So, just a quick note on the women's basketball firing. As you know, I don't blog about women's basketball, and didn't see a game all year, so I don't have anything to add other than respect for the class Coach Roos has showed all along, including after the decision.
Having said that, for fans of other Falcon sports there is one thing to notice. Roos was fired with one year left on her deal and was bought out to the tune of $200K. Under very similar circumstances a few years ago, Coach Orr was sent on a one-year lame duck season to avoid paying a buy out. As I understood it, one factor was that the President at the time felt that it was unseemly for a cash-strapped university to spend money to pay someone not to coach (not to mention that most of the athletic budget is paid for by student fees).
So I have no inside information on this. I just note that a couple weeks after a new President was named, BG bought a coach out.
Here's the thing. That last year on a contract is tough. If you don't extend the contract prior to the last year, you are creating uncertainty. I know sometimes the Coach comes through in that last year and earns an extension. But, most of the time it seems like you're just postponing the inevitable and giving up a recruiting year. I know for MBB, it set the program's recovery back.
Just an observation.
I think there were differing levels of urgency and tolerance. The women's team is the marque program in the MAC, both of late and historically. We were at the outer limits of riding Roos' predecessors success. Things were very clearly not right. There is a historic success that locals want to protect. The men's team, harsh as it is to say, hasn't really been much outside of a few MAC titles. Riding out another bad year under Orr was not as possibly big a danger as letting a power in the MAC suffer lasting damage.
ReplyDeleteOf course how this compares to football, mostly the economics.