To those of us on the outside -- or, at least those of us who are enamored of Mike Leach -- it's been exciting and fascinating to consider the apparent fact that college football's most famous pirate could be headed to ACC Country.
As said in this space before, this conference needs a shakeup. Too much collegiality. Too much back-slapping and too little back-stabbing. Not enough of the sniping and snarling that you see in the SEC.
The infusion of Paul Johnson's arrogance at Georgia Tech certainly helped things. And if Leach ends up at Maryland, life in this conference will become infinitely more interesting.
(Now if we can just find a way to get Les Miles to leave LSU...)
But that's how some of us on the outside look at it. It's probably different right now if you're a Maryland fan.
Surely plenty of Terps backers are excited about the proposition of Leach's ship anchoring in College Park. Ralph Friedgen has done some impressive things at Maryland, but his presence at the place gives off the feel of a marriage that has irretrievably lost its spark.
All that said, and as much as I want to see Leach shaking things up in this conference, there's just something a tad unsettling about the way this is happening.
Isn't Friedgen a Maryland alumnus? Didn't he just win ACC Coach of the Year after guiding the Terps to a six-win improvement over last year's 2-10 disaster?
Didn't he win something like 31 games in his first three years at the place after taking over the wreckage left by Ron Vanderlinden?
Didn't his new athletics director, Kevin Anderson, say recently that Friedgen would return in 2011?
At some levels, you have to appreciate the swift manner in which Maryland's administration is addressing this situation. Once James Franklin took off for Vanderbilt, it gave them the opening they needed because they no longer had to worry about paying Franklin's large buyout by cleaning house.
Even though Maryland won eight games this year, some major issues remain. Of all the stuff I've read on this situation over the past few days, this article in The Baltimore Sun presented the most revealing summation of why this is unfolding the way it is.
The paper managed to speak with longtime Terrapin Club member Chuck Corcoran, who offered this perspective:
"Obviously he's looking at the financial part of it," Corcoran said. "Football is going to bring in $2 million less [than projected]. I don't know what that does for the bottom line, but that's probably a loss to the bottom line. You can't support 27 sports with basketball being the only sport making money."
Corcoran said having a lame-duck coach next season was likely the impetus for Anderson's decision.
"I think the bigger issue is that if Kevin Anderson is not going to renew Ralph's contract next year, why let recruiting linger in limbo for two years?" Corcoran said. "From a recruiting standpoint and a stability standpoint for the program, it makes sense to buy him out and move forward, turn the page."
Bingo.
This insight presents overwhelming evidence that, no matter what athletics directors and others say about commitment and all that, the ultimate say in a coach's job security is often dictated by the fans.
When large numbers of luxury boxes are sitting empty on game days, and when large numbers of fans come dressed up as aluminum, it's hard to ignore -- and often impossible to ignore.
Fan support, or lack thereof, has always been influential in the job security of coaches. But surely it's magnified in an era of rapidly escalating compensation for coaches, facilities enhancements and all that. Somebody's got to pay for it, right?
Nevertheless, there's still something odd and just not quite right about what's going on in College Park. As my friend Patrick Stevens points out, it's quite an extraordinary occurrence for a coach to be fired after receiving his conference's Coach of the Year award.
Much has been made in the last 24 hours about Ralph Friedgen's impending departure from Maryland despite winning the ACC's coach of the year award.
And much probably should, since it appears he is the first BCS conference coach to ever be fired after a winning a coach of the year away in his respective league.
The closest examples are what happened to Bill Curry (1989 Alabama) and Walt Harris (2004 Pittsburgh). Neither was especially pleased with the contracts offered to them, and both opted to leave for other jobs rather than remain on --- Curry at Kentucky and Harris at Stanford.
Overall, 14 coaches of the year in the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and Southeastern conferences have not returned before Friedgen. Eight took other college jobs, three took an NFL head coaching position, one became an athletic director, one retired and one --- Paul Amen of Wake Forest back in 1959 --- accepted a position as a bank executive.
Times do change.
This feels kind of like the Curry "departure" from Alabama after the '89 season. And Maryland doesn't have the excuse of being a football-mad school.
The cutthroat nature of the business has permeated even College Park.
So while the pirate's apparent arrival at the place is creating quite the buzz, seeing Friedgen walk the plank to make it happen kills some of that buzz.
LW
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