Now that Bill O’Brien has taken over, what’s going on?
Answer: he fired everybody just as hard as he could go. He fired Wade Philips and he fired Rick Dennison, and he fired some people that he didn’t even know.
Seriously: Wade Philips is gone as defensive coordinator. Rick Dennison is gone as offensive coordinator. Quarterback coach Karl Dorrell is gone. Defensive backs coach Vance Johnson is gone.
Reports from elsewhere say everyone is going to be fired before the day is out.
Musical hattip:
Carol Ross, head coach of the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, was fired yesterday.
Well, actually, she was laid off. Along with her staff. And the entire front office staff.
And the team’s current owner has said that they are “no longer in a position” to continue with the team.
This is your official Monday after the end of the season coach firings post. I’ll try to update this during the day as coaches are let go.
Starting at the beginning: the Browns didn’t even wait for Monday. Rob Chudzinski was fired last night after one season.
Yeah, they finished 4-12, but I kind of feel like Chud was being used as the scapegoat for years of bad decision making by the previous management of the Browns. Really, one season? A season in which you traded away a previous first round draft choice (who turned out to be a bust)? I smell a scapegoat cooking.
Edited to add 1: Looks like Mike Shanahan’s firing as head coach of the Redskins is now official, as opposed to merely speculative.
Edited to add 2: Leslie Frazier out in Minnesota. 21-33-1, and the Vikings were actually a playoff team last year. It does seem like most of their games this year were competitive until near the end, and I don’t think Frazier was the problem with this team. You know, the Texans could probably do a lot worse than Frazier…
Edited to add 3: Stepped away for a little while to run some errands. While I was out:
Greg Schiano out as head coach at Tampa Bay, along with general manager Mark Dominik. Schiano was 11-21 over two seasons. Perhaps now he can return to what he really loves; beating up middle school children for their lunch money.
Jim Schwartz out in Detroit. Also out: offensive coordinator Scott Linehan and recievers coach Tim Lappano. Schwartz was 29-51 over five seasons, and actually took Detroit to the playoffs once. Once.
Also, it looks like the Redskins are engaged in a major housecleaning: eight of Shanahan’s assistants are gone as well, including offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan.
I’m going to say “yes”.
I’ve seen rumblings that Cleveland plans to trade Bynum, but:
Earlier today, I was thinking to myself:
Well, I was wrong wrong wrongity wrong!
Wade Philips will be the interim coach. And Case Keenum will be the starting quarterback for the remainder of the season.
Analysis of Kubiak’s years here must include yin and yang, as his run with the Texans will be remembered for successes and failures. Triumphs and defeats. Ups and downs.
Mathematically, in fact, there is almost an equal number of each.
Unfortunately for him, mediocrity was the standard.
Kubiak’s overall record with the Texans was 61-64.
Edited to add: The team also fired Joe Marciano, special teams coordinator “who had been with the organization since its inception in 2002”.
The NFL loser update will return Tuesday. (The Giants play Monday night.)
In the meantime, I wanted to take note of a story that’s been on the FARK sports tab, but is too strange to ignore here.
The Grambling State athletic program, as I like to say, does not have “issues”: they have a lifetime subscription and a complete run of bound volumes. You may recall that the men’s basketball team went 0-28 this past season. You may also recall that the football team lost the first two games of the season, and fired coach Doug Williams.
Things have not gotten better for the football team. They’re now 0-7 and 0-4 in conference. And the players are unhappy. It seems there’s some concern over Williams being fired, and over “poor facility conditions”.
The players are also unhappy about travel policies. Money’s tight, so the team travels by bus.
Grambling was scheduled to play Jackson State tonight. The game is Jackson State’s homecoming game, so it is kind of a big deal for the school (in terms of both spirit and money).
Note the use of the word “was”: the Grambling State players refused to get on the team buses Friday afternoon, and the game has been cancelled.
Yes, you understand that correctly; the football team is in open revolt.
The conference has ruled the game a forfeit, which I guess makes Grambling State 0-8 now. I can’t remember the last time there was a forfeit of this kind in college football; this list at SportsReference.com appears to include games that were retroactively forfeited due to NCAA enforcement actions, and (oddly enough) Wikipedia does not have a “forfeited college football games” entry.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. There’s already some detail coming out about the Williams firing that makes the school look bad. And the school is clearly struggling financially: ESPN has a good backgrounder from Tim Keown.
I have a lot of respect for the Grambling players for standing up and saying “We’re not gonna take it anymore”, and I would hate to see them punished for expressing legitimate concerns. At the same time, though, given the university’s financial troubles and athletic struggles, I have to wonder if maybe the best solution is to shut down the athletic program completely. That certainly seems like a better option than Grambling renting itself out as a cupcake opponent or players spending 15 hours on buses.
