FOUR-PAGE PULLOUT
B3
S PORTS
THE BULLETIN • FrIday, JaNUary 22, 2021
MEN’S COLLEGE
BASKETBALL
Ducks to be down
2 starters vs. Beavs
EUGENE — Oregon will
be without two starters,
including leading scorer
Chris Duarte, and have
just eight scholarship
players available against
Oregon State on Saturday.
The No. 21 Ducks
(9-2, 4-1 Pac-12) will
be without Duarte and
starting small forward
L.J. Figueroa due to
COVID-19 protocols, Ore-
gon coach Dana Altman
said on Thursday.
Altman said Duarte
(18.4 points, 4.6 rebounds)
and Figueroa (10.1 points,
6.5 rebounds) are asymp-
tomatic.
Backup point guard Ja-
len Terry, who missed the
previous four games, will
be back in the lineup.
Will Richardson, who
has missed the whole
season following surgery
on his left thumb, is still
recovering and won’t play
this weekend.
— The Oregonian
bendbulletin.com/sports
PREP SPORTS
Clock winding down on return of high school sports
BY BRIAN RATHBONE
The Bulletin
It is a situation that has be-
come all too familiar the past
10 months — waiting for new
information on what the future
holds for high school sports,
which have been shelved since
March.
With the Oregon School Ac-
tivities Association next execu-
tive board meeting about three
weeks away on Feb. 8, the re-
turn of high school sports, spe-
cifically the sports deemed as
contact sports, remain in flux.
Peter Weber, the executive
director of the Oregon School
Activities Association, has said
unless guidelines change from
the Oregon Health Authority,
full-contact sports — football,
basketball, wrestling, cheer-
leading and dance/drill — will
not be allowed to compete
when the seasons restart Feb.
22 (Feb. 8 for football).
While school districts are
now able to decide when to
allow students back in the
classroom, a step toward high
school sports, a county’s risk
level dictates whether or not
sports can be played.
Deschutes, Jefferson and
Crook counties remain “ex-
treme risk counties,” which
means full-contact sports team
players can only condition and
train while the other sports
teams are able to compete. Six
counties in Oregon are low
risk, two are moderate risk,
two are high risk, and 26 are
considered extreme risk.
If county COVID-19 num-
bers improve, does it matter?
According to the current
guidelines put out by the OHA,
if a county becomes “low
risk” nothing changes for the
full-contact sports. They will
still only be allowed to train
and condition and “cannot in-
clude full contact of any kind,”
meaning no games.
With time running out on
when a final decision is to be
made on the return of high
school competition, an online
petition made by the Oregon
“Return to Play” campaign has
been making rounds through
school emails and has been
SYSTEM FAILURE
Former Packers GM
Thompson, 68, dies
— Associated Press
e e
Reporter: 541-383-0307, brathbone@
bendbulletin.com
COLLEGE SPORTS
COMMENTARY
NFL Commentary
NFL
Ted Thompson, whose
13-year run as Green Bay
Packers general manager
included their 2010 Super
Bowl championship sea-
son, has died. He was 68.
The Packers an-
nounced Thursday that
Thompson died the pre-
vious night at his home in
Atlanta, Texas.
Thompson announced
in May 2019 he had been
diagnosed with an auto-
nomic nerve disorder.
He was the general
manager from 2005-17
and drafted many nota-
ble players on the current
roster, including two-time
MVP quarterback Aaron
Rodgers. He acquired 49
of the 53 players on the
Packers’ 2010 champion-
ship team.
“He, in my opinion, is
the best talent evaluator,
especially when it comes
to the draft, that I’ve ever
seen or been around,”
said Brian Gutekunst,
who worked alongside
Thompson at Green Bay
before eventually suc-
ceeding him as general
manager. ”He had a very
unique way of seeing
what a player was going
to become and the great-
est he could become.”
Thompson spent more
than two decades in the
Packers’ front office and
was the team’s director of
pro personnel when the
Packers won the Super
Bowl for the 1996 season
and captured the NFC ti-
tle the following year.
Thompson had a play-
ing career as a linebacker
with the Houston Oilers
from 1975-1984.
But he made his big-
gest impact as an execu-
tive. He worked in Green
Bay’s front office from
1992-99 and was the Se-
attle Seahawks’ vice pres-
ident of football opera-
tions from 2000-04.
“I always appreciated
his steady hand and the
conversations that we
would have,” Rodgers said
in a statement. “He always
made things pretty clear
about what he expected
from the team and what
he expected from me. He
always preached to put
the team first, to not be a
distraction, to be a good
teammate, to be a good
professional, and I always
appreciated those com-
ments.”
With Thompson as GM,
the Packers made eight
consecutive playoff ap-
pearances from 2009-16,
including the Super Bowl
championship season in
2010.
shared hundreds of times
on the Facebook group, “Let
Them Play! — Oregonians for
Athletes.”
In a letter penned to Gov.
Kate Brown, the campaign is
making a plea for the return of
high school sports.
The letter highlights several
reasons for athletics to make
their return nearly a year after
the initial shutdown, includ-
ing the mental health of young
athletes.
