George Horton has received his first commitment for the 2009 season in Darrell Hunter of Thurston High School. Hunter is expected to play shortstop for the Ducks. Hunter turned down two time national champions Oregon State who offered Hunter a 25 percent scholarship but Oregon offered a 35 percent scholarship which forced Hunter to commit immediately. Oregon Live checks in with an article here. Jacob May of The Oregon Daily Emerald talks about the commitment and about George Horton here.

Kendall Rogers of Rivals.com has been busy churning out quality content. Some of his latests items include:

- A rundown of the issues for SEC teams in 2008

- The same rundown for Big 12 squads

- A pre-Fall listing of the top 25 teams heading into the next season (not really a top 25, but rather a 25 teams to watch, listed in alphabetical order).

In his latest Mailbag, Kendall also discusses Irvine, Wake Forest, Oregon and Oregon State, and the differences between Fresno State and San Diego.

Mark Etheridge of SEBaseball.com checks in with an article about many different topics. The first topic which is discussed is the whole Oregon/UC-Irvine/Fullerton musical chair act that has been going on all summer including Rod Delmonico (former head coach at Tennessee) throwing his name in the hat at UC-Irvine. The next topic discussed is how Dave Perno of UGA has had to change up his staff for the 2008 season with an assistant coach moving on to a different school. He finishes up the article by talking about some of winners and losers in the summer in getting transfers. The full article is available here.

Doug Kroll of CSTV has recently checked in with an article about the prospects of bringing baseball back at some of the other BCS schools without the sport. He spoke with Wisconsin’s AD Barry Alvarez and other administrators around the nation about the challenges they are facing in bringing back the sport. His full article is available here.

Baseball America is reporting that Dave Serrano will accept the head coaching position with Cal-State Fullerton after saying last week that he was going to stay at UC-Irvine. The article from Baseball America is available here. The College Baseball Blog will have more information as it becomes available.

Aaron Fitt of Baseball America recently had a chance to sit down with George Horton to discuss his move to Oregon. A major change in the Oregon situation is that Horton will have the full 11.7 scholarships in his first season and the school is looking to build about a 10-15 million dollar baseball stadium. Horton also believes that Rick Vanderhook should be named the next head coach at Fullerton. The full article is available here.

George Horton the new head coach of Oregon has completed his coaching staff with the hiring of Andrew Checketts from UC-Riverside and Jason Gill from Cal-State Fullerton. Checketts led the Riverside pitching staff to a nation best ERA of 3.68. Checketts will be making $120,000/year with a one time stipend of $25,000. Gill comes over from Fullerton where he helped Horton to the NCAA Title in 2004. The full release from Oregon is available here.

The University of Oregon introduced George Horton as its new baseball coach on Saturday, having reached agreement with the two-time national coach of the year who led Cal State-Fullerton to six trips to the College World Series in 11 seasons, including the national championship in 2004.

“The gold standard,” director of athletics Pat Kilkenny said of Horton, who has a career record of 490-212-1.

“The bottom line is that the University of Oregon has immediate credibility as a baseball program. President (Dave) Frohnmayer said if you do it, be the best you can be and get the best you can get, and there’s no doubt we did get the No. 1 coach in America.”

The details of the agreement: A five-year contract that runs through June 30, 2012, subject to state approval, at $400,000 per year - a base salary of $150,000 per year and an additional $250,000 per year in guaranteed income derived in part from Oregon’s contracts with the Oregon Sports Network and Nike.

RegisterGuard.com

Oregon.Scout.com

UC Irvine head baseball coach Dave Serrano has been quick to dispel any speculation that he would be interested in the Cal State Fullerton head position with the Titans’ George Horton accepting the Oregon job. Serrano was Fullerton’s pitching coach for eight years prior to accepting the UCI head-coaching position in 2004.

“I have no interest in leaving UC Irvine for Cal State Fullerton,” Serrano said. “I feel that we have something special building at UCI with the program moving in the right direction. Fullerton is a great program and I have many enjoyable memories from there but my family and I are very happy in Irvine.”

Watch for Ted Silva pitching coach for Fresno State and Bryant Ward hitting coach from South Florida. This two guys could very well end up on a new staff here in the next week or so.

Ted Silva Played for CSF in the early 90’s and the was drafted by the Rangers and was in their organization for 5 years. Prior to being the pitching coach at Fresno State Ted over saw the pitching staff at CSF ‘04-’05 as a volunteer assistant. Bryant Ward played and graduated from East Carolina before going to CSF to be an volunteer assistant.

CSTV Story

UC-IRVINE Release

Following up the article by Brian posted earlier today about Horton going to Oregon, Who does coach Horton take to Oregon to fill out his staff? Does he take Gill from CSF? Then does he go get a coach that he has work with in the past? Maybe a Ted Silva or a Bryant Ward? With all this shaking out Rick Vanderhook could very well end up the Head Coach at CSF. You could see Vanderhook and Horton trying to get the same guys to work for them. Stay Tuned as the staff of the College Baseball Blog will bring y’all the breaking news as it happens.

