Archive for the ‘Firings’ Category

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Blood! Blood in the streets!

Monday, January 5th, 2026

As foretold in the prophecy, this is your annual Monday morning after the end of the season NFL firing thread.

Raheem Morris out as coach in Atlanta. Also fired: GM Terry Fontenot. (Sorry about the ESPN link: the Atlanta newspaper won’t even let you look at the front page with an adblocker on.) Morris had been with the team for two seasons and had a 16-18 record: Fontenot had been with the team for five years.

One of my Christmas presents was a delightful little book: Cleveland’s Greatest Disasters! Speaking of Cleveland and disasters, Kevin Stefanski out as head coach of the Browns. But they kept GM Andrew Berry. Stefanski had been with the team for six seasons, and went 45-56 in the regular season. The Browns finished 5-12 this year, and 8-26 over the past two seasons.

I’ll update this post if there are more firings today.

Edited to add: and now, as expected by pretty much everyone, Pete Carroll is out as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. He was 3-14 in his one season. But hey! The Raiders have the number one draft choice! And they’re keeping John Spytek as GM! (Again, sorry about the ESPN link, but the Oakland newspaper is…not good.)

Edited to add 2: Four! A-ha-ha! (Okay, technically, the Atlanta firing was the yearly “you didn’t even wait to get the [man] in the house” firing.)

Jonathan Gannon out as head coach of the Arizona Cardinals. They were 3-14 this year, and 15-36 in three seasons with Gannon as the coach.

Heading into Sunday’s game against the Rams, Arizona had 42 different players miss a combined 309 games with injury and had 25 players on injured reserve — the most in the NFL — including quarterback Kyler Murray, running backs James Conner and Trey Benson and wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Firings watch.

Wednesday, December 17th, 2025

Brian Smith out at Ohio University.

“For cause”.

“The termination follows an administrative review of allegations that Smith violated the terms of his employment agreement by engaging in serious professional misconduct and participating in activities that reflect unfavorably on the University,” the release from Ohio University reads.

Not much more information than that, though he had been previously placed “on leave”.

He was hired almost exactly a year ago: the team was 8-4 this season.

ESPN.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 1 Comment »

Firings watch.

Wednesday, December 10th, 2025

Wow!

Sherrone Moore fired as head coach of the University of Michigan.

The team was 9-3 this season. But it wasn’t a football related firing.

“U-M head football coach Sherrone Moore has been terminated, with cause, effective immediately,” Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said in a statement. “Following a University investigation, credible evidence was found that Coach Moore engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a staff member. This conduct constitutes a clear violation of University policy, and U-M maintains zero tolerance for such behavior.”

“inappropriate relationship”. “with cause”.

He was 17-8 in two seasons. More from ESPN, but not much more.

Edited to add:

Sherrone Moore was in custody in the Washtenaw (Michigan) County Jail on Wednesday evening, just hours after being fired as Michigan’s football coach for having an “inappropriate relationship with a staff member.”

Posted in Firings, Law, Sports | 1 Comment »

Firings watch.

Monday, December 1st, 2025

Mark Stoops out as head coach of the University of Kentucky.

Stoops, 58, went 72-80 during his time in Lexington (82-80 if including the 10-win 2021 season that was later vacated) and leaves as the winningest coach in school history. Bear Bryant is No. 2.

They were 5-7 this season, and 4-8 last season.

Stoops is owed 75% of his remaining salary, which is approximately $37.7 million. That falls within the top five buyouts in college football history, four of which have come this year (the first three were Brian Kelly, $54 million; James Franklin, $49 million, though that was reduced when he took the job at Virginia Tech; and Jonathan Smith, $33 million).

Before Stoops’ tenure, Kentucky had not won 10 games in a season since 1977. Stoops ended that streak with a Citrus Bowl victory over Penn State in 2018. He added a second 10-win season in 2021 with a Citrus Bowl win over Iowa, but the NCAA later vacated the victories from that season due to a scandal involving football players being paid for hours they did not work in university hospital patient transport jobs. The investigation found no evidence Stoops knew of the rules violations.

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Firings watch: November 24, 2025.

Monday, November 24th, 2025

Shane Bowen out as defensive coordinator of the New York Football Giants.

The Giants are 2-10, and blew a big lead to the Detroit Lions on Sunday.

