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“Look, I don’t want to date you anymore, and I’m leaving you at some point, but I don’t know when. It’s not now, but it’s coming. I’ll let you know when it happens. All good?”
– Welcome to Maryland.
“Sorry, man.”
“What? I’m on the way to helping myself with what we talked about last week. I’m nervous, but I’m going to make the change to get better.”
“About your job … ?”
“Do what? Yeah, that suspension hopefully will allow me to work on my problems.”
“Suspension? Can you not spell ‘fired?'”
“Do what?” Checks e-mail. “Damn it!”
– Welcome to Southern California.
“I saw you talking to a girl at the store and she smiled at you!!!”
“She was the cashier. I had to talk to her.”
“We’re through!”
– Welcome to North Texas.
Give Illinois this … they might not have the most glamorous opening this season, but they seem to be the only place so far that knows how to negotiate an employment departure.
As everyone and their mother knows, Randy Edsall is gone from Maryland because he couldn’t win, and Steve Sarkisian is gone from USC because he needed time away to work on himself in the wake of alcohol abuse allegations that seemed a lot more like grave dancing as they leaked out after the fact than before, when he could have been prodded to get help for his problems.
When did it become okay to fire folks like it’s a high school relationship, by the way?
According to statistics by the Pew Research Center, around 30 percent of teen relationship break-ups happen via text message.
That seems significantly less harsh than what’s going on in college football.
USC and athletic director Pat Haden seems to have a monopoly on heart-eviscerating firings. After all, Sarkisian’s predecessor Lane Kiffin was pulled off the team bus to get the employment guillotine.
Granted, there was no clean way to depart from Sarkisian, mostly because it should have been discussed prior to it getting to this point. Heck, for his health, if not because you were worried about winning football games. The first one is a lot more altruistic. The second a lot more self-preservation practical.
Yes, Haden did reportedly try to phone Sarkisian before word got to the wind, but when he didn’t get a hold of him, you’ve got to hold off on letting anyone else know. I know everyone writing big checks wants to know the second these things happen, but out of decency … especially for a guy really needing to put himself together right now … you’ve got to keep it close to the vest until he knows.
Someone losing their job, whether they know or not, is a very private thing where very few people know or rather, should know. Sarkisian deserved better, even if the choice was obvious. Coming on the heels of the Kiffin firing, you start to wonder what Haden seems to struggle more with … onboarding or off.
For Maryland, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here and say that Edsall’s side played telephone with the news. It makes zero sense for the Terps to do so, though … yeah.
We’ve already gone over their odd departure from Ralph Friedgen (the ACC coach of the year the season he was let go), which was all of:
“You’ve done a lot for me but we can’t be together anymore.”
“Wait, I got to thinking about it, and we just need to work on things.”
“Wait, I know you changed everything we talked about you changing, but we’re still breaking up.”
As on-again, off-again as that departure was, giving the benefit of the doubt isn’t mandatory. If you don’t want a guy around, announce him out at the end of the year and let him make the call. If you want him done quicker than that, tell him to clean out his office, pronto.
An aside here … or maybe not … the AD at Maryland was the same guy for both departures: Kevin Anderson.
Dragging it out both makes no sense, and in a way, is just cruel. There’s no victory tour for guys who are at schools under five years.
Lastly, you’ve got North Texas, who was drawn and quartered by Portland State and fired coach Dan McCarney an hour after the game had ended, before the blood had even dried.
That seems a little knee-jerk, doesn’t it? That’s the complete, “I’m mad so we’re through, immediately! I’m taking the clothes I have on and you keep everything! I hate you!”
To wit, it’s less than sophisticated, and completely shocking for people who have earned the right to lead college athletic programs.
I don’t know that there’s even a point to this column, other than the fact that it’s dumbfounding how much really smart people miss common-sense solutions. I know there’s always the ambiguous “stuff we don’t know about behind the scenes,” but surely firings can be classier than all of this.
Like, next time, can we totally at least pull out the cell phone and say, “IDK, I’ve been thnking and I cant do this anymore. H8 doing it this way, but SMH, we just need to break up. Sorry. (sad face emoji)”?
