Maryland Gets It Right and Fires Durkin

Every once in a while there is a story in the sporting world outside of Georgia football that is worthy of observing and commenting upon.

There are times when a football program gets it right, but only after getting it so completely and totally wrong as to forfeit every last shred of moral rectitude that they previously possessed.  This is one such time.

Were there not an actual death involved, this whole thing would be laugh-out-loud, bust-your-gut hilarious.

Alas, there was an actual death involved.

ICYMI:  Maryland had a player die during spring practice.  Jordan McNair, a 19-year-old offensive lineman, collapsed from heat exhaustion during a particularly brutal workout.  Coaches delayed–for up to an hour (!!!!!!!!!)–in getting him the medical attention he needed.  When help finally arrived it was too late.  McNair was taken to the hospital but he never recovered; two weeks later he died.

Following McNair’s death, allegations surfaced that head coach DJ Durkin, who was going into his third season, and strength/conditioning coach Rick Court, one of Durkin’s first hires when he got to Maryland, were running a toxic program.  ESPN aired a report in August in which players described the toxicity in excruciating detail–a culture in which shaming, bullying, intimidation and verbal abuse were the norm.  Court would routinely embarrass players, scream profanities at them, and throw food, weights–and in one instance, a trash can filled with human vomit–at them.  Basically it was tough love without the love.

The university launched two separate investigations, one into McNair’s death and the other into the toxicity of the football program.  They placed Durkin, Court, and a couple of other staffers on administrative leave for the duration of the investigations.

The results of the investigations came back last week.  Maryland fired DJ Durkin.  But not before reinstating him.  The Board of Regents oversaw the investigations.  They recommended that Durkin be reinstated, and reinstated he was.

The board lacks the authority to fire anyone at any university except the president, so they pressured president Wallace Loh into accepting their recommendations and reinstating Durkin.  (Loh had recommended that Durkin be fired but was overruled.)  So everyone got to stay.  Including Durkin.  Including AD Damon Evans, who had been director of football operations before being bumped up to AD last year and under whose oversight (or lack thereof) the toxic culture in the football program developed.  (Evans was last seen in these parts resigning in disgrace from the same role at UGA after a wild midnight ride through Buckhead finished with a pair of red panties in his lap and him facing a DUI charge.)  Loh complied, but not before delivering the news that he would be gone in June, at the end of the current school year.

Reaction to the reinstatement was swift and furious.  Students protested vociferously.  Fans and alumni blew up social media.  Prominent boosters issued statements excoriating the university and the Board.  Three players walked out of that first meeting/practice in which Durkin appeared and announced “I’m ba-aaack”.  With all this outcry, you had to sense that a course correction would ensue.  Sure enough, within 24 hours, Durkin was gone.

Matt Canada, the offensive coordinator, had been serving as the interim coach and will continue in that role.  At 5-3 and with a signature win over Texas in the season opener, he is making an argument for consideration as the permanent head coach.

The ESPN report was pretty damning.  The board report was not exactly exonerating either.  Though the board does not use the word “toxic” in their description of Durkin’s program, most adults who read it and see what was happening would call it toxic.

Yet that is not what the board saw.  Though they did express some concerns over Durkin’s management of the program and Court’s motivational tactics, in their estimation the real issue was that oversight in the athletic department was lax and they “failed to provide … Mr. Durkin with the tools, resources and guidance necessary to support and educate a first-time head coach in a major football conference.”

Say what?

This guy apprenticed under Urban Meyer, Will Muschamp, and Jim Harbaugh, some of the biggest names in the business–passed himself off to Maryland as being ready to step up to a head coaching role–and he needed an adult-education “Intro to Head Coaching 101” class to be successful in the job he’d pursued?  (Wonder what they teach in that class?  Do they go over how to talk up an underdog opponent in the media the week before the game?  How to not fall off the motorcycle while having an inappropriate relationship with an athletic department staffer?  How to handle the Monday morning presser after getting rolled by Alabama?)

The only explanation is that the board was so enamoured of Durkin, so blind to anything except winning at all possible cost (an all-too-common temptation in the world of college football into which way too many coaches and programs have fallen over the years) that they were willing to go on heedless of all possible common sense.  Even that beggars belief, because Durkin wasn’t doing much of that.  He was 10-15 in two years (5-13 in Big Ten play) including a loss in the Quick Lane Bowl in 2016.

What the board failed to see was that at this point, Durkin is basically damaged goods with no possible chance of success.  He could have returned, but he wouldn’t have had much of a roster.  What parent would send their son to play for a coach who let a player die on his watch?  Whose hand-picked strength coach routinely humiliated players by throwing food and weights and even a trash can filled with human vomit, at them?  At the very least, they should have seen this and cut their losses.

Credit to Loh for being the only player in all of this with even a shred of moral clarity.  When the story broke, he admitted that Maryland was responsible for McNair’s death.  When faced with pressure from the board to reinstate Durkin, he went rogue the next day and fired Durkin without the board’s approval.

No credit goes to the Board of Regents or to the University.  These leaders were charged with upholding the integrity, dignity, and honor of the University of Maryland.  They emerge from all of this without even a shred of integrity, having exposed the University to all manner of public shame and ridicule.