Shortly after my previous post, word came out: the Chicago Bulls have fired general manager Marc Eversley and “executive vice president of basketball operations” Arturas Karnisovas. Tribune. Sun Times. ESPN.
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Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category
More firings!
Monday, April 6th, 2026Firings watch.
Monday, April 6th, 2026Patrick Roy out as coach of the New York Islanders.
Amaka Agugua-Hamilton out as head coach of the University of Virginia women’s basketball team.
This is mildly interesting: UVA got as far as the women’s sweet 16 this year.
Agugua-Hamilton led the Cavaliers to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2000. She went 70-58, including a 29-42 mark in ACC play.
Virginia became the first double-digit seed to reach the regional semifinals since 2022 and pulled off the upset of the tournament, knocking off No. 2 seed Iowa on the road in double overtime in the second round.
It became the first First Four team to advance this far, before falling to TCU.
But: the backstory seems to be that she “created an environment where her support staff had feared for their jobs due to abusive behavior towards them and threats to fire them”.
Your loser update: April 1, 2026.
Wednesday, April 1st, 2026MLB teams that have a chance to go 0-162:
None.
There are currently five 1-4 teams (and one 1-3 team) as I write this:
Boston
Minnesota
White Sox
City Unknown Athletics
Colorado
San Diego
Is there any team likely to set a new record this year? Reply hazy, ask again later. I feel like it is too early in the season. But right now, I’m watching Colorado and the White Sox.
Your loser update: March 27, 2026.
Friday, March 27th, 2026MLB teams that have a chance to go 0-162:
Toronto
Tampa Bay
Kansas City
Minnesota
White Sox
City Unknown Athletics
Houston
Texas
Seattle
Miami
Atlanta
Pittsburgh
Cincinnati
Cubs
Colorado
Arizona
San Francisco
San Diego
In other news, the Houston Astros lost to the Los Angeles Angels 3-0 at Daikin Park yesterday. As we all know, that means the Astros won’t be able to sell beer there for the rest of the season…
…because they lost the home opener.
(Thank you. I’ll be here all season. Try the veal and remember to tip your waitress.)
Firings watch.
Wednesday, March 25th, 2026Hubert Davis out as men’s basketball coach at the University of North Carolina.
He was 125-54 in five seasons, and went to the NCAA Tournament four times. But the consistent theme seems to be: he couldn’t produce results. (Does that sound familiar to anybody? Lawrence?)
UNC lost to VCU in the first round this year, and blew a 19 point lead while doing so.
ESPN.
Obit watch: March 20, 2026.
Friday, March 20th, 2026Chuck Norris. THR. “The World Bows: Remembering Chuck Norris 1940-2026” from Black Belt.
Other credits include the bad “Hawaii Five-0”, “Sons of Thunder”, and “Firewalker“.
Ed Bernard, actor. Other credits include “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “Shaft” (the movie), “Cool Million”…
…and “Mannix”. (“A Question of Murder”, season 7, episode 22. He was “Bull Evans”.)
Jane Lapotaire, British actress.
For the historical record: NYT obit for Alvin Greene. (Previously on WCD.)
Firings watch.
Friday, March 13th, 2026In a little bit of haste:
Dr. Kevin Granger fired as athletic director of Texas Southern University. Also, they took down his jersey. (He was a former basketball player for the school, and they had retired his number.)
Wes Miller out as basketball coach of Cincinnati, per “sources”. Five seasons:
18-15 this season as well.
Kim English out as head basketball coach of Providence.
English compiled an overall record of 48-52 and 23-37 in Big East play.
15-18 this season.
Firings watch.
Thursday, March 12th, 2026I think the NCAA men’s basketball tournament bracket is going to be announced this weekend. I don’t really care, except Gonzaga! (Because it is fun to say “Gonzaga!”)
But with the end of the regular season, comes the firings.
Bobby Hurley out as head coach of Arizona State.
But:
Hurley led the Sun Devils to the NCAA tournament three times, including two straight in 2018 and 2019, but he needed to make another March Madness run if his contract was going to be extended.
Arizona State fell well short, finishing 12th out of 16 teams in the Big 12 at 7-11 and 17-16 overall following the 91-42 loss to Iowa State in Kansas City – the most lopsided game in Big 12 history.
Obit watch: March 9, 2026.
Monday, March 9th, 2026Country Joe McDonald, of Country Joe McDonald and the Fish.
The YouTube link doesn’t seem to work in the archived version, so here it is, for the hysterical record:
It has been a bad time for screenwriters.
Alan Trustman. Other credits include “They Call Me Mister Tibbs!”, “Hit!”, and “Lady Ice”. The NYT obit makes it sound like his career pretty much came to a screeching halt after he and Steve McQueen got into it while writing “Le Mans”.
Jeremy Larner. I wasn’t originally going to note this, but his arc is mildly interesting.
He has a total of four credits in IMDB. Two of those are as “Self”. The other one is for “Drive, He Said”, which he wrote (and which was based on his novel) and which you can find in the “America Lost and Found: The BBS Story” box set from Criterion.
I intended to note this the other day, but it got past me: Bruce Froemming, major leage umpire.
