Willie Taggart’s brief tenure as Oregon’s new head football coach has been rife with media tension. And he isn’t exactly making things better.
Taggart is freezing out the reporter who broke the story about the team’s workouts that left three players hospitalized last month and led to the suspension of the program’s new strength coach.
Taggart says he spoke with Andrew Greif, who broke the story for The Oregonian, prior to the story’s publishing. He believes Greif did not report the story accurately.
“When you’re not fair and honest, then to me that’s personal,” Taggart told the Daily Emerald about his issues with Greif. “When you do something that’s negative and it’s going to be personal, then I won’t have s— to do with you.”
“‘You’ve got to be s—-ing me,’ was kind of my reaction,” Taggart said. “I explained exactly what happened and he didn’t report it.”
Both comments were censored to remove the profanity.
Greif says he did report things accurately and that Taggart did not say the workouts were not grueling or military-style, which are phrases the coach believes contributed to the story going viral.
Taggart is so upset with Greif that he is not speaking with the reporter and even ignored a text message from the reporter requesting to talk things out.
Taggart wants The Oregonian to print an apology for the story or correction, but the paper believes their reporting was accurate and has no plans to do so.
Besides the workouts matter, Taggart also had to deal with one of his new offensive assistants getting fired days after being hired for a DUI arrest. The season can’t come soon enough for Oregon.
