Mike Bellotti's Exit Harmed Oregon Basketball

At the very least he made the efforts to hire a new basketball coach more complicated and difficult.

There is much about Mike Bellotti's abrupt decision to step down as Oregon's athletic director after less than a year on the job that has attracted attention. Whether it is the $2.3 million severance package he will receive while not actually having any contract. The speculation that he took the ESPN analyst job for a year so he can return to coaching. The thing that has largely been ignored is how this has been a big problem in Oregon's efforts to hire a new basketball coach.

Oregon announced they had fired Ernie Kent as basketball coach in mid-March. A couple days later, Mike Bellotti announced his resignation to take a position at ESPN as a college football analyst. The school quickly announced that Pat Kilkenny would be in charge of the search to replace Kent.

Pat Kilkenny is one of Oregon athletics top boosters. Not to mention being extremely close to Oregon's uber-booster Phil Knight, chairman of Nike. Kilkenny also served as athletic director for Oregon prior to Bellotti.

Pat Kilkenny, assumed the role of athletic director in February 2007 -- after kicking in a large amount of cash to buy out the contract of the present AD. When this happened, it was also announced Kilkenny was only going to serve as AD for only two years. That clearly indicated that Kilkenny was going to merely be a placeholder. It was widely assumed that football head coach Mike Bellotti would eventually take the position.

Kilkenny has not taken over as even an interim athletic director. He is only handling the search for a new basketball coach. The AD duties were given to a former Oregon vice-president for academic affairs. Of course, she does not even take the interim title until April 20.

So, Oregon is conducting a search for a new basketball coach without any athletic director in place. There is no clear timetable for when one will be hired.

With that as the backdrop, it becomes much clearer that Oregon had no chance to land any big name coaches following Bellotti's departure and no clear plan in place for a new athletic director. Big names tossed out like Florida's Billy Donovan or Michigan State's Tom Izzo would never bite regardless of the crazy possible money. It is also why the end result of pursuing Mark Turgeon of Texas A&M, Jamie Dixon at Pitt and Minnesota's Tubby Smith has been to merely get those coaches a raise and extension.

You have a situation where it appears the very powerful boosters of Oregon -- Kilkenny and Knight -- are making the decisions over the hiring. While it is easy to make a joke about how these two are really calling the shots in the Oregon athletic department, they do not handle the day-to-day activities. They do not handle travel, budgets and all the details.

Regardless of the brand new arena and facilities. It matters not about the large money rumored to be offered to some of these coaches. That would not be enough to get very good coaches already in good situations.

These are coaches that (except maybe for Tubby Smith) have fine relationships with their athletic directors. These coaches are experienced and smart enough to know that an important element for longevity at a program is to have a solid relationship with the boss. Oregon has no one in charge. The basketball coach would be hired and then have to wait to find out who the new athletic director will be. He would then have to hope for no clashes whether it is style of management, personality, desired style of play, and all the other factors that go into a successful and long-term tenure at a program.

Well, all of that and winning. Winning helps.