EUGENE -- In the days before the 1998 Micron PC Bowl, Mario Cristobal boarded a boat cruise in the waters off of south Florida as a first-year graduate assistant at Miami.
He disembarked as a newly hired U.S. Secret Service agent.
In between was this: A message on Cristobal's pager, informing him that after a nearly two-year process of applications, testing and a background check so thorough he'd heard from people he hadn't seen in 15 years, he had the job.
"It was time to go in the Secret Service," said Cristobal, the Oregon Ducks' co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach, last week in his Hatfield-Dowlin Complex office.