Whipped Cream Difficulties

John Farrell out as GM of the Boston Red Sox.

President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, sitting at a dais without ownership, provided no explanation for the dismissal of the five-year skipper who won a World Series in 2013 and just finished in first place in back-to-back seasons.

Gary Andersen “mutually parted ways” (read: you can’t fire me, I quit) with Oregon State on Monday. Anderson and Oregon State:

…agreed to release each other from the remaining contractual obligations. Andersen was under contract through the 2021 season.

Which is noteworthy, because:

Andersen signed a contract extension in December and had more than $12.4 million remaining on the deal. Oregon State owed him $883,332 for the rest of this season, $2.75 million for 2018, $2.85 million for 2019, $2.95 million for 2020 and $3.05 million for 2021.

I was waiting for this to become official. It is now.

Rick Pitino placed on “unpaid administrative leave” at the University of Louisville. This is being described as an “effective firing”:

Pitino may have been put on administrative leave because, under his contract, if he is fired he must be given 10 days’ prior notice and “an opportunity to be heard.”
The contract says he may be fired for a number of reasons, including “disparaging media publicity of a material nature that damages the good name and reputation of the university… if such publicity is caused by employee’s willful misconduct that could objectively be anticipated to bring Employee into public disrepute or scandal or which tends to greatly offend the public.”

Also out: AD Tom Jurich, but his “administrative leave” is paid. More from ESPN.

As I see it, this is only in part fallout from yesterday’s indictments. (And while the university is involved, Pitino and Jurich have not been charged with any crimes yet.) Pitino’s problem is that this was just the latest in a string of issues while he was coach.

In 2010, the coach testified in a federal extortion trial involving Karen Sypher, who went to prison after trying to get money and gifts from him in exchange for silence. The married Pitino admitted to having sex with the woman in a closed Louisville restaurant in 2003.
In 2015, the NCAA launched an investigation into a sex-for-pay scandal organized by former Louisville assistant coach Andre McGee that could force the Cardinals to vacate their 2013 national title and dozens of victories. For that, Pitino would have been suspended for Louisville’s first five ACC games this season. That all came after the school, hoping to soothe the NCAA and temper the sanctions, self-imposed a 2016 NCAA tournament ban.

Could Louisville men’s basketball be facing the death penalty?

I’m going to say “probably not” just because I don’t think the NCAA has the institutional will to impose the death penalty on a large successful program. But it would be fun if they did: much of the NCAA’s operating budget comes from rights fees, especially fees for the men’s basketball tournament. If the federal investigation blows up college basketball, will the explosion take the NCAA down with it?

(Thanks to Lawrence for the heads-up on this.)

Edited to add:

Pitino said he was shocked to learn of the latest allegation, just as he was shocked to learn that his former staffer, Andre McGee, was running strippers into the campus dorm named after the coach’s late brother-in-law to have sex with players and recruits. “Shocked” was a popular word Tuesday when college basketball assistants from Auburn (former NBA star Chuck Person), Oklahoma State (Lamont Evans), Arizona (Emanuel “Book” Richardson) and Southern California (Tony Bland) were charged with taking cash bribes to steer players to financial advisers and agents. Officials at Auburn and USC used the word in statements. Oklahoma State went with the milder “surprised.” Arizona checked in with the stronger “appalled.”

I have to do this. I’m sorry.

The Detroit Tigers did not fire general manager Brad Ausmus.

They just decided not to renew his contract.

Also out: Nebraska athletic director Shawn Eichorst.

Nebraska’s football team is currently 1-2.

Hugh Freeze, the football coach at Ole Miss, resigned “effective immediately” last night.

If he resigned, why am I spinning this as a firing? ESPN:

Ole Miss chancellor Jeffrey Vitter, in a Thursday night news conference announcing the move, said Freeze, 47, resigned after confirming to him and athletic director Ross Bjork “a pattern of personal conduct inconsistent with the standard of expectations for the leader of our football team.”

Clarion-Ledger:

If Freeze didn’t resign, athletic director Ross Bjork said the university would have exercised the termination clause in his contract for “moral turpitude.”

“Moral turpitude” is another of those phrases that I love. But I digress: what happened here?

From what I’ve been able to put together reading the press coverage, Houston Nutt, the former Ole Miss coach, is suing the university. As part of the discovery in his lawsuit, his attorney was able to get six days worth of Freeze’s phone records from his university issued cellphone. Freeze was allowed to redact his personal calls from the records, but did not redact what’s being described as a “one minute” call to a 313 area code number “associated with websites that advertise a female escort business based in Tampa, Florida”.

Freeze’s initial explanation was that it was a wrong number call. That’s plausible to me, given how short the call was. But apparently the university dug deeper into Freeze’s phone records:

“In our analysis, we discovered a pattern of conduct that is not consistent with our expectations as the leader of our football program,” Bjork said. “As of yesterday, there appeared to be a concerning pattern.”

…

Freeze, who had about $2 million left on his contract for this year, $5 million next year and $5.15 million for the 2019 season, will not be paid going forward.

So that’s $12.15 million down the drain. Why? Because a highly paid football coach wasn’t smart enough to use a burner phone for his calls to escort services.