Pac-12
presidents
prepared to
find new
commissioner
BY JOHN CANZANO
The Oregonian
Charlie Riedel/AP file
Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy greets a player during the 2019 AFC championship game against the New England
Patriots in Kansas City, Missouri. Many considered Bieniemy a leading candidate for one of the seven head coaching vacancies this offsea-
son, but with only one opening remaining, he could be frozen out again. Former San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh is
the only non-white candidate to land one of the coveted positions when he was hired by the New York Jets.
See Pac-12 / B5
Teams continue to pass on hiring new Black coaches
BY TIM DAHLBERG
AP Sports Columnist
C
oaches understand before
they sign employment
contracts that they are
hired to be fired, something that’s
particularly true in the NFL where
the only measure of success is a
playoff slot at the end of the season.
That’s why there was no real
outcry when Anthony Lynn was
let go by the Chargers. Lynn’s team
went 7-9 this season and some of
his head-scratching decisions late
in games caused fans to lose their
hair.
That Lynn is Black didn’t matter
when it came to getting a pink slip.
A half-dozen coaches who weren’t
of color were also let go in the
annual coaching exodus across the
league.
“The disparity in opportunities is mind boggling. It is unfortunate that
the performances of coordinators like Eric Bieniemy, Todd Bowles, Byron
Leftwich, Leslie Frazier, and Joe Woods, may not meet what appears as ‘ever-
evolving standards’ for becoming a Black head coach in the NFL.’’
— Rod Graves, executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, an organization that works
to promote minority opportunities in the NFL
Unfortunately, though, it seems being
Black still does matter when it comes to
getting hired in the first place. And that’s
become a problem the NFL seems in-
creasingly unable — or unwilling — to
fix.
The news Thursday that Philadelphia
plans to hire Indianapolis offensive co-
ordinator Nick Sirianni as the new head
coach of the Eagles is the latest reminder
of that. Sirianni seems qualified but at
the age of 39 he’s getting an opportunity
that could have gone to any number of
equally deserving Black assistants.
That it didn’t means six of the seven
coaching vacancies this offseason have
now been filled. Robert Saleh was hired
to coach the New York Jets as the first
Muslim head coach, but there are no
new Black coaches in the group.
The Rooney Rule that requires mi-
norities be interviewed for all head
coaching openings still gets Black ap-
plicants a foot in the door. But the door
seems to close when it comes to making
the actual hire, and recent tweaks to the
rule haven’t been enough to change that.
Consider this: In the three previous
coaching replacement cycles before this
year, 20 coaches were hired and only
three were coaches of color — just one of
them Black.
The executive commit-
tee of the Pac-12 Confer-
ence CEO Group gave me
15 minutes on Thursday
morning to ask questions
about what’s about to hap-
pen in the wake of dumping
the conference commis-
sioner.
I thought about coming
out of the gate with, “What
the $#%@ took you so
long?”
The conference an-
nounced on Wednesday
night that it won’t renew the
contract of embattled com-
missioner Larry Scott. The
Pac-12 will hire a search
firm, let it help craft a job
description, and Washing-
ton president Ana Mari
Cauce told me on Thursday,
“Nothing is off the table.”
Not the Pac-12 Network
future. Not the future lo-
cation of conference head-
quarters. Especially not a
significant reduction in sal-
ary for the new hire.
WOMEN’S COLLEGE
BASKETBALL
No. 13 Ducks
look to
bounce back
vs. Cougars
That leaves the NFL with four mi-
nority coaches, just two of them Afri-
can-American, pending a coaching hire
in Texas. And that’s simply unacceptable
in a league where 70% of players are
Black, and so are a third of the assistants
trying to work their way up the coaching
ladder.
Yes, there have been two Black general
manager hires, but that’s scant consola-
tion for those who see other inequalities
at the top.
“The disparity in opportunities is
mind boggling,’’ Fritz Pollard Alliance
executive director Rod Graves said in
a statement earlier in the week. “It is
unfortunate that the performances of
coordinators like Eric Bieniemy, Todd
Bowles, Byron Leftwich, Leslie Frazier,
and Joe Woods, may not meet what ap-
pears as ‘ever-evolving standards’ for be-
coming a Black head coach in the NFL.’’
Graves, whose organization works to
promote minority opportunities in the
NFL, cited the annual report card issued
by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics
in Sport at Central Florida in highlight-
ing the NFL’s issues. The 2020 edition
put together by Richard Lapchick gives
the NFL poor grades in racial hiring for
all its executives, including head coaches.
EUGENE — The all-time
series between Oregon and
Washington State has been
dominated by the Ducks,
70-19, but the Cougars had
command until the clos-
ing minutes in a loss last
month in Pullman and have
emerged as the surprise
team in the Pac-12 team
this season.
Washington State (7-
3, 5-3 Pac-12) is coming
off back-to-back overtime
losses to the Los Angeles
schools entering Friday’s
game (5 p.m., Pac-12 Net-
work) in Eugene, but its
three losses this season have
been by a combined 10
points. That includes a 69-
65 defeat by Oregon, which
is just 2-3 since.
See NFL / B4
See Ducks / B4
BY JAMES CREPEA
The Oregonian