This Week in Sportsball: Chip Kelly

I do not follow sportsball but I do recognize there are people who watch other people doing things with round balls and oval balls with great enthusiasm.

So here is a brief football update.

Duck football fans are very sad that their coach, who makes a base salary of about $4 million dollars a year, is moving to Miami, Florida, where he will make $8 million a year. Mind you he will also have to deal with wild alligators, feral pythons and rising sea levels literally swamping the city. But hey, it’s warm, there’s a beach and $4 million more dollars.

Meanwhile, classified staff workers at the University of Oregon are super excited their base salary will now be $15 an hour.

Mario Cristobal’s house in Eugene is valued on Realtor.com at about $1 million dollars. He’ll probably pay four times that for a house in Coral Gables, but he could buy a $4 million dollar house outright and still have a couple million left over to pay to have the alligators removed from his pool. Once he’s gotten the gators out, he can actually swim in that pool year-round, unlike the one at his house in north Eugene.

With Cristobal on the way out, The Register-Guard is getting some readership by joining in on the speculation of who will take his place. Longtime Duck fans are getting misty-eyed over Chip Kelly.

Remember Chip? Pop-folk star (and Duck fan) Mat Kearney loved him so much he wrote a song begging him not to leave back in 2013. Chip left, of course, but now he has the chance to come back to the land of cold and wet, and as Kearney reminds us: Phil Knight’s money.

Additional reporting by Henry Houston, who dug up the information on Cristobal’s house and actually cares about football.

Camilla Mortensen grew up in Florida where snakes and alligators partied in the backyard and frozen iguanas fell out of trees in the winter. Since Mario Cristobal grew up there too, he knows what he’s getting in to. #FloridaMan.

A Note From the Publisher

Dear Readers,

The last two years have been some of the hardest in Eugene Weekly’s 43 years. There were moments when keeping the paper alive felt uncertain. And yet, here we are — still publishing, still investigating, still showing up every week.

That’s because of you!

Not just because of financial support (though that matters enormously), but because of the emails, notes, conversations, encouragement and ideas you shared along the way. You reminded us why this paper exists and who it’s for.

Listening to readers has always been at the heart of Eugene Weekly. This year, that meant launching our popular weekly Activist Alert column, after many of you told us there was no single, reliable place to find information about rallies, meetings and ways to get involved. You asked. We responded.

We’ve also continued to deepen the coverage that sets Eugene Weekly apart, including our in-depth reporting on local real estate development through Bricks & Mortar — digging into what’s being built, who’s behind it and how those decisions shape our community.

And, of course, we’ve continued to bring you the stories and features many of you depend on: investigations and local government reporting, arts and culture coverage, sudoku and crossword puzzles, Savage Love, and our extensive community events calendar. We feature award-winning stories by University of Oregon student reporters getting real world journalism experience. All free. In print and online.

None of this happens by accident. It happens because readers step up and say: this matters.

As we head into a new year, please consider supporting Eugene Weekly if you’re able. Every dollar helps keep us digging, questioning, celebrating — and yes, occasionally annoying exactly the right people. We consider that a public service.

Thank you for standing with us!