Chip Kelly out as defensive coordinator of the Raiders. He’d only been with the team for 11 games, and the Raiders are 2-9 this season.

Las Vegas has fired an offensive coordinator midseason for the second straight year. Luke Getsy was let go after nine games in 2024, with Scott Turner taking over in an interim role under then-coach Antonio Pierce.

The California Golden Bears have fired head coach Justin Wilcox. 6-5 this season, 48-55 over nine seasons with the team.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Are you a pelican or a peliCAN’T?

Saturday, November 15th, 2025

In some haste, because I am on the road for a wedding. But:

Willie Green out as head coach of the New Orleans Pelicans. ESPN:

Green was in his fifth season as Pelicans coach, and he finishes with a 150-190 record, including postseason appearances in 2021-22 and 2023-24.

The team is 2-10 to start the season. Which, sort of surprisingly, isn’t the worst record in the NBA so far this season: Brooklyn, Indiana, and Washington are all 1-11.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Tuesday, November 11th, 2025

Nico Harrison out as general manager of the Dallas Mavericks. ESPN.

They were 182-157 over four seasons, with three playoff appearances. But they’re 3-8 so far this season, and…

…Harrison will long be remembered as the architect of what’s been called the worst trade in NBA history. His decision last season to trade Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for Anthony Davis and Max Christie yielded immediate backlash from fans, whose chants of “Fire Nico” became a universal swan song anytime the Mavericks found themselves in an unfortunate position.
They chanted the phrase in the team’s first home game following the trade. They rallied together and chanted it the first time Doncic returned to American Airlines Center as a member of the Lakers. Nine months later, they’ve chanted it during home games as Harrison sat from his new seats inside the arena, several rows behind the team’s broadcast booth.

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Firings watch.

Monday, November 10th, 2025

This is breaking, but I want to get something up now: I’m going to be out this afternoon and evening.

Brian Daboll out as head coach of the New York Football Giants, according to “sources”. ESPN.

2-8 so far this season, they lost to Chicago 24-20 on Sunday, and he was 20-40-1 overall (roughly four seasons).

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Ice, ice, baby.

Sunday, November 2nd, 2025

Hugh Freeze out at Auburn. ESPN.

15-19 in “two plus” seasons, 6-16 in the SEC, and they lost to Kentucky yesterday, 10-3. They are 4-5 this season.

And the NYPost is reporting that, with Mr. Freeze’s $15.8 millon buyout, the count is now up to $182 million owed to fired college coaches.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 2 Comments »

Firings watch.

Friday, October 31st, 2025

Chris Grier out as general manager of the Miami Dolphins.

The spin on this is that it was by “mutual agreement”. But the Dolphins are 2-7, and lost last night to Baltimore. So…yeah.

ESPN.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Your Friday loser update: week 4, 2025.

Friday, October 31st, 2025

NBA teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:

Indiana Pacers
Brooklyn Nets
New Orleans Pelicans

And today’s bonus firing for you: Scott Woodward fired as athletic director at Louisiana State University.

As you may recall, LSU fired Brian Kelly and owes him $54 million. This has attracted the ire of many, including Louisiana governor Jeff Landry. Gov. Landry went as far as to state that Mr. Woodward wouldn’t be picking the next football coach.

Additional coverage from ESPN.

On the “Pat McAfee Show” on Thursday, Landry added: “There’s a number of bad contracts that seem to have followed Scott Woodward.”

Posted in Firings, Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Briefly noted.

Tuesday, October 28th, 2025

Former LSU coach Brian Kelly’s $54 million buyout would bring the amount of money owed to FBS head football coaches fired this season to $167.7 million, according to publicly available data and reports.

…

The $168.1 million applies to coaches who have been fired since the start of the 2025 season and does not include coaches who were fired over the offseason.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 1 Comment »

Your NFL loser update: week 8, 2025.

Monday, October 27th, 2025

They don’t call them the Cincinnati Bungles for nothing.

I apologize for being late in getting this up. I had a series of events (the good kind of event, not the bad kind) yesterday that had me out of the house until 7:30 PM. Among those events was driving down to Gruene to meet up with a relative I had not seen in at least 25 years, and maybe closer to 40. While it was fun, it’s also about 90 minutes each way in pretty heavy traffic, so I pretty much got home and went straight to bed.

Anyway, NFL teams that have a chance to go 0-17:

None.