(To be fair, ESPN says it is only 160 miles to Jackson State. That’s about the distance between Houston and Austin, or roughly three hours travel time. I wonder if the protest would have been more effective if they’d refused to get on the buses for Indy? Then again, 15 hours each way on a bus gives you a lot of time to think. And plan.)
Edited to add: Totally forgot that I wanted to note this bit from the horribly written TampaBay.com article FARK linked:
“…has won a record 14 mythical national championships”? Say what?
Edited to add 2: By way of the FARK discussion thread, here’s a really good article from SI that goes into more detail on Grambling’s issues, including the whole weight room floor issue and the money problems.
The Astros lost 111 games this year. Someone must pay!
I have a cold or allergies or something. I turned in early last night and am still getting caught up with the news.
But I really think next year might just be the Chicago Cubs’ year to take it all.
After all, they just fired their manager, Dale Sveum.
Uh-huh. Pull the other one, Theo; it has bells on it.
Also, Paul Pasqualoni, head coach at the University of Connecticut, is out after starting the season 0-4.
It is kind of early for a Sunday morning – I haven’t had breakfast yet, or even coffee – but I wanted to get these up before I wandered out in the rain (Yes! Actual rain!) in search of both.
Lane Kiffin out as USC football coach. USC lost 62-41 to Arizona State yesterday; if other reports are to be believed, Kiffin was fired before the plane even got back to LA.
Kiffin was 28-15 overall. So far this year, the team is 3-2 and 0-2 in conference.
And the Astros have hit the 110 loss mark with one game left in the season. Right now, the team is at .317. .300 is sort of the bar for Wikipedia’s “List of worst Major League Baseball season records”, so the 2013 Astros won’t make that list. But I do still find this achievement refreshing.
Two games in, and we have our first head coach firing of the college football season: Doug Williams is out at Grambling. The team lost the first two games of this season, and was 1-10 last season (0-9 in conference).
The Chicago City Council voted to do away with the city’s gun registry.
Or, as Iowahawk once noted, Chicago blames their violence problem on other states…that don’t have a violence problem. (I can’t find his exact quote. By the way, Twitter’s search features stink.)
Criminal experts say the gun registry database in Chicago, which contains more than 8,000 gun owners and about 22,000 firearms, has helped the police better understand the movement of weapons in the city as they put in place new law enforcement strategies. Adam Collins, a spokesman for the Police Department, said in a statement that officers would be able to use a new online database of permit holders maintained by the Illinois State Police under the law.
“There’s no scenario where this makes the jobs of police easier,” said Jen Ludwig, director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, about having to repeal the registry.
Of course, because Chicago’s criminal class is composed of law-abiding permit holding individuals who register their illegally possessed guns.
Speaking of sad pandas:
Kind of interesting that the paper of record mentions Bloomberg specifically, and not the NRA.
Heh. Heh. Heh.
And among the many things Mexico needs: strict machete control.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction:
This is Mack Brown’s last season coaching at the University of Texas.
The big questions in my mind are: who else does he fire, and does he finish out the season or get canned part way through?
(By the way, NFL loser update resumes Tuesday, for obvious reasons.)
Charlie Manuel gone as manager of the Phillies. And replaced by Ryne Sandberg.
I lost track: is this the first firing of the baseball season?
John Donne never met Richard Ramirez.
George Karl of the Denver Nuggets was this year’s NBA coach of the year.
George Karl of the Denver Nuggets was fired on Friday. He was 423-257 over nine seasons.
(Thanks to Lawrence for the hattip on this. I was away from the computer pretty much all day yesterday.)
P.J. Carlesimo out as coach of the Brooklyn Nets.
I put “firing” in quotes because Carlesimo was acting as an interim coach: as you may recall, the team fired Avery Johnson in December. (Wasn’t he great in “Spenser: For Hire” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”?)
Carlesimo went 35-19 as interim coach, and the Nets did go to the playoffs. But apparently that wasn’t good enough, and the team is looking for a change.
Firings: Mike Dunlap, Charlotte Bobcats head coach. One season, 21-61.
Obits: Richie Havens. NYT. LAT. A/V Club.
E. L. Konigsburg, noted author (From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
This is one of those little tidbits that I find fascinating: “From the Mixed-Up Files…” won the Newbery Medal in 1968. That was Ms. Konigsburg’s second book. Her first book, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth
There will probably be more to say about this tomorrow, but Allan Arbus has also passed away.
In other news, while I was out and about having fun, Lawrence was working. Specifically, he’s been posting video of the Travis County DA being arrested for DWI, and of the DA in jail.
And what do I have to offer to compare with that? Pictures, maybe?
Here we see the elusive Mike the Musicologist. While Jim attempts to throw a net over him, let me tell you about Mutual of Omaha…
And one for my great and good friend Weer’d Beard: ducks!
