Kelly's focus has kept Oregon on winning track

At 7 a.m. Saturday outside Eugene's Casanova Center, thousands of Oregon students dressed in different shades of green and yellow gathered for what likely appeared to the uninformed to have been one heck of a morning-after recap session. Those happen on Saturday mornings in college. You stumble out of bed into some central meeting spot to find your buddies, discuss your Friday nights and try your damnedest to put the pieces together. A day later, it wasn't the Oregon fans attempting to figure out what had occurred the night before. Rather, it was the once-proud USC Trojans. The longtime kings of the Pac-10 — with their run of consecutive conference titles and recent history of Hollywood celebrity quarterbacks and first-round draft picks — had been dethroned in the ugliest, most gruesome fashion. They were beaten up by a bunch of angry Ducks. Oregon manhandled the Trojans on Saturday, racking up 613 yards of offense (the most a USC defense has surrendered since 1946), including 391 yards on the ground (the most a USC defense has surrendered since 1977). After the game, coach Pete Carroll looked like he had seen a ghost (after all, it was Halloween), telling reporters: "It was a real mess for us tonight. Oregon did everything that they wanted to do." The 47-20 manhandling was the worst Trojans loss since 1997 and the worst suffered in Carroll's celebrated career at USC. Everyone knows Pete Carroll. He hangs with Snoop Dogg and Will Ferrell. He stars in GameDay commercials with Kirk Herbstreit. On the other sideline Saturday night, though, was a guy most fans couldn't pick out of a lineup. First-year Oregon coach Chip Kelly looks more like a high school gym teacher than the face of an elite college football program. More Turtle than Vinny Chase. More Harry Crane than Don Draper. Rather soft-spoken with the media and hardly a "Hey, look at me" front man, Kelly made his bones as an offensive coordinator whiz kid at Division I-AA New Hampshire. After linking up with Mike Bellotti a few years ago, it was Kelly who guided former Ducks quarterback Dennis Dixon during his near Heisman-winning season in 2007. When asked about Kelly's coaching acumen on Saturday, Dixon — who attended Saturday night's game during the Pittsburgh Steelers' bye week — told the Oregonian: "Kelly is a big part of it. He keeps everybody loose. Honestly, he is an offensive guru." Nine weeks into the 2009 college football season, few would argue with Dixon's assessment. Kelly has been the breakout coach of the year and is quite possibly on his way to a national Coach of the Year award. To say he has done it despite some stormy waters in Eugene would be an understatement. Hell, he has done it in a tropical storm. Anderson Cooper wouldn't brave the disasters Kelly has dealt with. Just a few months back, no one could have ever imagined such high praise. Then again, no one could have ever imagined Oregon football being spoken about in an even somewhat positive light. When starting tailback LeGarrette Blount threw the sucker punch felt 'round the world on Sept. 3, there were very few folks in the Oregon football program's corner. The team had been outmanned and outclassed by Boise State on the first Thursday night of the season and left Idaho in shambles. A meeting that ironically started with team captains shaking hands in the name of sportsmanship ended with college football's ugliest on-the-field incident in years. Few coaches have ever had to deal with such adversity in their first game of the season. No head coach has ever had to do so in the first game of his career. With no real blueprint or precedent to rely on, Kelly handled the Blount situation just about as well as anyone could have imagined. Swift and firm, he reacted immediately. Moments after the incident, Kelly sent Blount out to apologize. Kelly then suspended the highly decorated running back — the team's top offensive player — the very next day. Though overlooked by many at the time, Kelly opted not to kick Blount off the team and out of the program permanently. Doing so would have likely stripped Blount of his scholarship and essentially written off the young man altogether. A funny thing happened between that disastrous Thursday night and now. Blount rebounded. He committed himself to his classwork and dedicated himself to being a model student-athlete. Oregon rebounded, too. Without Blount (who scored 18 touchdowns in '08), two All-America defenders (Nick Reed and Patrick Chung) off to the pros and an All-Pac-10 center (Max Unger) now starting for the Seahawks — the Ducks found a way to bounce back. They've continued to find ways — despite injuries to their quarterback and both starting cornerbacks — ever since. They've now won seven straight games and have done so in dominant fashion. Oregon handed Utah its first loss since 2007 two weeks after the Blount incident, held Cal Heisman hopeful running back Jahvid Best to 55 yards in a 42-3 blowout, beat an upstart Washington team, 43-19, on the road and have now embarrassed the vaunted USC defense on national television to the tune of 617 yards and 47 points. Along the way, Kelly has surely, but quietly made a name for himself as one of college football's rising stars. When a frustrated fan wrote a letter to the coach following the Boise loss in which he demanded a full refund for his trip to Idaho, Kelly answered by sending a check for $439. When questioned by amazed reporters, Kelly downplayed the incident and insisted the media focus on an upcoming game with California instead. One game at a time. No reason to linger on the past. When ESPN's Game Day crew descended upon campus in the early morning on Saturday, it was Kelly — hours before Lee Corso — found on campus with the Ducks mascot's headgear on, exchanging high-fives with an excited student body. The decision to be the first coach in the ESPN program's 14 years to throw on one of those mascot headpieces was not for the cameras or for recruits, but for the Oregon students. "I've known Chip for a few years," ESPN's Chris Fowler said, "and I've never known him to be that kind of a fun-spirited guy on the day of a really big game for his team and for him personally as a head coach." Seemingly every button Kelly has pushed this season has been the right one. And this week, it could all come full circle. Pacific-10 Commissioner Larry Scott met Sunday with Kelly, Blount, university president Richard Lariviere, university counsel and athletic director Bellotti to discuss the possible return of Blount for Saturday's Stanford game. "This is not a football decision,'' Kelly told reporters following the meeting. "If he has an opportunity to come back, then that's awesome for LeGarrette Blount, but this doesn't have anything to do with any decisions from a football standpoint.'' Kelly then reminded reporters of the chain of command on the Blount decision — Kelly to Bellotti to Lariviere to Scott. If (more likely, when) Blount returned to the team, it would be business as usual. He would join redshirt freshman LaMichael James — fresh off a career-best 183-yard day — in the backfield and a team of focused, hungry teammates primed for a Rose Bowl berth. Currently the highest ranked one-loss team in the BCS standings (they leapfrogged Penn State and LSU this week), the Ducks control their Rose Bowl destiny. Win out and a trip to Pasadena is theirs. And if (more likely, when) they do, their coach will be showered with accolades and praise. He'll most likely dismiss them all and talk only about the Ducks' next opponent. One game at a time. One tropical storm at a time. It's a good mantra to live by. Hell, it's worked for Chip Kelly thus far.