By Rob Moseley

Editor, GoDucks.com

Two years as a graduate assistant coach at Oregon have accorded Joe Bernardi all sorts of invaluable opportunities.

As assistant coach Steve Greatwood's right-hand man, Bernardi often takes groups of offensive linemen and puts them through drills on his own in practice. He's Greatwood's eyes in the sky during games, analyzing defensive fronts from the press box and communicating what he sees to Greatwood over a headset.

In truth, those are pretty standard duties for a graduate assistant coach. But this past spring, Bernardi enjoyed about as rare an opportunity as a GA could get.

With Greatwood recovering from hip replacement surgery, Bernardi took his place on the road as a recruiter during the spring evaluation period in May. He visited high schools and junior colleges, gathering information on potential recruits for the UO staff as it assembles the signing class of 2016 and beyond.

“There's a lot of young guys who, when you go out recruiting for the first time, it's for a small school,” Bernardi said. “There's not too many guys who, first time you go out recruiting it's for the No. 2 team in the country. Obviously it was a big-time opportunity, and I was very appreciative.”

Bernardi was one of two junior UO staff members on the road this spring. Defensive intern Shawn Young also took recruiting trips, on behalf of defensive line coach Ron Aiken . Like Greatwood, Aiken had a medical procedure that made travel impossible; under NCAA rules they could be replaced on a temporary basis.

Greatwood and Bernardi formulated a game plan in April, and the GA hit the road for Salt Lake City the day after Oregon's spring game, which was played May 2. It took less than 24 hours for Bernardi to experience his first travel hiccup, reducing his time on the ground in Utah. He called Greatwood — should he simply meet with Oregon's most highly regarded recruit in the area, or stick to the plan of seeing multiple recruits in the region?

Greatwood's response: It's your call. Use your best judgment.

“He called me two or three times a day, gave me his impressions of what he thought,” Greatwood said. “But I gave him carte blanche as far as that goes. I trust him, as far as getting the work done.”

In general, Greatwood said, he'll enter the spring evaluation period with about 25 players he's considering as recruits. After a month of visiting schools and meeting with coaches and administrators, the goal is to pare that list by half, if not further.

“The only thing I told him was, don't confine your time at the school to just talking to the head coach,” Greatwood said. “If you can, talk to the position coach, the athletic director, the counselor, the principal. I think he did a really good job of that, maximizing his time at schools.”

Assessing success on the recruiting trail will take some time. Based in part on the quality of information compiled by Bernardi, the Ducks will extend scholarship offers. Whether they're accepted, and how well players perform several years down the road, will be the true indicator.

For now, coming out of the spring, Greatwood was pleased. And for Bernardi, the experience was invaluable – if pressure-packed.

Not only were there the menial tasks of making flights and navigating strange cities and making sure he got to high schools while a team was actually practicing, Bernardi was doing so for one of the top football programs in the country. He never forgot that fact.

“We're not in the business of finding players we can just go to bowl games with,” Bernardi said. “We're in the business of finding players we can win the whole thing with. That's one thing I learned very quickly – no disrespect to other programs out there, but we're looking for a different kind of guy. Because the stakes are higher, and you've got to understand that going out there.”

Besides Greatwood, Bernardi stayed in touch with Oregon's recruiting staff, including director of player personnel Jim Fisher. Along with doing bookkeeping in relation to rules compliance, that office kept Bernardi apprised of developments among the Ducks' various recruits, and clued him in to other visits he might be able to take while in a specific city to see a specific player.

And Bernardi had another, somewhat unique resource: his father, Gary, the offensive line coach at Colorado. Bernardi would hit up his dad for tips on small things – what freeway to take to avoid rush-hour traffic, what hotel to choose in a particular city – and at one point they even found themselves on the same field at a school in Arizona, father and son now colleagues on the recruiting trail.

“A lot of kids can go to their dad about a lot of stuff, and ask their dad a lot of questions,” Bernardi said. “I called my dad and asked him how to recruit.”

It was all part of a truly rare and enriching month for Bernardi, as he filled in for Greatwood during the spring evaluation period.

“He did a great job,” Greatwood said. “I think he really busted his hump.”