An athletic department source at the University of Oregon confirmed today “discussions are ongoing” on a long-term contract extension for football coach Mario Cristobal.

Good. Get that done.

I wasn’t surprised at all late last spring when UO played some smart defense, handing its first-year football coach a one-year contract extension.

Athletic director Rob Mullens had learned a painful lesson.

Cristobal won nine games in that first season. Mullens used it as an opportunity to trade an additional year of job security (extending his coach through 2024) along with a bump in base salary ($2.6 million a year) in exchange for raising a series of buyouts.

Mullens had badly misfired in negotiating Willie Taggart’s buyout. It was only $4.36 million, and worse yet, it was allowed to be pro-rated over 48 monthly installments of $62,500. Florida State must have laughed when it saw that. Taggart, who won seven games, stepped over Oregon like it was in a body bag on his way to Tallahassee.

Nobody should blame Mel Tucker for ditching Colorado for Michigan State this week. He doubled his salary, has more resources and is joining a conference that hasn’t been shut out of the College Football Playoff three consecutive years. But Tucker’s defection made me think about Oregon and Cristobal.

Michigan State didn’t just pay Tucker’s $3 million buyout. It also wrote ex-coach Mark Dantonio a $4.3 million check. Also, it doubled Tucker’s salary to an average of $5.5 million annually and gave him a $6 million-a-year salary pool for his assistants.

Total bill: $18.8 million.

Cristobal’s agent might as well put on a bib, because a feast appears to be coming. I suspect Mullens and Oregon took notice of the Tucker dealings and is busy trying to ensure UO has adequate protection. The last extension left Cristobal as the No. 56 highest-paid coach in the country.

Also, it raised the buyouts should Cristobal bolt before January 2021 to $8 million. That, however, drops to $5 million in January 2022 and $3 million in January 2023, and given the recruiting trend you can see where Mullens might be concerned.

Would Cristobal bolt for a better job?

I asked the Oregon coach just that in September. Taggart was struggling and on his way to being fired at Florida State. Chip Kelly was sputtering out of the gates at UCLA. I wondered if Cristobal was paying attention to any of it. Given that Cristobal had already been fired once as a head coach at Florida International University, I wonder if maybe he’s more inclined to know when he’s got it good.

Cristobal said: “This is like, ‘How can it get better for someone like me?’ The way the circumstances and how it unfolded, the amount of gratitude, the amount of feeling blessed, therefore the investment in return, the dedication and commitment in return ... come on brother, I exhaust every ounce of what I have on a daily basis for the love of the game and also for being thankful and having gratitude for this opportunity.”

Then, he went and won the Pac-12 championship. Now, he’s got that Rose Bowl title and an Outland Trophy winner. Which is why I think Oregon is wise to play some contractual defense.

Coaches win and leave. It’s what they do. Most can’t help it. Ask Dennis Erickson, who told me numerous times, “I should have just stayed at Oregon State.” And had he been a forever guy in Corvallis, I’ll bet the regret instead would have been wondering what he missed out on in the NFL.

Erickson left OSU for the 49ers. Mike Riley holds the distinction of serving as both Erickson’s successor and predecessor. This was sort of like watching a friend marry, divorce, re-marry, divorce, then re-marry the first woman with us all toasting at the reception.

Greg Hansen, longtime columnist at The Arizona Daily Star, wrote about the longevity in the conference this week. He looked at the last 50 years of Pac-12 football coaches. That’s nearly 100 coaches in all. Hansen could only find four examples of coaches who stuck it out from start to finish -- Terry Donahue (UCLA), Don James (Washington), Bill McCartney (Colorado) and Mike Bellotti (Oregon).

The rest were a bunch of transients.

I don’t blame Oregon State athletic director Scott Barnes for jumping at the chance to glue Jonathan Smith to Corvallis. Smith won five games last season. Barnes rewarded his coach with an extension that gave him a $500,000 raise to $2.4 million annually this season.

Also, Barnes raised the assistant coach salary pool. Also, he launched the long-awaited renovation of the west side of Reser Stadium. It’s a stalled project that was born in the Riley-Erickson-Riley era of Beavers football. Last week, Barnes told me, “We will get this done.”

This doesn’t feel like posturing. It feels like a wise investment in Smith. Oregon State is positioned to make a bowl game next season, and should that happen, universities playing in deep-pocketed conferences will look at Smith and his staff as their solution.

College football hiring is a speculative business. Coaches have always jumped around. That’s not going to change. But now, the dollars are driving it in a jet-fueled manner and the Pac-12 isn’t uniquely equipped to withstand that siege. But Oregon is positioned as an outlier in the conference, with booster resources and a solidified season-ticket revenue stream not available to some of the others.

Cristobal had to hire a new offensive coordinator, as Marcus Arroyo left for UNLV. He lost one of his chief recruiters to USC this week. Immediately after the Rose Bowl, I asked Cristobal if he had time to reflect on what a wonderful season he’d posted in his second year.

“This is also the time of year where coach poaching takes on, right?” he said. "You’ve got to be on guard and you’ve got to make sure do right by your own staff members ... there are so many guys responsible for the success and what’s going on in the future.

"That’s why there’s not enough time to reflect.”

Mullens is wise to be huddled today with his advisers and staff, working to ensure Oregon has done enough to cement Cristobal as a long-term fixture in Eugene. He has to be celebrating what looks like a great hire in Cristobal while simultaneously fretting over what it’s going to take to keep him.

Oregon can’t afford to get this wrong.