According to a report on Rivals.com, George Horton of Cal-State Fullerton will become the new head coach of the Oregon Ducks which restarts their program in the 2008-2009 season. Horton has led Cal-State Fullerton to a 452-117-1 record in his eleven seasons with the Titans. His most successful season was in 2004 when he won the national championship. This move by Horton shows how important it was to the Oregon athletic department to get a huge name in the College Baseball world. Oregon failed to get Tim Corbin from Vanderbilt and Dave Serrano from UC-Irvine. They also had some flirtations with Pat Casey but never officially interviewed him. The full article from Rivals.com is available here and The College Baseball Blog will be all over this story in the coming days.

The University of Oregon announced on July 13th that they were bringing back baseball to the Eugene school after a 26 year absence. The school ended up dropping the wrestling program and adding competitive cheerleading to the athletic program. The reason that was quoted by the Oregon athletic department to add baseball was that the sport is seeing increased growth across the country.

I believe that this is true in the suburbs but Baseball has seen a major decrease in urban areas. The main reason is the increasing cost in competing on select teams which in some communities start before the age of 12 when a kid in the city of Miami can go play a game of basketball for weeks on end at the playground for 20 bucks with a decent basketball. I would like my readers to drive by a baseball field this weekend and see how many kids are playing on their local Little League field. Also, look at the Little League World Series and see how many African-American kids participated in the final eight. There was a report on Say Hey which is one of the top sports blogs on the internet that only two out of the eight US teams had any African American kids. (Click here for article). The other experiment is to look at a MLB baseball game and see how many players are minorities from United States. You will be surprised with how low it actually is.

The other problem I see with Oregon adding baseball is that the wrestlers at the school now will have to transfer to continue their athletic careers and possibly make the Olympic team. Baseball has been removed from the Olympics starting in 2012 due to the lack of interest in the sport around the world. We did see a very well attended World Port Tournament in Holland this summer with over 3,000 people attending some of Team USA games but we also saw the debacle which was the Pan-American games. During that tournament, we saw multiple delays with the field due to poor drainage and even had the tournament readjusted a day before it started due to insufficient lighting.

The final problem I have with Oregon is that they couldn’t support baseball 26 years ago. What has changed in Eugene to say they can support a Pac-10 team? They currently have no stadium and need to build a brand new facility.

I also think that the Oregon Athletic Department is aiming way too high with the help of Phil Knight for a new head coach. The Oregon Athletic Department has already interviewed Tim Corbin and planned on bringing in Dave Serrano before he backed out. There was some reports on the Internet that Phil Knight had earmarked so much money that whoever took the job would be one of the top five coaches in the nation in terms of salary. Why has Oregon not looked at some of the top assistants on the West Coast instead of a current head coach? How many top head coaches are going to leave a successful place to restart a program which will not have the full usage of scholarships until 2011-2012 season?

I just felt like sharing my thoughts on the situation in Eugene and hope that the Oregon program will be a success but they need to overcome the obstacles I have outlined above.

Kendall Rogers of Rivals.com offered up his suggestion of five coaches Pat Kilkenny should target for the opening at Oregon. You can read the article here.

His list:

Mike Trapasso of Hawaii

Ritch Price of Kansas

Mark Machtolf of Gonzaga

Rich Hill of San Diego

Nino Giarratano of San Francisco

Dave Serrano said Wednesday he has withdrawn as a candidate for the Oregon job, choosing to stay at UC Irvine and continue to build the Anteaters into a perennial national contender.

In his third season at Irvine, Serrano took the Anteaters to the College World Series and garnered National Coach of the Year honors. Along with the recognition came interest from Oregon, which is looking to resurrect its baseball program after 26 years.

“I want to thank the University of Oregon for their interest,” Serrano said. “And I apologize to both universities for any distraction this has caused.

“I am excited to move on and continue to be the coach of the players who are in our program now.”

Serrano said the decision, reached after long discussions with his wife, came down to family. He said the time and effort to start up a new program would cost him too much time away from his wife, Tracy, and his three young sons.

Orange County Register

UC Irvine coach Dave Serrano has taken his name out of the running for Oregon’s vacant head coaching job.

Baseball America’s 2007 Coach of the Year had delayed his scheduled visit to Eugene so he and his wife and staff could make a trip to Las Vegas to celebrate and relive the Anteaters’ College World Series run, and the Ducks allowed him a few more days to think about it before his visit, which he never wound up making. Serrano said he woke up this morning with a decision to remain at Irvine.

“As intriguing and as challenging as the Oregon job would have been–and we would have been up to the task–I hope this shows my commitment to UC Irvine and our team,” Serrano said. “We still have lofty goals here at Irvine. I think this is a good program that can continue to grow and grow as long as I can keep my coaching staff intact, and we can take it to the highest level.”

Baseball America

Dave Serrano, the leading candidate to become the coach of Oregon’s reborn baseball program, will delay his visit to Eugene to interview for the Head Coach job due to scheduling issues with Athletic Director Pat Kilkenny. Kilkenny is currently dealing with the announcement of a $100 million dollar donation from Phil Knight of Nike and Coach Serrano is scheduled for a family vacation the rest of the week which has rescheduled his interview until August 27th according to The Register-Guard.

Serrano postpones interview
Knight donates $100 million to Oregon