What felt seemingly inevitable months ago became official Thursday.

The University of Oregon and defensive coordinator Jim Leavitt reached a “mutual” decision to part ways following a two-year stint that started off sweet before eventually turning sour and ultimately untenable.

The details of the agreement to part ways have been released, as the university will – through “private sources” – pay no more than $2.5 million to Leavitt over multiple years. That amount, however, could be offset should Leavitt find employment elsewhere.

A little over two months ago, we openly pondered in this space the viability of Jim Leavitt’s future at Oregon. It was as obvious then as it is now that Leavitt’s days in Eugene were numbered, as the 62-year-old assistant and former head coach was noticeably absent both on the recruiting trail and in photos the coaching staff often takes with recruits when hosting them and their families on official visits to campus. A peculiar thing, particularly for a coach commanding a $1.7 million annual salary after receiving a notable contract extension little over a year ago.

The dirty details of what presumably went wrong between Leavitt and head coach Mario Cristobal haven’t surfaced publicly, and perhaps they never will. Though, it feels safe to generally assume that Leavitt never really made peace with the fact that he was passed over for the head coaching position in favor of Cristobal, whose candidacy was famously publicly supported by an overwhelming majority of the team following Willie Taggart’s hasty departure for Florida State in December of 2017.

It’s been no secret that Leavitt covets another opportunity to be a head coach at a Power 5 program, especially after he was unceremoniously let go at USF as a result of a widely publicized “disputed confrontation” with a former player in 2009. Not only did he publicly state as much with a tweet he sent days after Cristobal was officially named as the Ducks’ head coach in 2017, but his relentless pursuit of other head coaching opportunities at Colorado, Kansas State, and Texas Tech this past year only further cemented the notion that Leavitt wasn’t long for Eugene.

But ambition is hardly something that drives a wedge between a head coach and an assistant. Acceptance of a nomadic lifestyle is a pre-requisite for all who have aspirations of coaching at the highest levels of the sport, and virtually all coaches at all levels understand the hard-wired competitive desire to seek the best opportunities for advancement in the profession.

What occurred between Cristobal and Leavitt feels like the result of a bad marriage that was probably built on little love and affinity for one another to begin with. Let’s not forget that Leavitt was one of Taggart’s marquee hires – not Cristobal’s – when he took over the program following the dismissal of Mark Helfrich. Once Taggart left for Tallahassee and Cristobal was promoted to head coach, the decision to pony up to retain Leavitt was theoretically made out of a desire to maintain continuity and a hope that both parties would overcome their personal differences to make the partnership work long term.

As the year unfolded, it became increasingly clear that it wouldn’t.

Leavitt was mentioned less by Cristobal publicly, Leavitt was made less and less available for public comment by the athletic department, and before long, it increasingly felt like Leavitt was a misfit in a program undergoing a powerful cultural shift under the direction of a forceful and charismatic leader in Cristobal.

If you’re one looking to assign blame, it’s likely that equal amounts can be shared by both coaches for the failure of the partnership, as neither seemed all that willing to conform or adapt to the other.

Call it a case of oil attempting to mix with water, or cats attempting to co-exist with dogs. Call it whatever you like, but at the end of the day, the disconnect between the two coaches was awkward, bordering on unhealthy. With Cristobal residing as the unofficial CEO of the program, the decision to part ways with Leavitt was a necessary and prudent move for a head coach who is still in the process of molding and remaking the program in his image and in his way entering a critical second season.