It’s a big-money business and big money has changed how sports organizations do business.
This season Girardi led a young team–aptly nicknamed ‘The Baby Bombers’–to the ALCS, beating the mighty Indians along the way.
I wasn’t surprised by the news that the Yankees decided to part ways with Joe Girardi. The ax is falling more frequently these days on otherwise “successful” field bosses. Girardi is a case in point.
He won nearly 1000 games in 11 years as a manager (one season with the Marlins); claimed a World Series title with the Yankees (2009); and ranks 6th all-time in total wins for a Yankees’ manager.
Why is Girardi gone? Girardi and Yankees’ management didn’t have a sustainable relationship. Yankees’ broadcaster, Michael Kay, thinks the key factors were player relations (not a Girardi strong suit) and analytics (ditto). (Watch Kay’s interview with Bob Ley on ESPN’s Outside the Lines.)
But beyond the specifics in Girardi’s termination, I think something broader and thematic is at play. I believe managers and head coaches are expendable and replaceable in ways I’ve not seen previously. It’s not unusual to find coaches out-of-the-loop when it comes to club decisionmaking.
Want an example? Watch the Jets’ Todd Bowles learn about a team trade … from the media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RxdHM5_OmY&app=desktop
A tell-tale sign is the personality profile of today’s high-profile managers and head coaches. Larger-than-life personalities–bombastic and full of character–are generally a thing of the past. Not one is a field general today in either MLB or the NFL.
Yeah, some still exist–like Saban and Calipari in college sports–but giant-like personalities are few and far between. That’s not the way it used to be. There were guys like Tommy Lasorda, Casey Stengel, and Earl Weaver in baseball, and Woody Hayes, Bear Bryant, and Bo Schembechler in college football. Add Bob Knight and Vince Lombardi. The list is long.
What’s going on? There has been a paradigm shift. Today, GMs and university presidents prefer managers/coaches who are willing and able to follow a game plan authored by the front office. The execs want their game plans implemented immediately, consistently, and without variation or noise. It’s called compliance. Larger-than-life, independent-minded, outspoken managers/coaches are distractions.
Bo and Woody, an era past (photo, Pinterest.com)
It’s not as though what I’ve just asserted is totally new. Think about how George Steinbrenner ran the Yankees with a managerial revolving door. But what was more episodic before is more pervasive today. What accounts for the change? Many more pro clubs and nearly all the major college programs have the money to do just about whatever they want.
Pro and major college sports are big business. Big business means big money. Big money means flexibility in management decision making. Flush revenue streams, including lucrative media rights, make it possible.
Big money has changed how business is conducted.
One of the best examples is mid-season firings in major college football. What used to rarely happen is commonplace today. Schools would ride out the season and make changes then. But the nature of recruiting, fan/alumni impatience, and brand management have rewritten that script.
Once a few schools started firing head coaches in mid-season, it began looking “normal.” Other schools soon followed. The paradigm shifted. The Washington Post commented on that shift in a 2015 article entitled. College football’s new normal: the mid-season firing. “There’s a compelling argument that midseason firings might be the new normal in the high-stakes game of Power Five football,” Patrick Stevens wrote.
And a reality it has become. And–just like in Girardi’s case–the separation list includes big names–Les Miles (LSU) in 2016, Charlie Weiss before that (2014, Kansas), Jim McElwain (Florida) just this week, and Gary Anderson (Oregon State) a few weeks before that.
Former KU head coach, Charlie Weiss (photo, SI.com)
Money enables it. Managing big buy-out packages, which used to be a showstopper, doesn’t stand in the way these days.
And the excessiveness is unbelievable.
Consider this. By the end of 2016, Charlie Weiss had been paid nearly $25 million by Kansas and Notre Dame NOT to coach football.
Florida is negotiating with McElwain regarding how much he’ll be paid in relationship to his contractual buy-out of nearly $13 million. And we’re talking about Florida, a school that’s still paying McElwain’s predecessor, Will Muschamp (now the South Carolina HC), $1.575 million NOT to coach in Gainsville. And just to show how the dominos connect: UF and McElwain are still making separate payments —totaling $7 million–to McElwain’s former school, Colorado State — the school McElwain left early (contractually) to coach UF.
See what big money can do?
The interesting thing about McElwain’s firing is that–like Girardi–he had success. Edward Aschoff and Mark Schlabach documented that record on ESPN.com: “He (McElwain) has a 22-12 record and won the SEC Eastern Division in back-to-back seasons, becoming the first SEC coach to make it to the SEC championship game in each of his first two seasons. His 19 wins entering the 2017 season were the second most by any SEC coach in 2015 and ’16. Those 19 wins tied Steve Spurrier for the second-most victories by a Florida coach in his first two seasons.”
Courtesy: Frontiersman
It wasn’t good enough. The Florida AD made that clear. There were reasons, good reasons–institutional reasons–to make a move. Florida could make a move, just like the Yankees could, and Florida made that move.
The irony is that — in so many cases — careers don’t end for jettisoned managers and coaches. Most will settle elsewhere … IF they keep their mouths shut.
Girardi will be a good manager for some team. McElwain will coach again.
But what bothers me is well-expressed by Patrick Stevens in his 2015 article: “The time for arguing for whether … /it’s/ … right or wrong is probably long since gone.”
He’s right. What I’ve just described is accepted uncritically as a way of doing business–even when that way of doing business should be questioned. Case in point: a public university, Florida, spends millions and millions on its head coaching carousel … because it can.
The unasked question: Should it? (Silence ….)
