The past couple of weeks have been relatively interesting when it comes to a “drama” standpoint for the University of Oregon and one of their former coaches.
Almost two weeks ago, Oregon’s former running backs coach Carlos Locklyn announced that he would be leaving the Ducks to take over as the next RB coach for the Ohio State Buckeyes.
The timing of the move was relatively unfortunate, as it left the Ducks without an RB coach during the middle of spring practice. However, head coach Dan Lanning did a great job of acting quickly and finding a replacement, Arizona State’s Ra’Shaad Samples, who was officially announced as the new RB coach on Tuesday.
While that story may seem like it should be over now, the fact remains that Oregon fans were relatively unhappy with Locklyn after his departure, claiming that his move goes directly against his theory of “soft-batch cookies,” or weak-minded players who hop into the transfer portal as soon as things get tough.
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Duck fans have claimed that this is exactly what Locklyn did by leaving Oregon, and in his introductory press conference on Wednesday, he admitted that he heard a lot of the backlash from Oregon fans.
“I’ve been called everything but a child of God by the people back at the other place that I just left,” Locklyn said. “I’m telling you, if I let you in my DMs, there’s some great comedians out here that are sending me tons of cookies. It’s funny.”
Almost a year ago in an interview during Oregon spring practices, Locklyn talked about the soft-batch cookie mantra.
“I tell kids all the time, I don’t coach soft-batch cookies,” Locklyn said then. “If you a soft-batch cookie you got to get away from around me. And they got a bakery for that, guess what it’s called? The transfer portal.”
Now, Locklyn is attempting to clarify his statement that was made almost a year ago.
“The soft-batch cookie thing came from just having the frame of mind, a mental toughness,” Locklyn said on Wednesday at Ohio State. “It had nothing to do with guys getting in the portal or anything. Now most people will say I’m a soft-batch cookie for leaving there, but in actuality, I’m not. It takes great strength to make the decision to leave a place. A weak-minded person wouldn’t be able to make the decisions that I make. It took great strength to do that.”
There seems to be some other point of contention as well, with Locklyn opening up about his name, and what Lanning would call him at Oregon. When asked what his preferred title would be at Ohio State, the former Ducks’ RB coach claimed that his former boss might have tried to take shots at him in Eugene by what he called him.
“I prefer to be called Lock,” Locklyn said. “I know coach Lanning would call me — I thought maybe trying to take a shot at me every now and then while I was out there at Oregon — he called me Carlos. But I prefer to be called coach Lock.”
While we can’t determine whether or not that’s true, I think everyone can agree in saying that we are ready to move on from this and focus on football for the remainder of the spring season.
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