I asked Mario Cristobal if he had a reaction to Jimmy Lake’s comments about Oregon recruiting and “academic prowess.”
“Every single ounce of our focus is on the game.”
If you thought Cristobal would say anything different, you haven’t been paying attention.
— Zachary Neel (@zacharycneel) November 3, 2021
Mario Cristobal could have gone down in the dirt with Jimmy Lake. But the Oregon head coach decided to do the adult thing and take the high road in response to Lake’s earlier comments.
Those comments came Monday when the Washington head coach was asked about whether the Ducks and Huskies are recruiting rivals. For some reason, this is what Lake spewed out.
“That is way more pumped up than it is. Our battles are really, the schools that we go against, have academic prowess, like the University of Washington, Notre Dame, Stanford, USC. We go toe to toe, all the way to the end, with those schools. So I think that’s made up and pumped up in (the media’s) world. In our world, we battle more academically prowess teams.”
By insulting the football players at the University of Oregon on their supposed academic prowess, he insulted every athlete that currently and formerly attended the U of O.
As expected, Cristobal and the Ducks will formulate a response on the field. Oregon has won 14 of the last 16 meetings with the Huskies and since their current head coach signed on, the Ducks are 3-0 against Washington, including a 35-31 win in 2019 in Seattle.
Maybe Lake is correct. Looking at the overall recruiting rankings over the past few seasons, Washington isn’t in Oregon’s league in recruiting and the results on the field show it.
Although Oregon won’t respond to the comments, they definitely didn’t go unnoticed.
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