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Umpires are known for their accuracy — or lack thereof — in calling balls, strikes and outs, as well as for their on-field disputes and occasional ejections. Froemming gave the heave-ho to players, managers and coaches 125 times from 1971 to 2007, far fewer than Klem’s record of close to 300 ejections. Three managers were each thrown out by Froemming three times: Davey Johnson of the Mets, Bobby Cox of the Atlanta Braves and Joe Torre, once with the St. Louis Cardinals and twice when he skippered the Mets.
Froemming booted out his last man, Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon, in the waning days of his last season, in 2007, for arguing a check swing call.
He also booted Billy Martin (though, as far as I can tell, there was no fistfight involved).
In 1976, Froemming ejected the fiery Yankees manager Billy Martin in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the World Series for tossing a ball at Bill Deegan, the home plate umpire, from the dugout. Martin, claiming that Deegan had tossed three balls out of play in his direction, rushed onto the field to argue his ejection.
“It’s a touchy situation,” Froemming said afterward, “and to have Martin start something at this point is something we can’t tolerate.”
Jennifer Runyon, actress. Other credits include “Carnosaur”, “The Falcon and the Snowman”, and “The Master”.
Lawrence sent over a NotTheBee obit for Alvin Greene, “the most bizarre Senate candidate in United States history”.
Obit watch: March 5, 2026.
Thursday, March 5th, 2026Master Gunnery Sgt. Juan Jose Valdez (USMC – ret.). He was 88.
Sergeant Valdez was the last American service member out of Saigon on April 30, 1975.
…
…
Before loading helicopters at the embassy, Marines searched evacuees for weapons and threw any they found into a swimming pool. At dawn on April 30, Ambassador Graham Martin, carrying the American flag that had been lowered in the compound, boarded one of the last flights out. Sergeant Valdez and a handful of Marines stayed behind to protect his departure.
Panicked civilians soon broke through the gates and surged up the stairways of the chancery. The Marines retreated to the rooftop, barricaded the access door and waited for their own ride out. They could see North Vietnamese troops converging in the street.
Maj. James Kean, the commanding officer of the Marine guards, recalled years later in an interview with CBS News, “There were 17 divisions of North Vietnamese coming across the bridges into Saigon, and when the sun came up, we saw them.”
When the last helicopter, a CH-46 Sea Knight, descended to the rooftop, Sergeant Valdez stood back as Major Kean and nine enlisted men got on board first. Sergeant Valdez was nearly left behind: He was thrown off balance and fell on the rear boarding ramp as the pilot lifted off.
“The ramp, you could see behind me, it was starting to go up, and that helicopter wanted to get the hell out of there,” he recalled in a 2021 interview.
Staff Sgt. Mike Sullivan, one of the men already onboard, told The Los Angeles Times in 1990 what happened next.
“I looked at the back of the helicopter door, and I noticed two hands hanging there,” Sergeant Sullivan said.
Sergeant Valdez was grabbed and pulled aboard. It was approximately 8 a.m. on April 30, 1975. After a 30-minute flight, the chopper arrived at the U.S.S. Okinawa offshore.
When Holtz, slender and bespectacled, arrived at Notre Dame in 1986, taking on college football’s most pressure-packed post, he hardly projected the image of a tough coach who might inspire his players to win one for a latter-day Gipper.
“I’m not very smart and I’m not very impressive,” he remarked. “I’m 5-10, weigh 152 pounds, speak with a lisp, appear afflicted with a combination of scurvy and beriberi, and I ranked 234th in a high school class of 278.”
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He did have a short and unsuccessful season with the New York Jets in 1976, which was also Joe Namath’s final season.
His team was 3-10 when he resigned with one game left in the season, walking away from a five-year contact to become head coach at the University of Arkansas.
“God did not put Lou Holtz on this earth to coach pro football,” he said.
In his memoir, he wrote, “My short-lived tenure in the N.F.L. has been a source of embarrassment for me, not because the Jets didn’t do very well under my leadership (they did not), but as a result of a so-so commitment on my part.”
…
When he was 28 years old with three young children, little family savings and his prospects of becoming a collegiate head football coach in doubt, Holtz set down life goals, professional and personal. He came up with 108 items.
While Notre Dame was preparing for its 1989 Fiesta Bowl game with West Virginia, he said he had accomplished 84 of those goals, among them sitting next to Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show,” meeting the pope and dining at the White House.
Holtz, a practicing Roman Catholic, met Pope John Paul II while touring the Vatican. Even before his award from President Trump, he was invited to the White House by President Ronald Reagan (who in the role of Notre Dame’s George Gipp in the 1940 film “Knute Rockne All American” implored Rockne from his deathbed to “just win one for the Gipper”). He also accepted invitations from Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who was governor of Arkansas during part of Holtz’s coaching tenure there.
Awful Announcing:
ESPN.
Firings watch.
Friday, February 27th, 2026LaTroy Lewis fired as “assistant defensive line coach” of the Atlanta Falcons.
What makes this mildly interesting is: he was hired February 10th.
Mr. Lewis is accused of assaulting a woman while he was working for Michigan.
