Can't Help but Wonder Department: How will the outcome of the NCG affect some key staff and player decisions?

Read on the web this morning that Justin Wilcox, Tennessee defensive coordinator and a former graduate assistant and all-league defensive back at Oregon, is a leading candidate to replace departed Texas defensive coordinator Will Muschamp, who took the head job at Florida. Funny how the dominoes fall in college football.

I've always hoped Wilcox would wind up on the staff at Oregon one day. The Duck staff is strong with former Duck players and long, long-time assistants, and that continuity has been a big part of the program's sustained success. Steve Greatwood and Don Pellum are former Duck players, and coaches Greatwood, Pellum, Campbell, Aliotti and Radcliffe all have 20 or more years on the staff.

Will a national championship lead any of those long-time assistants, a tremendous group and the source of the stability and success of the program, to consider other offers or even retiring from coaching? With recruiting, it's a year-round grind. Gary Campbell is 59, and Aliotti is 56. The young guns of the staff, Mark Helfrich and Scott Frost, will have to start getting some national attention as well. Frost, who played for Bill Walsh and Tom Osborne in college, quarterbacked an undefeated national champion Nebraska team in 1997, then played six years in the NFL as a safety, will make a great defensive coordinator or head coach some day.

Oregon is an exceptional place to live and work, and Kelly, an innovator who shares credit, leads by example and encourages creative thinking, has to be an ideal boss. It will be interesting to see how this new level of sustained success affects the growth and development of the staff. Maybe Oregon will again become a cradle of coaches the way it was in the Len Casanova years. At one point Casanova had John McKay, John Robinson and George Seifert on his staff.

Kelly will inspire imitators and influence others. His methods and philosophy will have a lasting effect on college football, particularly in the pace of practice and the use of the no-huddle philosophy. There are probably a handful of current Duck players who have the intelligence and drive to become very good coaches when they're finished playing football, if they decide to go that way. Kelly's leadership and positive energy will have a profound influence not only on their football careers, but the men they become outside of football. Mark Asper, who has already completed two B.S. degrees and is now working on a graduate degree in sociology, has expressed interest in teaching, school administration and coaching after football. Nate Costa wants to go into law enforcement, but he has the communication skills and poise to be a terrific coach if his life opened up in that direction.

It will be interesting to see where the 2010 Ducks are in 20 years. From Spencer Paysinger to Brandon Bair to Mark Asper to LaMichael James, they are an exceptional group. Their future is bright, well beyond the national championship game.