Why fire Willingham and give him what he wants?
by John Berkowitz on Oct 26, 2008 1:21 PM PDT
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PrintOK, where do you go exactly now if you are an 0-7 football team in a complete death spiral with a lame duck head coach?
Los Angeles of course to face the USC Trojans in the Coliseum.
Talk about throwing the Christians to the lions...this is going to be the least entertaining college football game in the long history of the Pac 10. The only way you could appreciate this coming game is if you are a S&M specialist! We are talking about 60 running minutes of humiliation without the honor of certain death at the end of the match.
In a normal universe Willingham would have been fired last season. Everyone knew including himself that he was over his head and had lost it. Only political maneuvering on the part of Todd Turner, the threat of NAACP involvement, and little advise from Bill Gates Sr stayed Mark Emmert's hand.
What we get for that intervention is a week by week death watch that is going to bury his head coaching career forever. Every day Tyrone prays for Scott Woodward to pop in the door to fire him and put an end to his torture. Every day it isn't going to happen as Mark Emmert and Scott Woodward have decided to let Tyrone die by his own hand instead.
It all makes sense. This season is totally lost and the football program is even farther behind from being respectable than it was in 2004. Why let in interim coach take the weekly abuse when you have Coach Willingham to kick around each week? If you don't like this guy you certainly don't want Woodward to fire him. Let him suffer stewing in the cruel soup he has made for himself till the end of the season.
Don't give Willingham the chance to pull the same type of crap his minions did for him on his way out the door at Notre Dame. He started the campaign yesterday by floating the comment that this was the most acidic position he had ever been in his life. He doesn't seem to get that he is totally responsible for this acidic situation. It was his acidic and lazy personality that got us here in the first place.
Don't fire him....the worst punishment you could give this guy is not letting him out of his contract early this year so he can go golfing in North Carolina. Let him wallow in the misery. Let all the stories come public about what a petty SOB he has been during his four year reign at Washington.
The gloves are officially off in every segment of the Husky community. Even announcer Bob Rondeau gave Willingham a tongue lashing in his post game interview. Dick Baird even called for his head and for the first time in his Dawgman journalistic career picked UW to lose a game. It is official, it is over, Tyrone has zero support from top to bottom at Washington.
That still doesn't mean he should be fired. A sympathetic firing is way to good a fate for a man like Willingham. Only last week he was trying to run one of the true freshman off the team by having him run endless sets of stairs during practice. The kids sin was that Willingham didn't feel he was Pac Ten material.
Even though Willingham offered him a scholarship last Spring he is trying to make the kid quit school before even his first semester is done. You have to wonder why a coach on the rocks would even bother with such a silly and dishonorable exercise? Is this truly a molder of men or a petty tyrant trying to fulfill one last vendetta on the way out the door?
Why fire a guy like that and give him what he wants? Let Tyrone continue to suffer and show him no mercy. Let him face the indignity of explaining each week why his team is among the worst in America in his fourth year at the helm.
Woodward and Emmert know exactly what they are doing!
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Agreed
Let the stain continue to sink in to Emmert and Woodward.
They are responsible for this continuing debacle and Emmert started it all with the hire of Turner and Willingloser.
Stain is the right word
All that really matters now is bringing in the right people to clean up this utter and complete train wreck!
First things first...IMHO
Woodward or someone in the AD should let the players know to hang in there. Things will be different next year instead of allowing Ty to run players off.
Jack
Are you serious?
I find this line of thought — also expressed by Nate at the PI — incredible. Woodward should do what’s best for the program over the long term, not what makes Tyrone Willingham’s life hardest. In fact, if Woodward believes firing Willingham is the best thing to do, and doesn’t do it for the reasons you guys suggest, then HE should be fired!
Get it together, guys, there are still chips on the table, and your suggestion is about throwing good money after bad. If Willingham should stay, then the reasons must include the interest of the program. Likewise, if he should go, it must be because the program benefits.
This reminds me of two years ago when people were calling for Willingham to start Felix Sweetman in the Apple Cup because… What the hell. I share the frustration that leads one to make statements of that kind, but you’ve got to have the maturity to remember what you’re really after: winning games. That requires recruiting players, and that’s not helped by a lame-duck coach grinding through the season to satisfy fans’ call for punishment.
Man up, Johnny. Think about the program.
Woody's call
It is written with a litte sarcasm.
I would love to see him gone, but it is Woodward and Emmerts call.
They would rather have him resign or simply wait till after the WSU game to avoid any negativity.
Fair enough
Okay, but at least acknowledge that balancing the benefits and costs of firing him now versus later is not trivial. You may disagree with whatever conclusion Woodward comes to, but there ARE arguments to be made either way.
Hmmmmm . . . oh, can't say that
Personally, I think he should’ve been gone BEFORE this season started. I also think he should be fired now; however, I understand the reasoning to make “his royal do-nothing A” continue to take heat rather than someone else. Why would anyone want to come to UW? This team is HIS! These are his recruits. He couldn’t coach his way out of a cardboard box!
Enough said. Fire him! He better not be back next year! He’s worthless and useless.
WOW
When Dick Baird predicts a Husky loss, and calls for a coach’s head, I just can’t put words to how bad that is. Good for Rondeau, another sign of how bad it is.
For a “molder” of young men, I haven’t been impressed with how he has handled any of the problem child’s. How do they do it in the military? They won’t get rid of a bad apples, they feel its their duty to make them better.
"Bow Down to Washington"
"Kick the tires and light the fires!"
Ty buries kids
Ty just buries kids.
EJ Savannah is a perfect example of a kid that needed help that Willingham ignored.
It's not about Willingham!
It’s about the Huskies, BrewskieTyger. Whether Willingham is worthless or not, whether he should have been fired last November, whether he’s been bad for the team up to now — all COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. The ONLY question should be: What’s the best way to maximize our wins in the future? And there’s an answer to that question (not mine, but a reasonable one, none the less) that says you should keep him around through the end of the year.
Great point. The only way to think!!!
"Bow Down to Washington"
"Kick the tires and light the fires!"
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