At this point, it is probably easier to list who the Houston Texans have not fired:
Assistant head coach/defensive line Bill Kollar.
Also out of a job: Miami offensive coordinator (and former Texas A&M head coach) Mike Sherman.
The latest episode of “American Experience”, which is airing tonight on most PBS stations (7 PM on KLRU, with repeats at 1 AM and 3 AM) is an adaptation of Deborah Blum’s The Poisoner’s Handbook
Legendary former Houston Oiler Mike Munchak, who went on to coach the Tennessee Titans for three seasons, was fired today.
He was 22-26; the team finished 7-9 this year.
Also:
Now that Bill O’Brien has taken over, what’s going on?
Answer: he fired everybody just as hard as he could go. He fired Wade Philips and he fired Rick Dennison, and he fired some people that he didn’t even know.
Seriously: Wade Philips is gone as defensive coordinator. Rick Dennison is gone as offensive coordinator. Quarterback coach Karl Dorrell is gone. Defensive backs coach Vance Johnson is gone.
Reports from elsewhere say everyone is going to be fired before the day is out.
Musical hattip:
Gerhard Becker has pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and been sentenced to serve one year in jail. With time served and time off for good behavior, it seems likely he will go free in six months.
I’ve written about this case previously. For those who don’t recall: Becker was an architect who remodeled a home in Hollywood Hills. After the final inspection, and after having lied to the inspectors, Becker installed fire pits designed for outdoor use inside the home. The home eventually caught fire, and Glenn Allen, a firefighter with the LA Fire Department, was fatally injured while fighting the fire. Allen’s death resulted in the charge against Becker.
More “we’re just not feeling the clever this week”. Might as well just open the box. After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
The lawsuit by Alexander Calder’s heirs against his former dealer has been dismissed.
In a decision dated Dec. 23, Judge Shirley Werner Kornreich wrote that “all of these allegations are so patently inadequate that the court can only conclude that they were brought solely for the purposes of harassment or embarrassment, without any consideration of their legal sufficiency.”
The judge also invoked the statute of limitations, writing that the plaintiffs were trying to litigate issues that stretched back “decades without any personal knowledge or contemporaneous records, where nearly all of the people who had personal knowledge of the facts are dead.”
(I expect to have a second legal update later today; I’m just waiting on events.)
I wasn’t all that wild about what the NYT did with this year’s “The Lives They Led” obituary roundup.
But this, this is a swell article:
One aspect of this that fascinates me: the Coast Guard’s use of computers in search and rescue.
Carol Ross, head coach of the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, was fired yesterday.
Well, actually, she was laid off. Along with her staff. And the entire front office staff.
And the team’s current owner has said that they are “no longer in a position” to continue with the team.
(* Offer not valid outside of New York City.)
I’m not sure I understand the point of this article. Ostensibly, it is about the supposed economic impact on the neighborhood businesses of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” closing.
But even a full house at the 1,930-seat Foxwoods, the biggest Broadway theater, is just a drop in the bucket of the roughly 400,000 people moving through Times Square daily at this time of year.
And it can be hard to determine just where audience members for “Spider-Man” — some 89 percent of whom are from out of town, according to the show’s most recent research — have been spending their dollars, though some businesses popular with tourists seeking a classic Broadway experience say the show’s absence will be felt.
So it doesn’t seem like the NYT has any way to quantify the impact, just a bunch of anecdotes from businesses in the neighborhood. Some of them expect reduced business, others say they expect people (especially actors) to keep showing up. Is there a point?
Strippers. Always with the strippers.
Is that $1 million from each club, or $1 million total? And is it just me, or is there something odd about private businesses giving money to the police department to enforce the law?
This is your official Monday after the end of the season coach firings post. I’ll try to update this during the day as coaches are let go.
Starting at the beginning: the Browns didn’t even wait for Monday. Rob Chudzinski was fired last night after one season.
Yeah, they finished 4-12, but I kind of feel like Chud was being used as the scapegoat for years of bad decision making by the previous management of the Browns. Really, one season? A season in which you traded away a previous first round draft choice (who turned out to be a bust)? I smell a scapegoat cooking.
Edited to add 1: Looks like Mike Shanahan’s firing as head coach of the Redskins is now official, as opposed to merely speculative.
Edited to add 2: Leslie Frazier out in Minnesota. 21-33-1, and the Vikings were actually a playoff team last year. It does seem like most of their games this year were competitive until near the end, and I don’t think Frazier was the problem with this team. You know, the Texans could probably do a lot worse than Frazier…
Edited to add 3: Stepped away for a little while to run some errands. While I was out:
Greg Schiano out as head coach at Tampa Bay, along with general manager Mark Dominik. Schiano was 11-21 over two seasons. Perhaps now he can return to what he really loves; beating up middle school children for their lunch money.
Jim Schwartz out in Detroit. Also out: offensive coordinator Scott Linehan and recievers coach Tim Lappano. Schwartz was 29-51 over five seasons, and actually took Detroit to the playoffs once. Once.
Also, it looks like the Redskins are engaged in a major housecleaning: eight of Shanahan’s assistants are gone as well, including offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan.
I’m going to say “yes”.
I’ve seen rumblings that Cleveland plans to trade Bynum, but: