George Horton Oregon Ducks

An attempt to name a hiring at comparable astonishment level as the University of Oregon hiring of George Horton as its baseball coach is a futile task. The Ducks dropped baseball in 1981 because of budget cuts and Title IX consideration and consequently have only fielded a club level program in recent years; the only Pac-10 team to do so. So after UO reinstated the baseball program in July, when names like Horton, Dave Serrano from UC-Irvine and Vanderbilt’s coach Tim Corbin were mentioned as candidates to rIbuild the program, it’s doubtful even Oregon athletic director Pat Kilkenny believed the Ducks had a legitimate chance at pulling off such a coup.

Nevertheless, 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 a national championship in 2004 and whose teams have reached a No. 1 ranking in national polls in parts of the 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 seasons to headed to Eugene.

The Ducks will return to the baseball field during the 2008-09 school year and Horton anticipates being competitive immediately and plans to returning to Omaha in short order wearing the Duck’s green and gold.

The impact on prospective student-athletes in considering Horton as their coach is unquestionable. Twenty former Titans have ascended to the Major Leagues during Horton’s seventeen year tenure at Fullerton. Four of the last six MLB amateur draft classes have contained at least nine of Horton’s players and eleven of his players have been taken in the top five rounds.

Horton not only will use his coaching pedigree as a recruiting resource, but Oregon will build a new baseball facility for the Ducks which should rival any ballpark in the nation. Until then, they’ll play at Civic Stadium, the diamond of the short-season A Northwest League affiliate Eugene Emeralds. Furthermore, Horton sees playing in the Pac-10, one of the nation's premier baseball conferences, as a positive and will use it as a recruiting spring board.

"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."

Former University of Oregon player Dave Roberts agreed. "He's just stellar," Roberts said of Horton. "There are no holes. George Horton is an excellent coach, he's an excellent person, he's an excellent recruiter, he's got a great passion for his job.”

Horton began his coaching career in 1976 at Cerritos College, a school he also played for as a freshman and sophomore. He then briefly coached at Los Angeles Valley College for three years and returned to Cerritos as an assistant before being named the head coach in 1985. In 1990 he was hired by his former coach, Augie Garrido at Cal State Fullerton where Horton had played his junior and senior years. When Garrido left for Texas in 1996, Horton was hired to replace him.