Ah, January. ‘Tis the firing season in football, the holiday cheer just an enigma. Once the Hanukkah latkes and Christmas ham-induced haze wears off, reality sets in. Two sets of 8 crazy days and nights was about all that Mike Haywood had on the job at the University of Pittsburgh. Oy! There were certainly more French Hens than victories given by the Carolina Panthers to their disposed head-coach John Fox. Hail the new, ye lads and lasses, because there have been already been five coaching changes in the professional ranks (with possibly more on the way) since the start of the 2010 NFL season, not to mention 19 college programs and counting, which are working on new figureheads/placeholders/marked men.
Folks in Seattle are Carrolling over a 7-9 season that somehow ended with the Seahawks winning in the postseason despite their own best efforts. Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, Tony Sparano was on the verge of getting the Tony Soprano treatment after the Dolphins finished with an equivalent mark but ended up nowhere near the playoffs and only missed the bottom of the division because the Buffalo Bills wear cement shoes. After Miami’s brass (not knuckles) gives him the vote of confidence, he should be finished quicker than a plate of rigatoni at Patsy’s.
In the case of Haywood, he went from Miami of Ohio to replacing Dave Wannstedt to da unemployment line in a matter of just over two weeks after his New Year’s Eve buffoonery. Perhaps attending that Mike Price coaching seminar wasn’t a good idea after all. Even George O’Leary probably thinks Coach Haywood should take a couple of courses on sociology at NYU-Stony Brook… Oh, that’s right, it doesn’t exist. If only he were a basketball coach, maybe Billy Donovan could have given him a job with the Orlando Magic or Rick Majerus with USC.
Mike Singletary joined an elite club on December 26th. Sure, he was already an exclusive member of some kind of a coaching fraternity when he pulled down his pants during halftime of a game in his initial season at the helm of the 49ers (presumably he was illustrating an end around). However, after San Francisco’s loss to the Rams, Samurai Mike wasn’t even given the opportunity to fall on his sword. The Niners gave him his walking papers before the plane even touched down at SFO. (Perhaps the in-flight movie The Back-up Plan probably wasn’t the best choice in retrospect.)
Vikings coach Brad Childress took his team to within one game of the Super Bowl last year. This season, only a handful of wins separated the Vikings from having the top spot in April’s draft. The Vikings won as many games after his departure than they did prior, and as Andrew Luck would have it, the Stanford QB will not be touring the Mall of America any time soon. Wade Phillips was derided as a bum in Dallas, and the fans were apparently not referencing his pop. He got the axe in November. Josh McDaniels started the 2009 season 6-0, and when he saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more crummy AFC West teams to conquer. Ostensibly, more weeping was done after his Broncos lost 17 of their next 22 through this season and Coach was embroiled in a videotaping scandal in a game they lost (perhaps filming the field of play would be a good start). Denver replaced him in December, leaving the NFL with coaching luminaries like Jason Garrett (no relation to Leif), Leslie Frazier (an amalgam of some pretty good athletes), Eric Studesville (not to be confused with the club, Studsville), and Jim Tomsula, who made his mark on the elements in NFL Europe, from Fire to Thunder.
One could easily mistake the National Debt Clock in New York for a tally of the number of coaching jobs turned over in college football these days. Somewhere, every 30 seconds, it seems a coach is being fired in the college pigskin ranks. No hiring freeze prevented Hugh Freeze’s ascension at Arkansas State. The dangerously named Jerry Kill took over the program at Minnesota in a seemingly bloodless coup. Miami 86’d Randy Shannon because the U hopes that silence is anything but Al Golden.
While the winter grows longer and every able-bodied college football player returns to the classroom for nothing more than the free heating, there is still plenty of intrigue remaining in the 2010 college football season, which, because a playoff system would take too long, doesn’t end until the following calendar year. Long after bowls have hawked everything from mortgages and fatty foods to substandard football, there will so many shoes to fill across the country even Imelda Marcos wouldn’t know what do with herself.
It has become so de rigueur to read about the latest coach deep-sixed in the pigskin ranks, both pro and college. For crying out loud, during the course of writing this sentence another coach was fired. Amid the rancor of January firings, it should not be a surprise about who was making suggestions on coaching candidates recently … Donald Trump. Hey, he already knows the 2 magic words.
