If there’s anyone who had a front-row seat to the emergence of Oregon Football, look no further than former head coach Mike Bellotti. At face value, Bellotti’s Division-two resume did not look like the one that would lead the Ducks to the talk of college football. For him, it was all about doing the best he could, one day at a time. The Ducks found Bellotti, and under head coach Rich Brooks, Oregon football became a force. And when Brooks took off to the NFL, Bellotti brought the Ducks to even bigger heights and became the winningest coach in the history of Oregon football. But the turnaround wasn’t easy. He had to change the narrative around the program because, for many years, the word was not good.     

This is the first of a three-part series into the story of Oregon’s winningest football coach, Mike Bellotti, and the emergence of Oregon football told through the eyes of the man who led the program to their first four ten-win seasons in school history and a total of 12 bowl games, three more than Oregon had attended in their entire history before his time in Eugene.

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