Nothing can stop the U.S. Air Force…
Saturday, February 21st, 2026…except a good firing.
Joe Scott out as men’s basketball coach.
The Falcons failed to finish better than 10th place in the Mountain West in any of his six seasons at the helm, including last-place finishes in each of the past two seasons. They were 3-14 (0-6 MWC) when Scott was suspended and haven’t won a game since.
In five-plus seasons, Scott went 15-78 in league play.
Mr. Scott was “indefinitely suspended” in January as a result of accusations that he “mistreated” his player. He was previously with Air Force from 1999 to 2004, and actually had a successful run there:
Firings watch.
Monday, February 16th, 2026Jerome Tang out as head coach of the Kansas State men’s basketball team.
Even better, the firing is “for cause”, which means they don’t have to pay his $18.7 million buyout.
It seems like the precipitating incident is a rant Tang went on last week:
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Tang was 71-57 in “nearly four seasons” as coach.
Obit watch: February 4, 2026.
Wednesday, February 4th, 2026Chuck Negron, of Three Dog Night.
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The band splintered in 1976, and Mr. Negron sank further into the abyss, in large part because of heroin addiction. His millions in savings vanished and, before long, he was living in a Skid Row drug den in Los Angeles. The police often raided crack dealer neighbors but “never bothered us,” he recalled in a 1998 interview with The Las Vegas Sun. “That’s how pathetic we were.”
He hit a particular low one day when he was zonked out on a curb and noticed people gawking. “It’s really embarrassing,” he remembered telling a companion next to him, “these people want an autograph.”
“Chuck, you just peed in the street,” the friend responded. “They don’t know who you are.”
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Virginia Oliver. I’m not exactly sure she qualifies as “notable”, outside of a small circle. But the obit is fun, she led a good life, and it lets me use a tag I don’t get to use as often as I’d like.
On the frigid and crustacean-filled waters of Penobscot Bay, Mrs. Oliver was known as the Lobster Lady. She was a folk hero to Mainers — an enduring, if fading, emblem of the state’s hardy, matter-of-fact work ethic.
“She represented that no-nonsense Mainer who just got up every day and did what they had to do,” Barbara A. Walsh, the author of a children’s book about Mrs. Oliver, said in an interview. “It’s grit and determination.”
During lobster season — from June to December — Mrs. Oliver would wake up at 2:45 a.m., put on overalls and drive her four-wheel-drive pickup truck to the dock. After loading her boat, the Virginia, with bait and gas, she would head to sea before sunrise, hauling lobster pots until lunchtime.
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Mrs. Oliver fished for more than 60 years with her husband, Maxwell Oliver Sr., known as Bill. After he died in 2006, Max Jr. took his spot. “I’m the boss,” she would occasionally remind both of them.
As a general rule, her authority was not to be questioned on land or at sea.
“She was a hard worker, a lovely lady, but you definitely didn’t mess around with her,” Dave Cousens, a lobsterman who knew Mrs. Oliver for several decades, said in an interview. “She had a mouth like a sailor. A lot of things she said you couldn’t print in a newspaper.”
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A few years back, she needed stitches after a particularly obstreperous lobster sliced her finger.
“What are you out there lobstering for?” the doctor asked.
“Because I want to,” she replied.
She was 103 when a fall forced her to give up lobstering. She was 105 when she passed away.
Mickey Lolich, of the Detroit Tigers.
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The Tigers finished 12 games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles as they won the 1968 American League pennant, led by the right-hander Denny McLain, who won 31 games and lost only 6 that season in becoming the first pitcher to reach the 30-game milestone in 34 years, a feat that hasn’t been matched since. Lolich, meanwhile, compiled a laudable 17-9 record.
McClain was bested by the future Hall of Famer Bob Gibson in the World Series opener, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Despite battling a groin infection that had developed overnight, Lolich pitched the Tigers to an 8-1 victory in Game 2 and hit the only home run of his career, a drive down the left-field line off the Cardinal starter, Nelson Briles.
The Tigers lost the next two games at home and were facing elimination when Lolich took the mound again, once more against Briles, but this time at Tiger Stadium. Lolich yielded three runs in the first inning, but the Tigers managed to rally for a 5-3 victory.
They won again in Game 6, in St. Louis, behind solid pitching by McLain and a 10-run third inning.
The durable Lolich was called on again for Game 7, when he faced Gibson.
With the game scoreless in the seventh inning, the Tiger outfielder Jim Northrup connected on a liner over the head of Curt Flood, the Cardinals’ center fielder, for a two-run, two-out triple. Detroit went on to a 4-1 victory, giving the Tigers their first World Series championship since they defeated the Chicago Cubs in seven games in 1945.
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Firings watch.
Friday, January 30th, 2026Oh, Minnesota.
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah out as general manager of the Minnesota Vikings.
And Derek Falvey out as president of the Minnesota Twins.
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Falvey’s departure was framed publicly as a mutual decision to part ways.
Missed this the other day, but Joe Lombardi out as offensive coordinator in Denver.
Wide receivers coach Keary Colbert and cornerbacks coach Addison Lynch also were fired.