I can speak to one thing. The players LOVE this guy. All across Twitter yesterday, you saw the hashtag #cristobALLIN, including from leaders like Troy Dye and Tyrell Crosby.

After a coach leaves like the way Taggart did, you’re gonna have a lot of players feeling hurt and betrayed. What better way for the athletic department to regain some of that trust among their players than by listening to their wishes and promoting Cristobal?

Cristobal was 27-47 in his run as FIU’s head coach. He was variously a line coach and tight ends coach at Miami and Rutgers before that. He was a tackle for the Hurricanes in the late 1980s and early ‘90s and also served as a graduate assistant there.

He has a reputation as an elite recruiter, and he had a hand in building Oregon’s elite 2018 class that may or may not hold together now that Taggart’s gone. (The Ducks have suffered losses since Taggart’s exit.)

Cristobal helped Alabama win the 2015 season’s national title with a dominant offensive line. He also oversaw a pretty good Oregon offense this season, which jumped slightly from 27th to 18th nationally in scoring.

He’s still just 47 and has plenty of time to produce another good coaching run. Cristobal’s FIU tenure went south at the end, but he’s put together two impressive assistant runs since then. He could be the guy to bring the Ducks back.