There's a tendency to let raw emotions cloud better judgement.
I've been struggling with that over the last 24 hours, to be honest with you. See, when I found out that Randy Edsall had decided to leave Uconn for the (greener?) pastures in Maryland, I was perplexed. All that hard work spent building a program in Connecticut from the ground up, all to take a job at......Maryland? Miami, I could see. Michigan? Of course. Heck, even some second-tier SEC school, like Mississippi State would be an easy choice. But, Maryland? When, exactly, did I miss the memo that Maryland is a big-time college football school?
So, needless to say, I was taken aback.
But, what sent from perplexed to fuming was the way in which Edsall decided to leave.
The man who preached responsibility and owning up to one's actions, the head coach that had dismissed several players for conduct he found unbecoming during his years at Uconn, had slunk away in the middle of the night, too cowardly to look his players in the face, too selfish to even inform his assistant coaches that a move was at hand.
So, for the past 24 hours, I have been less than generous when it comes to Edsall.
"He wasn't a good in-game coach anyway."
"How many really good players Edsall scouted went to other Big East schools? It shows he wasn't a very good recruiter."
"He got too much credit for the success of Uconn anyway. The school, and its committment to the program, deserves the most praise."
Those are the thoughts that have been filling my head. When someone leaves, and proves himself to be very different than the person you believed them to be, admitting there was something good, important about them is virtually impossible.
And, quite frankly, it's unfair.
Edsall deserves all the credit he has received for building the Uconn program. He recruited lesser-known players and coached them up. Yes, he found "diamonds in the rough," but his brilliance was turning okay players into really good players, just by sheer will. He had them buying into a system, into a common cause, and he knew how to put them into the right situations to succeed.
During his Uconn career the program never once experienced a humiliation on par with so many others in college football. There were no Cam Newtons' being pimped by their father to the highest bidder. There was no Carolina booster problems, where money seemed to be flowing like a raging river after a long winter thaw. Sure, there were incidents where students got out of hand, made mistakes, and they were most often ejected from the program, but there was nothing that happened that violated our collective sensibilities. Forget "NCAA Violations," which are so numerous, ludicrous, and hypocritical in nature they mean nothing. Edsall's program never once stepped over a line that the common fan could understand.
Because of that, today should have been a amicable, if not emotional, separation.
Instead, it is a nasty divorce in the making.
Again, this has nothing to do with Edsall leaving. All of us can have our opinions on whether he should have taken a lateral move in Maryland but that's his choice. This is about yet another coach proving that the principles he preached were imperative for both a football career and a successful life, principles he demanded from 18-22 year old men, principles that, when violated, resulted in dire consequences for the unfortunate athlete, were never more than words to Edsall. Once the time came for him to be more than just the preacher but the practitioner, he ignored his lessons and did what was best for old number one.
There is no excuse for Edsall's actions. He could have told his team right after the game. He could have told his coaches that he was thinking about leaving. He could have made sure that young men who had followed him, believed in him, counted on him, wouldn't learn of his departure through Twitter and ESPN.com. It would have been difficult, but being a man means doing things that are difficult and uncomfortable. Sure, the players would have been mad, but he owed them the opportunity to vent, if that's what they wanted to do.
Even more egregious is that, when Edsall finally did call his players, he grouped them together on a conference call, about 40 of them or so, made them wait a half hour as he readied himself in his new home in Maryland, then had the gaul to say that the reason he cowardly ran to Maryland without explaining himself was because the job had "just come up." If Edsall had any respect for his players or his former university, he would have thought of a better excuse than that, only hours after losing the Fiesta Bowl, this opportunity popped up out of thin air. It doesn't happen that way.
Though evidence was not necessary, Desmond Connor from the Hartford Courant is reporting that Edsall had been in talks with Maryland about a contract for weeks. Doesn't sound like a spur of the moment thing to me.
Where does the program go from here?
Well, perhaps some of this is sour grapes, but let me suggest that both Edsall and Uconn had run its course with one another. Edsall was a master program builder, but he was a poor in-game strategist and only a decent recruiter. Uconn needs both, now, to take a step forward, and Edsall was never that guy. The program is built, and Edsall can be proud of that for the rest of his life. I don't know how many men could have done what he did. But, building a program and bringing it to the next level are two different things.
Has Edsall left the program in good enough shape to find such a coach? The next few weeks will tell that tale. Rumors have already begun, and some of the names are quite interesting. NFL coaches such as just-fired Cleveland Browns coach Eric Mangini and Dolphins coach Tony Sparano, both Connecticut natives, have been mentioned, as has Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride. Then, high-profile college coaches Rich Rodriguez and Mike Leach, who were once hot commodities but are now looking for second chances, have been rumored as being possibilities.
Would any of those men really be interested in setting up shop at Uconn? Would former NFL coaches really see Storrs as a comfortable landing ground? Would Leach or RichRod see Uconn as a legit opportunity at redemption? I have no idea. They are simply rumors right now.
But, whoever it is has one single job: prove that Randy Edsall's graceless dismissal of Uconn was unwarranted and find a way to have more consistent success over the next several years than Maryland.
Shouldn't be so hard to do.
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