Sorry; but, I disagree on two counts.
In summary a 19 year old boy died needlessly. It was not an accident, which I get can unfortunately happen in football and any sport. It was negligence by the U Maryland.
First, as a volunteer, youth coach, I have seen kids who are down on the field crying because someone pushed them, got stepped-on, missed a goal, etc. Nevertheless, I have to go through basic medical training to be able to identify potential concussion, cardiac, and heat related situations. If something unfortunate happens and it is discovered that I did not follow protocol, the town and I could be held accountable. That's at a town, amateur level. How a professional staff at U Maryland could not asses the difference between a football player dogging it and a football player in distress from heat stroke is beyond me and then not follow the protocol for close to an hour after is beyond comprehension.
Second, it is the AD's responsibility to provide the training and tools to ensure safety within each sport team and the coach's responsibility to ensure that his staff and players follow such. The culture that Durkin put in place and Court enforced in part led to ignoring basic health safety protocols and thus contributed to the player's death. Not holding the coach/leader for such is ridiculous. As a raised Catholic, I have seen how bad things can get when the leaders of an institution put the protection of the institution above all else, including the safety of the people it is supposed to serve.
It's not an accident in the sense that it's not an accident when a drunk driver kills somebody. That doesn't mean we should treat them differently than all the other drunk drivers.
It is my understanding that Durkin was not present at the fatal workout in question. That doesn't mean he's off the hook, but it's an important detail that too many people have glossed over for this reason: "culture" is a general term that is being applied in a limited and slightly arbitrary manner by the people who are consuming this story. Why doesn't culture apply to the AD or the president? Why doesn't it apply to the NCAA? What about the fans and the donors and the media?
These are macro questions that don't all need to be answered right this second, but they should help inform our reaction to a systemic calamity that will happen next time in a different way. Canning the coach might be helpful today, but ultimately it's the equivalent of giving us a fish instead of teaching us to fish until we decide to invest in a truly independent governing body.
In other words...Everything. Always. Comes. Back. To. The. NCAA. Every single thing about college sports that's unethical - whether it's paying players, or changing grades, or pushing them past their physical limits - is enabled and required by a cartel that people are all too happy to ignore. Yeah, a kid died this time, so people are less likely to quibble over the underlying bureaucracy that empowered Durkin to establish the toxic culture that he did. But they shouldn't. They really, really shouldn't. They need to see through to the real villains, the villains that have not been held responsible, if any of this madness is going to stop. It's not a matter of me liking Durkin or tolerating his behavior so much as it is me acknowledging that he's not that different. Hell, his first coaching job out of college was as a GA at Bowling Green under Urban Meyer. He had two different stints under Jim Harbaugh.
For better or worse, I probably have less in common with your average college football coach than just about anyone you'll find. I don't believe in fear tactics, I don't believe in intimidation, and I don't relate to any of the things they sell you about perseverance, accountability, toughness, sacrifice, or any of the other patriarchal building blocks they preach from. I'd probably last less than one day at a college football program, so my position has nothing to do with a lack of empathy for these kids and the barbaric things they've put up with.
I'd just like to see us at some point come to terms with the culture - not the culture of a football program, but the culture in America right now - that's eventually sucking everyone dry. The Durkin fellow ran his football team like he did because that's the way he was taught to do it, and the sad part is, this kid dying was nothing other than bad luck. Had it been some other kid, with slightly different biorhythms, we could be talking about a world where Maryland wins eight games and he jumps to take over at Michigan State or some other program where he's presented as a needed character guy who runs a tight ship. People will rationalize almost anything when they're winning and making money.
It's probably a good thing that they fired him now, because it was only going to become a bigger mess. I struggle to understand Loh keeping his job and I struggle even more to understand why he's been presented as some figure of virtue. In essence, he determined that Durkin needed to be fired, but then when he realized that he himself might have to, you know, actually sacrifice something (his job) to make that happen, he backed off. I don't get it. To the extent that Durkin was responsible for Court's conduct or lack thereof, the same is true of Loh with regards to Evans and by extension Durkin. It is indeed a
culture problem, the same problem that people here don't have the balls to address when it comes to the leaders of their school. It's a culture of waiting for an obvious problem to smack you in the face before doing something about it.
