Before the biggest game of the last few years, head coach Chip Kelly didn’t sleep in or try to relax. Instead, he made his way down to the Casanova Center where ESPN College GameDay was filming to interact with fans.
 
He donned the Oregon Duck mascot head, Puddles, and surprised the fans in the front row with high fives and handshakes.
 
“I take my job seriously, I don’t take myself seriously,” Kelly said. “It was more of a chance to see our fans. I think they’re the best fans in college football.”
 
In the process, he said, he gained a newfound respect for the job of a student-mascot.
 
“It is very difficult to see and it doesn’t smell very well in there,” Kelly said.
 
Kelly also said he’s starting the campaign for Puddles to be in the Capital One Challenge, which is the competition for the nation’s best mascot.
 
“I want to know why our mascot is not in the Capital One Challenge,” Kelly said. “I think our mascot is the best in the country, and I would like to start campaigning for the Duck to see if we can get him on there because I don’t know if there’s a better mascot in all of sports.”
 
As for the football team — which itself is one of the best in the country — it is coming off the high of beating USC at home and the Ducks got back to work on Monday. The team was in helmets for the practice and everyone around the team was talking about what they needed to improve on.
 
Never mind the No. 7 ranked Ducks demolished No.12 USC 47-20 or that they’re now being talked about in national title circles around the country, players said the penalties were too much and you can never stop trying to get better.
 
“We still need to clear up the penalty facet,” Kelly said. “We uncharacteristically had a lot of illegal procedure penalties on the o-line. I think we can do a better job tackling and fundamentals.”
 
The same refrain came from players after the game Saturday night when media members asked running back LaMichael James how good the Ducks were. He responded simply, “We need to get better,” and moved on to the next question, despite some scoffs from reporters.
 
One aspect of Oregon’s game that USC was uncomfortable with was the tempo in which the offense reeled of plays. The Ducks — who go no-huddle for the entire game — relentlessly pounded at the Trojan defense without giving the team a chance to rest. And the preparation for something like that comes from months of conditioning, Kelly said at his Monday press conference.
 
“I really think the way we play on Saturday is in direct result of how we practice,” Kelly said. “We practice very fast for a reason, and the game itself on Saturday is a slowed down version of what we practice. We feel like we practice better than anyone in the country in terms of how we prepare and focus. It’s certainly a benefit for us on Saturdays.”
Kelly said the key to the no-huddle is the varying pace in which plays are called. Sometimes Oregon will run two plays in 15 seconds or let the tempo lull to just two plays in 45 seconds.
 
“Part of being a no-huddle team is that you have to vary the pace,” Kelly said. “You just can’t play a million miles an hour every play. You have to speed it up and slow it down. We want to be able to do whatever we can that disrupts the defense.”
 
But perhaps the elephant in the room was the one thing that wasn’t really addressed. The first question of the press-conference was about suspended running back LeGarrette Blount and his possible reinstatement.
 
Kelly announced on Sept. 4, a day after Blount punched Boise State player Byron Hout, that Blount wouldn’t play the rest of the season but would still practice with the team. Then on Oct. 2, Kelly announced a plan to reinstate Blount if he passed imposed ladders. The earliest date Kelly would give for a reinstatement was Nov. 7 at Stanford, and now that the week is here, that was the question at hand.
 
Kelly did have a meeting Sunday with Pacific-10 Conference Commissioner Larry Scott about the decision, but it wasn’t revealed what was said.
 
“When we have an announcement we’ll make it,” Kelly said.
 
The only other thing Kelly said on the subject was that he doesn’t have a timetable for a decision and he doesn’t know how long it will take for a decision to be made.
 
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