FB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[smedindy]

I don't think it takes a "Y" chromosome to determine what is or is not a fireable offense in administrative terms no matter what the occupation.

You all know the AD at Drake is a female, right?

The longtime AD at NC State is former women's hoops coach Deborah Yow. When I looked, there were several female AD's at the D-1AA level, many at HBC's. This trend is going to continue. Texas and Tennessee have both women's and men's ADs and I wonder if that's due to the huge success of their women's programs alongside their men's programs.

[wabco]

Well ... Smed .... following the trail of your piece:  DePauw apears in fact to be leading in something. Huuraw ...

Whether that is a positive or a negative for someone (probably a male ... but based upon Danny "leading the progress" that is not a given) who would consider the DPU football head coach position ... and combining this gender boss redundancy with the 5 in and/out over 9 year history ... now there is a question. 

[smedindy]

Don't know how much of a leader DPU is - the AD at Carnegie Mellon is Susan Bassett and she's been on the job since 2005.

[sigma one]

The new AD (started in January) at Allegheny is Portia Hoeg.  Her husband is Josh Hoeg, a name familiar to Wabash fans.  Wabash lost Josh when Portia took the Allegheny job.  She was previously at Lake Forest.  I'm saying Portia will make Allegheny and their athletic program proud, both men's and women's sports. 
     I have trouble getting on board with the idea that Robbie ran into trouble because of two women administrators.  I have no problem believing that a new AD who wants things done a certain way (the DPU way?--she's new!) would get into a dispute with a football coach who may have been used to having things done differently, and who may have even been given new assignments since the arrival of the new AD.  Two toughs mano on womano.   

[sigma one]

By the way, don't we all know, or know about, men who have trouble when the new boss is a woman--sometimes more his attitude than hers? Not saying that that's what happened here because--sometimes more her attitude or a mutual discomfort and then, well, she's the boss.  Is the AD, any AD, finally more valuable that a coach?  We know who almost always wins the battle when hierarchy is involved.  This ain't the SEC.

[Gregory Sager]

A lot of you seem to want to keep reading between the lines of the Long firing, suspecting that he got canned because of a lopsided loss, or because of driving infractions, or something more sinister, rather than the school's stated reason (which is, of course, sparse in terms of details). But if the DePauw administration isn't lying, and he really was fired because of his negligence in fulfilling what the school required of him with regard to administrative duties, then the gender of his superior(s) strikes me as being a complete non-issue. His administrative responsibilities would've been spelled out very clearly in his contract and/or his job description. The school would not have fired him without clear proof that he had failed to fulfill those responsibilities as they were spelled out, or it would've left itself open to a lawsuit.

Contracts are contracts, and job descriptions are job descriptions. Men and women don't read them differently.

[nike]

Not at all saying gender had anything to do with any of this.  It just struck me as odd, (thank you Wabash Hokie) that the female AD says she conferred with her female upline regarding this manner and the decision was theirs.  It could very well be.  Just had not seen that before.  But my guess, just my opinion is that others, maybe the President or whomever were intimately involved in the final decision.  If Long did something terribly wrong, he should have been let go.  If not, however, firing him so soon in the season could make a bad situation worse.  0-2 is not a reason to fire someone.  Have good friends who played at U of Akron. Two one win seasons under the same coach the last two years, I believe.  Now that is a reason to let someone go.

[nike]

A lot of you seem to want to keep reading between the lines of the Long firing, suspecting that he got canned because of a lopsided loss, or because of driving infractions, or something more sinister, rather than the school's stated reason (which is, of course, sparse in terms of details). But if the DePauw administration isn't lying, and he really was fired because of his negligence in fulfilling what the school required of him with regard to administrative duties, then the gender of his superior(s) strikes me as being a complete non-issue. His administrative responsibilities would've been spelled out very clearly in his contract and/or his job description. The school would not have fired him without clear proof that he had failed to fulfill those responsibilities as they were spelled out, or it would've left itself open to a lawsuit.

Contracts are contracts, and job descriptions are job descriptions. Men and women don't read them differently.

Firing someone on a Sunday morning?  Right after a whuppin from Witt?  That is unusual.  Unless it was to give the new interim coach a full week to prepare for the next game.

[Li'l Giant]

Contracts are contracts, and job descriptions are job descriptions. Men and women don't read them differently.

In my experience you're lucky if both parties read the entire contract at all. 

[wally_wabash]

Firing someone on a Sunday morning?  Right after a whuppin from Witt?  That is unusual.  Unless it was to give the new interim coach a full week to prepare for the next game.

No Sunday morning truce in Greencastle, apparently.  Omar does not approve. 

[Gregory Sager]

I can think of a number of reasons why the firing was done on Sunday morning, nike:

1) Keeping it low-key for press reasons. Everyone who follows national politics knows that sensitive decisions and/or actions are often released to the media in the wee hours, on the weekend, or on a holiday. The less you want to draw attention to something in Washington DC, the more likely you are to try to hide it by doing it at a down point in the news cycle. It's a great idea that more and more organizations in the public eye (e.g., colleges and universities) may be trying to use.

2) Sparing Long the pink-slip perp walk. Few things in life are more humiliating than being told to clean out your desk in the middle of a work day and walk out of the building with a box containing your personal belongings. Firing him on a Sunday morning kept him from having to deal with his former officemates averting their eyes or issuing him uncomfortable condolences as he left the building for the last time.

3) Something happened on Saturday that was the last straw with regard to the real reason why he was fired. Yes, Long's team got blown out on the field on Saturday. But a head football coach is responsible for a million other things on game day besides running his team from the sidelines during the game itself. Since the reason given by DePauw for his firing was that he was not fulfilling his administrative responsibility(ies), whatever that means in particular, and since the school's spokespeople have each made it a point to state that this was an error or errors on his part that had been going on for quite some time, it's perfectly reasonable to guess that this fireable administrative offense was sort of a straw that broke the camel's back on Saturday ... a straw that had absolutely nothing to do with the scoreboard.

4) It gave the interim coach a full week to prepare for the next game. Your guess is a good one, nike.

I know that Division One athletics has trained college sports fans to always assume that wins and losses are the bottom line whenever a coaching change is made. But, as much as we all love a conspiracy, sometimes a coincidence is simply a coincidence. Yes, DePauw got hammered on the football field scant hours before the head coach was fired. But the school has explicitly stated that he was fired for reasons that had nothing to do with the outcome of the game. And it strikes me that if this was not the truth, and if he really was fired because the Tigers were not performing well on the field, then the lies told by the school's spokespeople to the media regarding the reasons for his firing could lead to a lawsuit by Long for wrongful termination. I have a hard time believing that the DePauw administration would set itself up for that sort of public and financial grief with its eyes wide open.

Occam's razor indicates that DePauw is on the up-and-up about Long being fired for administrative negligence.

[bashbrother]

What a Circus... as a Marketing and PR consultant to large corporations.....   I can't even say this is good theater...

Circus fits....  http://youtu.be/1D5Sa2Yq-2g  (notice the Tigers)

School fight song?

[smedindy]

Sunday morning firing in this situation is congruent to late-Friday bad-news dump.

[Li'l Giant]

No Sunday morning truce in Greencastle, apparently.  Omar does not approve.

Can Slim Charles coach?

[smedindy]

Well, I think we can all agree that this has distracted Wes from posting the North Region Fan Poll. That or some idiot, like me, putting CMU in the North instead of the South. You know, Pittsburgh, that Southern Belle of a city.