Think of it this way: Over the last 6 years, Oregon's average ARPI rank (using the 2012 ARPI formula) has been 80.0. Over his five years at LMU, Mallia's average ARPI rank (again using the 2012 ARPI formula) was 68.2. So, at a mid-major, his teams were ranked on average over his five years about 12 positions higher than Oregon's over the last six years. If indeed he is getting serious consideration, of which I have no idea, perhaps that would explain it?
Please tell me that is not true. She got fired from Texas, with an absurdly huge budget and resources to work with. And then does nothing at SLU. So she should get rewarded with a PAC-12 job, that makes sense. There were some awful hires last year, this one would trump all of them if true.
Better link. http://www.slubillikens.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=27200&ATCLID=205843051 This is a head scratcher
Title 9 at it's finest. Hopefully SLU wins out in the long-term with this...Oregon doesn't look to that's for sure.
Unbelievable. This may be the only profession I know of that rewards mediocrity and inexperience. Oregon had a chance to get a good hire and totally blew it. Did they only look at females? Even if that were the case they could find a better coach than Mertz. There are only a few decent female coaches out there but they could have found one. Expect this position to open up in 3-4 years again as she won't do a thing there.
Here's the U of O announcement, complete with testimonials. http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205846063
All the other PAC-12 coaches got an early Christmas present with this hire! I don't have the time to put together all the research/data from her tenure at UNLV, Texas and SLU to show how this is one of the most unwarranted hires of the year.....maybe even over the past decade! Can't scratch my head on this one because I won't have any hair left if I do.....so perhaps after I stop laughing I will put something together....
To be fair, Tara's teams got better in the beginning. In her second or third year, they beat USC and UCLA the same weekend and claimed second place in the PAC. That's probably why she lasted as long as she did.
There should be a law requiring anyone mentioning that weekend to also mention that those were Oregon's ONLY Pac10 points that season. They went to SoCal 0-6 in conference.
Somebody needs to ask BYU's central defender lindsi Lissonbee Cutsall if she is interested in soccer after college. She was bar none the best central defender in the country. Had size, speed, skills, and attitude. If it wasn't for a miracle save off the line, UNC would have gone home. I fear she doesn't want to do the work, though.
haha. the pain may have colored your memory. to be accurate, Oregon had exactly ONE loss in conference in 2006, to Stanford 0-1. Stanford had two losses, to UCLA, and I think USC. It was the second best record in the conference. They didn't make the tournament and felt they were robbed in a conspiracy engineered by Portland, according to a Eugene newspaper article the next year. we were apparently scared of them ( UP beat them 3-0 in the regular season) the fact that they had bad non conference losses to UC riverside, Long Beach State, and LMU didn't seem to enter into the conspiracy theory. and the idea that Portland could engineer a conspiracy with the record of being sent on the road with a #1 ranking is comical. Its also pretty comical that UP would chose to have to take their High seed on the road at 4500 feet to play BYU and Utah instead of hosting Oregon.
I stand corrected. I didn't realize they had done that well in league, or that the Pac10 was that weak that year. I do remember the whinging.
while you can't blame Mertz for getting the job, it sure is nice to be a female in this profession....GENERALLY speaking the definition of success is different & ability to move up the ladder is easier....no question. You can however blame the administration for their lack of courage, creativity & concern for the student-athletes and program. While this may be the worst of the year so far, these types of hirings have become a broken record..........there are 50 male coaches with markedly better resumes than her.
The job only paid $100k plus $40k in benefits. http://cascadepolicy.org/govdocs/st..._name=Tara&like-last_name=Erickson&campaign=1 What do you expect?
Looking at the old Soccer America rankings, they were ranked 17 at selection time. I'm not sure what that says about RPI v. rankings. This was before we had the benefit of the fine work by CPThomas and GoCourage in decoding the workings of the RPI.
I originally started my RPI work in early 2007 because Oregon did not get seeded in '06. I wanted to understand why and suspected Oregon was hurt by a regional bias inherent in the RPI. I did verify there is a regional bias, but I've never gone back and looked to see where Oregon fit within the RPI rankings. I see from the "Final" RPI Team Sheets for the 2006 season, which are available at the RPI Archive, that Oregon was ranked #50 in the ARPI. The "Final" includes the NCAA Tournament. The NCAA has not published the "Selection" ratings for 2006, which are through the end of the regular season, but I'm suspecting that Oregon's Selection rating was poorer than in the Final. If so, it's possible they were not even a bubble team. As a matter of interest, Oregon's non-conference record was 6-5. All of their non-conference wins were against teams ranked #99 or poorer in the Final ARPI. On the other hand, they had a win against #3 UCLA in the Final ARPI. If they were a bubble team these days, that very likely would get them an at large selection. That's partly why I'm suspecting they might not even have made it into the bubble.
Only question left is whether she takes her SLU staff with her...thoughts? Can't say I'm real familiar with either of her assistants, but on the surface it seems like she could've done a better to help herself out in those 2 hires...1 assistant that was part of the disaster that was Northwestern, and another with no collegiate level coaching/recruiting, albeit top-level club experience. Neither look like they have any West Coast history.