Football, Sports

Sports Law, Spaw, Lorts: Pushed Off the Team, This Coaching Career Is About to Die

In today's sports law column: Daron Roberts get sacked, the end of Bountygate drama (for now), and other sports figures in legal hot water.

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Mirroring the profession it covers, this website has whiplashed from ecstasy to agony since its inception, from bottles and models to pink slips and loan debt. Like a rap career in reverse, the site has gone from frivolity to gritty realism in the time it took the legal market to absolutely crater. And that’s okay, really. Train wrecks can be beautiful. Like a pictorial essay of Detroit. The idea behind this column was to talk about a world immune from such harrowing turns of event. To talk about a world filled with Peter Pan syndromes who won the genetic lottery and behave as if what is owed to them is much more than just the world. You know, like young Biglaw attorneys circa 2006.

But this hasn’t been the case, sadly. This space has been the province of pedophiles and et cetera and so forth, and I’ve gotten to cover none of the Entourage-like excess that I had hoped. Today? Today we have another unemployed lawyer. Another statistic. Another godforsaken down-in-the-mouth sad sack who can’t keep a job and makes me want to cry because if he can’t keep his job, what does that foretell for my own “career” if you can even call it that — because I really can’t, I mean, why did I even go to law school in the first place? Good God and baby Jesus, was that a mistake…

This guy’s a football coach with a J.D. from Harvard. Let’s talk sports….

COACH WENT TO A SCHOOL JUST OUTSIDE BOSTON

We covered the story of Daron Roberts previously, because everyone has covered the story of Daron Roberts, the Harvard graduate turned football coach, previously. It’s a good story and ESPN was there when he first started his journey, and Sports Illustrated made sure to notice when he was a coach with West Virginia. Was a coach with West Virginia. Was. Last week, Daron Roberts was vamoosed from the ‘Eers coaching staff like so many coaches before him. The folks over at College Football Talk had this to say about his firing:

In a release, head coach Dana Holgorsen confirmed that the cornerbacks coach is leaving WVU to (ahem) pursue other opportunities.

“I want to thank Daron for his time on staff at West Virginia,” Holgorsen said in a statement. “We wish him the best in his future endeavors.”

Given the depths to which WVU’s defense plunged this season, it was a given there would be some type of shakeup on Holgorsen’s staff. The 457 points given up in 2012 were the most in school history, with the 38.1 points per game “good” for 117th (out of 124 FBS teams) in the country.

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The West Virginia secondary was absolute garbage this year. Atrocious. Now, a coach can only do so much, especially a cornerbacks coach. In the pass-happy Big XII conference, defenses are going to get lit up on a regular basis. Daron Roberts was put out to pasture not because he isn’t a good coach, but because someone had to be put out to pasture after the embarrassment West Virginia put out on the field this year. Or maybe he was sh*tcanned because he’s a terrible coach. It’s hard to say.

Like the legal profession of late, some will win, some will lose. Some were born to sing the blues. Something something something on and on and on and on.

TAGLIABUE? MORE LIKE TAGLIA-YAY, AMIRITE PEOPLE???

The big news this week centered on the big ginger cretin Roger Goodell getting his comeuppance from his former boss and mentor, Paul Tagliabue. After months of acrimony, arrogance, moralizing, and threatened lawsuits, all of the New Orleans Saints players who had been suspended for Bountygate had their suspensions lifted. Here’s Roger Goodell defending his actions:

“We came to the same conclusion as far as the facts were concerned,” Goodell nevertheless said. “Clearly, there was a bounty program in place for three years, despite the denials. Clearly this is something that is considered conduct detrimental. Where I think Commissioner Tagliabue and I disagree is on the fact of discipline. I think when there’s conduct detrimental, there should be associated discipline with that. And that’s where we disagree. But I respect his decision and we’re moving on.”

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This sounds exactly like the Clinton impeachment, where the chattering class and politicians sat around discussing what high crimes and misdemeanors meant, ignoring the very obvious fact that they were all completely full of sh*t. Who cares what “conduct detrimental” is? You really want to rely on such an abstraction as your guiding principle here? Instead of, you know, common sense. That a bounty system initiated by a coach has no chance of being objected to by players who, since their infancy, have been taught blind obedience to coaches and all their many logic-defying precepts and spittle-flecked commands never occurred to you, you red-headed freak? That perhaps your anal reign over America’s most popular sport is starting to grate on every single human being possible? That the success of the NFL has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the players you hard-love into submission with your paternalistic pearl-clutching ways?

In happier news, Jonathan Vilma intends to go forward with his defamation suit against Roger Goodell.

RAP SHEET ROLL CALL

* An Oklahoma University football player was arrested for receiving four pounds of pot in the mail. Red River Highvalry.

* Former jacked wideout David Boston received a six month prison sentence for punching a woman last year. Terms were not disclosed.

* And finally, the Dallas Cowboys nose tackle who has been charged with intoxication manslaughter in his teammate’s death has been moved to the non-football injury/illness list. Seriously.

Holgorsen ‘parts ways’ with WVU assistant [CFT]
On bounty ruling, Goodell thinks “conduct detrimental” should result in discipline [ProFootballTalk]

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