Seriously, Cincinnati? 39-38?

Oh, well. There are still five winless teams in the NBA, and I’ll probably do an update on Friday.

Bonus firing:

Screenshot

Speaking of the war font…story here. ESPN. 34-14 over “four seasons”, but they’ve lost three out the past four games, and got beat 49-25 by Texas A&M on Saturday.

Texas A&M is 8-0. I’m wondering if there’s a chance that we might see a national champion from Texas this year…and it won’t be the one everyone expected at the start of the season.

Edited to add: also out now, LSU offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Joe Sloan. One story I saw said that the athletic director approached Brian Kelly and told him to fire Sloan. Kelly allegedly said “No, I want to fire these people instead,” and the response was to fire Kelly, then Sloan.

Posted in Firings, Loser, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Firings watch (plus, bonus legal news!)

Thursday, October 23rd, 2025

I know I’ve been quiet the past few days. There just hasn’t been much going on. But today is shaping up to be interesting.

ESPN is reporting the arrest of Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups. Also arrested: Terry Rozier, guard for the Miami Heat.

According to the NYPost:

Billups, an NBA Hall of Famer, has been charged with partaking in an alleged illegal poker ring tied to the Bonanno, Genovese and Colombo crime families, sources told The Post.
A total of 31 people across the country are charged with running rigged games, which took place in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Las Vegas, sources said.
The players involved were being paid by mobsters to play in card games fixed with technology and card shuffling machines to give the house the advantage, sources familiar with the case said.
The athletes were told to take a dive when they had to and win when they were told. It didn’t appear as if they were attempting to pay off any debts, sources said.

Rozier’s arrest is tied to another case.

Sportsbooks in multiple states flagged suspicious betting interest on Rozier’s statistics ahead of a Charlotte Hornets-New Orleans Pelicans game on March 23, 2023. An unexpected surge of bets — including 30 wagers in 46 minutes from a professional bettor totaling $13,759 — came in on the under on Rozier’s points, rebounds and assists, causing sportsbooks to halt betting on the veteran guard. Rozier, then with the Hornets, played just 10 minutes before leaving the game, citing a foot injury.

ESPN is suggesting this might also be tied to the Jontay Porter case.

Porter pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and admitted in court to manipulating his performance in two games during the 2023-24 season. He is awaiting sentencing in December.
Four men, including Porter, have pleaded guilty in the case. Two other men have been named as conspirators and have been in plea negotiations, according to court filings.

And I did promise a firing, didn’t I? This is a sports firing, but it’s an odd one: Ken Williamson has been “permanently suspended” as a SEC referee.

…following eleven complaints against the seasoned official and his crew during the Auburn-Georgia game on Oct. 11, sources told Yellowhammer News on Wednesday.
“According to sources, nine of those complaints were validated by conference officials,” the outlet wrote.
The game’s biggest controversy came late in the second quarter, when Auburn quarterback Jackson Arnold lost the ball near the one-yard line during a QB sneak and was recovered by Georgia cornerback Kyron Jones.
Though multiple angles from ABC’s broadcast appear to show Jackson crossing the goal line before the ball was punched out, officials ruled it a fumble — awarding the Bulldogs possession after the recovery.

Posted in Firings, Law, Sports | 4 Comments »

Your NFL loser update: week 7, 2025. (Plus: firings!)

Sunday, October 19th, 2025

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

NY Jets

And the Sharks are 0-5 in the NHL.

Next week: the Bengals in Cincinnati. Cincinnati is 3-4, and a slight favorite at the moment.

The worthless Bills had a bye this week. The game with the worthless Chargers is in progress at the moment, and what is up with that alternate uniform?

In other news: Billy Napier out as head coach of the University of Florida. 22-23 overall in “three plus” seasons, and the team is 3-4 this season. ESPN.

Jay Norvell out as head coach at Colorado State. 18-26 overall, the team is 2-5 this season, and lost to Hawai’i yesterday. ESPN.

And a non-firing, non-loser update that I don’t have room for anywhere else: Curry College is a D-III school. They beat Nichols 71-27 yesterday, and rushed for 522 yards.

Oh, wait: did I say the team rushed for 522 yards? I mean one guy, running back Montie Quinn, rushed for 522 yards by himself. 20 carries, seven touchdowns, and a NCAA record.

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