Maryland Football Priorities

[hoya95]

I'm guessing Durkin has convinced the MD Board that his "culture" can finally make them relevant in football. 'Cause they're willing to step over dead bodies to bring him back. That's about as craven as it gets.

www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/25128085/maryland-board-recommend-keeping-dj-durkin-damon-evans

"The board of regents insisted that DJ return, and this has been their highest priority," a source with knowledge of the situation told ESPN. "Some regents appeared to be obsessed with it. The problem is they don't have the authority to hire and fire DJ, but they made it clear that is their main priority here. Because they can't hire and fire anybody, which they finally realized, they told Wallace Loh that they wanted him to bring DJ back and the clear message was that if Loh was not willing to bring DJ back right away, they would fire [Loh] immediately and then see who the acting president was and get that person to [retain Durkin]."

[DanMcQ]

[DanMcQ]

[DanMcQ]

[RusskyHoya]

The Board of Regents really is out of touch and delusional. Maybe they thought it wouldn't get out that Wally was retiring under duress. Enjoy the fruits of your myopia, you dinosaurs.

www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/25133811/maryland-student-government-protest-dj-durkin-reinstatement

The University of Maryland's student government association has organized a rally Thursday to protest the reinstatement of football coach DJ Durkin and to demand justice for Jordan McNair, the Maryland offensive linemen who died June 13 from heatstroke he suffered after a May 29 team workout.

...

Jonathan Allen, Maryland's student body president, told ESPN that students are "outraged" by the board's decision. Allen will introduce emergency legislation at a student government association meeting Wednesday night that will call for university president Wallace Loh to fire Durkin. Sources told ESPN that Loh, who announced Tuesday that he will retire in June, only brought back Durkin after the board of regents threatened to fire the president if he didn't reinstate the coach.

"People are appalled at this," Allen said. "When I spoke to stakeholders -- media, alums, donors -- over the last few months, as this has been transpiring, they all said there's no way Durkin comes back from this. And yet he's returning and the president is the one that's leaving?

"When the system fails, the next obvious step is a grassroots push, being vocal and showing the outrage and sentiments students have had with these decisions."

[DFW HOYA]

Oct 31, 2018 12:02:49 GMT -5 RusskyHoya said:

The Board of Regents really is out of touch and delusional. Maybe they thought it wouldn't get out that Wally was retiring under duress. Enjoy the fruits of your myopia, you dinosaurs.

State board of trustees have different agendas than a college president. Maryland has paid out millions to Randy Edsall and would owe Durkin $5 million if he was cut. By keeping him, the trustees would rather keep a potential litigant in the fold and move out Loh instead, who is 72 and had no prior or future connections to the Maryland system.

www.si.com/college-football/2018/10/30/dj-durkin-maryland-reinstate-head-coach-jordan-mcnair-rick-court

[RusskyHoya]

Oct 31, 2018 12:33:48 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

Oct 31, 2018 12:02:49 GMT -5 RusskyHoya said:

The Board of Regents really is out of touch and delusional. Maybe they thought it wouldn't get out that Wally was retiring under duress. Enjoy the fruits of your myopia, you dinosaurs.

State board of trustees have different agendas than a college president. Maryland has paid out millions to Randy Edsall and would owe Durkin $5 million if he was cut. By keeping him, the trustees would rather keep a potential litigant in the fold and move out Loh instead, who is 72 and had no prior or future connections to the Maryland system.

www.si.com/college-football/2018/10/30/dj-durkin-maryland-reinstate-head-coach-jordan-mcnair-rick-court

You don't have to pay out the coach if you fire him for cause. Allowing a kid to be murdered by your training staff through your own negligence and failure to supervise counts as "cause."

[RusskyHoya]

Better late than never, I guess

[SSHoya]

Now what about the AD and Loh? Hogan needs to clean house at the Board of Regents next.

[DFW HOYA]

Oct 31, 2018 17:50:27 GMT -5 SSHoya said:

Now what about the AD and Loh? Hogan needs to clean house at the Board of Regents next.

And by a termination without cause, Maryland owes Durkin the entire amount of the buyout, $5.1 million.

www.dbknews.com/2018/10/31/dj-durkin-maryland-football-coach-fired-board-of-regents-wallace-loh/

And then there was this:

[SSHoya]

Oct 31, 2018 18:36:30 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

Oct 31, 2018 17:50:27 GMT -5 SSHoya said:

Now what about the AD and Loh? Hogan needs to clean house at the Board of Regents next.

And by a termination without cause, Maryland owes Durkin the entire amount of the buyout, $5.1 million.

www.dbknews.com/2018/10/31/dj-durkin-maryland-football-coach-fired-board-of-regents-wallace-loh/

And then there was this:

I thought I heard on one news report it was a "buyout" but other reporters kept referring to as a firing (which in my mind connotes termination for cause). Different altogether. As a former longtime resident of Maryland (with nearly a dozen Maryland alums as relatives), I am glad I now reside in Delaware!!

[DanMcQ]

[hoya9797]

A coach is better off killing a player than paying him.

[DanMcQ]

[RusskyHoya]

When even the Bum is ready to dogpile on you... you best believe the writing was on the wall:

Problem is... the rot here is wide *and* deep.

Evans also survived in large part because he is a slick politician. According to Maryland sources, he rallied the school’s non-football coaches, to send e-mails to the board singing his praises.

Fine. Evans is clearly bright, but he also supposed to be overseeing the football program during Durkin’s tenure. If the circumstances hadn’t been so tragic, it would have been fall-down funny when Evans introduced himself at an August news conference as “the new athletic director at the University of Maryland,” as if he had just been told about the McNair tragedy that morning.

Marty McNair, Jordan's father, was on SoortsCenter tonight. Honestly, it was a little hard for me to just watch him speak... which is an infinitesimal fraction of how difficult it must've been for him to be on camera before a nationwide audience. Lest any of us forget, we are not dealing in abstractions here.

If this sport is to be saved... and I'm not entirely sure that it can be... it will require a level of accountability that has heretofore been fleeting or absent. That Durkin's name should be added onto the roster of ignominy to join Paterno, Briles, Freeze, etc. is only fitting and just.

[SSHoya]

Chair of MD Board of Regents resigns.

[njhoya78]

Not surprising. I'd have to think that Governor Hogan will take action against other members of the Board of Regents after Tuesday's election.

[RusskyHoya]

It's incomprehensible to me that the key Regents, being motivated as they were by football considerations, didn't try to quietly consult some football people. If they had, I think they would've clued up to the enormity of the backlash retaining Durkin would unleash.

One of the things that's remarkable to me is the near-universality of the outrage - it's not just busybody students or people affiliated with the McNair family. Here's College Football Talking Head Supreme, Paul Finebaum, on Tuesday:

College football analyst Paul Finebaum suggested that the Maryland football program will never recover from Tuesday’s decision to reinstate Durkin.

“You see a lot of hypocrisy in college athletics," Finebaum said on ESPN’s “First Take." "You see Ohio State retaining Urban Meyer when perhaps he should have been gone, but in this case, it defies logic. We’ve seen one school, SMU, get the death penalty from the NCAA. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a university give itself the death penalty, because this school, as a football program — it’s not a power, it’s just a program, and not a very good one — is effectively done. They will not recover from this, because in a year or two, Durkin will be fired, and the biggest issue will be recruiting, because no one in their right mind will sign a letter of intent to go play football at the University of Maryland.”

[DanMcQ]