PHOENIX – As Oregon coach Chip Kelly said before leaving Eugene, “I’m very analytical.”
It appears that between the end of the regular season and the Ducks’ Sunday arrival at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, Kelly analyzed Oregon’s preparation for last year’s Rose Bowl game.
Oregon lost that one to Ohio State 26-17. Perhaps the Ducks were so happy to be there, they forget to buckle down for the game.
The stakes are larger now, with No. 2 Oregon (12-0) squaring off with No. 1 Auburn (13-0) for the BCS National Championship Monday in University of Phoenix Stadium, and Kelly has tightened his grip.
Practice has become sacrosanct. Players were told no girlfriends, mothers or fathers would be allowed in. Wives of Oregon’s assistant coaches are excluded. Last year, former UO quarterback Akili Smith and former USC coach John Robinson, once an Oregon assistant, watched practice. Not this year.
If former Oregon quarterback Joey Harrington, who took the Ducks to the No. 2 national ranking at the end of the 2001 season, shows up, he will be asked to cool his heels outside the gates of the UO practice field at Pinnacle High School in north Phoenix, along with everybody else.
On Tuesday, toward the end of a light practice without pads, one of four bus drivers ferrying the Ducks between their Scottsdale hotel and Pinnacle approached the stadium gate and asked to use the bathroom just inside the fence. A security officer told him to wait 10 minutes for practice to conclude.
Larry Barker, an athletic department volunteer who handles security for Oregon’s practices in Eugene, has been to the Ducks’ previous three bowl appearances, the Sun in 2007, the Holiday Bowl in 2008 and the Rose last year.
Asked if this is the most restrictive he has seen Oregon be in the postseason, Baker said: “Absolutely. Absolutely.”
Barker understands Kelly’s reasoning.
“This time is the pinnacle,” he said. “Nothing compares. One hundred and fourteen years, and they’ve never been in the situation they’re in right now. Chip’s whole philosophy is ‘win the day.’ He’s focused on business.”
Barker was leaning back in the shade Tuesday, just outside the stadium, keeping an eye on things. Unlike Eugene, where he usually is a one-man show, he had plenty of help to keep the curious at bay. There were Scottsdale motorcycle cops, Pinnacle High campus monitors, a bowl rep, and three off-duty law enforcement officers who are friends of Kelly from New England and functioning as sort of a personal security force.
“Six-oh-three security,” quipped Oregon spokesman Andy McNamara, referring to New Hampshire’s area code.
At one point, a mini-crisis ensued when three men were spotted on the roof of one of Pinnacle’s seven buildings. One appeared to be either looking at the practicing Ducks through binoculars or taking a photo with his cell phone.
Pinnacle principal Jason Reynolds got on a two-way radio and learned they were workers repairing solar panels.
Kelly’s new, no-distractions policy includes a ban on post-practice interviews with UO coaches and players.
Dave Williford, Oregon’s assistant athletic director/media services, said Kelly met with him in Eugene to discuss how to handle interview requests in Arizona.
“That’s the way he wanted it,” Williford said. “So I’m going to carry it out.”
It’s a marked contrast from Oregon’s policy during the regular season, in which the assistants usually consented to interviews, Kelly generally met with reporters as a group and players requested in advance almost always were available for short interviews after practice if it didn’t conflict with class schedules.
Williford said Oregon players are being given box lunches for the bus ride to the hotel, and scheduled for mandatory tutoring and study hall sessions immediately upon their return. The winter term began Monday.
Now, Williford said, “everybody has class.”
Well, not everybody. Some players, such as linebackers Casey Matthews and Spencer Paysinger, and defensive tackle Brandon Bair, have graduated. Surely, neither Kelly nor the assistant coaches have post-practice tutoring sessions.
“What those guys do,” Williford said, “I don’t know.”
It’s a different approach than former USC coach Pete Carroll’s laissez-faire policy for bowl practices when the Trojans were dominating the Pacific-10 Conference.
Pac-10 schools generally have not been restrictive. Washington State practiced in the Los Angeles Coliseum prior to the 1998 Rose Bowl, and allowed everybody in. Player interviews were conduced on the field afterward.
Oregon’s media blackout hasn’t been total. Formal BCS-mandated news conferences begin Wednesday. Reporters were allowed to observe Oregon’s practice for 15 minutes Tuesday morning.
But the Reuters reporters who read an old schedule and showed up Tuesday after the observation window closed, weren’t happy – not that it’s Kelly’s job to keep a British wire service happy.
He wants to win the game.
Notes: A caterer Lo-Lo’s Chicken & Waffles preparing Oregon’s lunch on an outdoor grill, set off a Pinnacle High fire alarm just as the Ducks were arriving for Tuesday’s practice. They had to wait for the alarm to shut off before entering the locker room. … Back-up quarterback Nate Costa, who underwent major knee surgery after Oregon’s game with Washington on Nov. 9, threw the football during Oregon’s practice, but wasn’t part of the game preparation. In fact, he exited practice about a half-hour after it began, accompanied by a trainer, and didn’t return until the Ducks were almost finished.
