Five months and one day after Jordan McNair collapsed at a Maryland football practice, D.J. Durkin, the head coach who oversaw the system whose failure led to the offensive lineman’s death, was reinstated to his job. That decision was made over the reported protests of university president Wallace Loh, who didn’t mention Durkin’s name at a Tuesday press conference and was told he’d be fired if he didn’t follow the regents’ recommendations…

[One of the football program’s trainers] allegedly used homophobic slurs and threw everything from food to weights to vomit at players, while other unnamed coaches forced them to watch graphic videos of “serial killers, drills entering eyeballs, and bloody scenes with animals eating animals.”

***************

Chicago Trib:

[For the University of Maryland,] being guided by the memory of a 19-year-old whose death was wholly and completely preventable means that the football coach who oversaw a program built on — among other things — demeaning players should be welcomed back. So here comes the inconceivable: DJ Durkin, back on the sidelines…

[T]he University of Maryland — in its entirety — is delusional…

“Greetings, mothers of prospective Maryland football players. Come in. Have a seat. Let me flip on this video of animals disemboweling each other, just to get you in the right frame of mind. Oh, sorry, is there puke in that trash can? Allow me to fling it across the room. That should do it. Would you like a candy bar? No? I insist. Seriously. Eat this &$%@#! candy bar!!!!!!!! Or else!!!!!!!!!”

… That DJ Durkin remains the football coach at the University of Maryland defies common sense and common decency. That Damon Evans remains his boss as the athletic director means Maryland has installed a leader who is defined more by his mistakes than his successes. And the entire university system has exposed itself.

************

It’s all chaos, degradation, and continued danger, and the whole world is watching. Take a look at today’s Google News page for the University of Maryland.

A Forbes writer gets it right: Unless you’re Clemson and Baylor and Nebraska and the other total-football-and-nothing-else schools, you’re eventually going to find yourself deep in the same sort of shit Maryland’s in right now.

**************

The hot mess in all its glory.

Two things almost for sure:

1. Durkin will go.

2. This entire episode will end up costing the university at least ten million dollars, plus endless further costs arising from multiple lawsuits.

****************

Headline on this one: IN AN AGE OF REFORM, MARYLAND SAYS IT’S FINE WITH SLIME

President Loh …. advocated that Durkin be dismissed. Instead it’s the president who’s leaving. The coach, beggaring belief, gets to stay. Unknown is whether he can find anyone willing to play for him, now or ever again.

****************

The Maryland head football coach, who in the very best-case scenario, was so incompetent at overseeing a program that he allowed it to turn into one so toxic and so physically dangerous to players that it killed one, but who was so competent at instilling a culture of “fear” that players and subordinates were too afraid to speak up with their concerns, was reinstated on Tuesday, along with everyone else who bears responsibility for Jordan McNair’s death.

… As for why the board of regents appears so committed to Durkin, well, look no further than his contract. The coach is in the third year of a six-year contract that pays him about $2.5 million annually. If he were to be bought out, it would cost the school $5 million. If he were to be fired without cause, it would cost 65 percent of his remaining salary, or, again, about $5 million. If he were to be fired with cause, there would likely be an expensive and protracted legal battle. It is no wonder, that at just about every program, a football coach has more job security than a university president: He makes more money.

Maryland football does not turn a profit. It had run, for years, at a multi-million-dollar deficit, but believed that moving to the Big Ten would make it the money-printing machine it always believed it could be. But so far, by all reports, it’s barely breaking even, and has committed to years of serious expenses paying off its fancy new football facilities. The board of regents appears to believe the program cannot afford to take the hit of paying off Durkin to leave, and the likely accompanying loss in donations from insane boosters, on top of the inevitable lawsuit from McNair’s family. The regents announced yesterday, in so many words, that doing the right thing would cost too much money.