Whipped Cream Difficulties

Neil Olshey out as general manager and “president of basketball operations” for the Portland Trail Blazers.

According to the Blazers’ statement, the decision came after an “independent review of concerns and complaints around our workplace environment at the practice facility.” That led to the Blazers to terminate Olshey effective immediately for violating the franchise’s code of conduct.

Steve Addazio done at Colorado State.

4-12 in two seasons: 1-3 in 2020, 3-9 in 2021. They lost the final six games this season, including getting beat 52-10 by Nevada last week. And Addazio was ejected from that game in the second quarter.

I’m back home, but playing catch-up. In the meantime, Justin Fuente out as Virginia Tech head coach.

43-31 overall and 28-20 in the ACC over six seasons.

But in the last four years, the Hokies are 24-23, 17-15 in the conference. They went 6-7 in 2018, the program’s first losing season since 1992, and 5-6 last year.

Riding shotgun on the way home. In haste: Butch Davis out at Florida International.

Even better: it’s sabotage!

Davis, who is 24-30 at FIU and 1-9 this season, told The Action Network that in addition to the posting about his job, the school is using old uniforms and equipment, refused to offer multiyear contracts to assistants and would not allow the coaches to go out recruiting the past two years because of financial reasons as well as COVID-19 concerns.

Tom Arth out as head coach of the Akron Zips.

3-24 overall. They were 0-12 in his first season, 1-5 in 2020, and are 2-7 so far this year.

Henry Ruggs III out as wide receiver for the Las Vegas Raiders. Of course, Mr. Ruggs has other issues, which are being well covered elsewhere, but I wanted to note it here because: 156 miles per hour.

Gary Patterson fired as head coach of TCU.

Patterson arrived at TCU as Dennis Franchione’s defensive coordinator in 1998 and took over as head coach in 2001. He went 181-79 at TCU and oversaw the Horned Frogs’ rise from being left behind after the breakup of the Southwest Conference back through Conference USA, the Mountain West and back into the Big 12, largely due to the success the school had under Patterson.

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Despite his history at TCU, Patterson started to come under fire in recent years. The Horned Frogs haven’t finished a season ranked in the AP poll since 2017, when they went 11-2. The past four seasons, they were 21-22. He had also lost two straight to rival SMU after seven consecutive wins over the Mustangs.

Joel Quenneville out as coach of the Florida Panthers (in the NHL) in another “resignation” that seems closer to a firing.

This is also related to the Chicago Blackhawks sexual abuse scandal: he was the Blackhawks head coach at the time.

The investigation, which was made public Tuesday, revealed that Quenneville was aware of the situation and took part in at least one meeting regarding the allegations during the 2010 postseason. Quenneville had previously said he only learned of the allegations in the summer of 2021 “through the media.”
In an interview with TSN on Wednesday, Beach said there was no way Quenneville was unaware of the allegations.”I’ve witnessed meetings, right after I reported it to [Blackhawks mental skills coach] James Gary, that were held in Joel Quenneville’s office. There’s absolutely no way that he can deny knowing it,” Beach said.
According to recollections from former Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman in the investigation report, Quenneville, after learning of the Aldrich allegations, “shook his head and said that it was hard for the team to get to where they were [the playoffs] and they could not deal with this issue now.”

Stan Bowman, “president of hockey operations” for the Chicago Blackhawks, has “resigned”, in what sounds like one of those “resign or get fired” deals.

This appears to be a result of a third party investigation commissioned by the Blackhawks. A former player, who is being identified as “John Doe”, sued the team and states that he was sexually assaulted in 2010 by “video coach” Brad Aldrich. This was during the Blackhawk’s Stanley Cup run. Aldrich apparently admitted to a sexual encounter with “John Doe”, but claims it was consensual: “John Doe” denies that it was consensual.

The current investigation concluded that Aldrich made a sexual advance to a 22-year-old Blackhawks intern after the organization was made aware of the initial allegations.

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After leaving the Blackhawks, Aldrich was convicted in 2013 in Michigan of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a high school student. He was sentenced in 2014 to nine months in prison and five years of probation, which ended in 2019. He is on Michigan’s registry of sex offenders.

Matt Wells out as head coach at Texas Tech.

Since Wells took over going into the 2019 season, the Red Raiders are 13-17 and 7-16 in Big 12 games. Many Tech fans were opposed to Wells’ hire from the beginning, and discontent grew as the Red Raiders went 4-8 in 2019 and 4-6 in 2020.

A source close to WCD suggests that this is related to the ongoing Curse of Mike Leach, and that Tech won’t be successful until they cough up the bucks they (allegedly) owe Leach.

Wells is in the third year of a six-year contract. To fire him without cause, Tech is obligated to pay Wells 70 percent of the amount remaining in his contract, around $7 million.

Since a couple of people sent this to me, and it has been going around.

Nick Rolovich out as football coach of Washington State. Also out: assistants Ricky Logo, John Richardson, Craig Stutzmann and Mark Weber.

This wasn’t a record thing: all five were fired because they refused to get the Chinese Rabies shot.

Not much to say beyond that, but this is sportsfirings.com, so I felt like I had to note it here.

I love the fall season. Fall is a great time for philosophy.

For example, Mike Shildt out as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals.

John Mozeliak, president of baseball operations, said the move was made due to “philosophical differences.” Mozeliak added that it was a baseball decision, related to the direction he and ownership intended to guide the major-league team and not anything beyond the ballpark.

Shildt was 252-199 in a little over three seasons, and the Cardinals have made the postseason each of the past three years. They won 17 straight games this year, made it to the wild card game, and lost to the Dodgers.

In other news, the Yankees fired Phil Nevin and Marcus Thames. Thames has been the hitting coach for four seasons, and Nevin has been the third base coach since 2018. Also out: P.J. Piliterre, assistant hitting coach.