Business decisions

 Wisconsin fired its football coach yesterday, five weeks into the season, three weeks after Nebraska fired its football coach, and three years after Paul Chryst's Badgers had won 10 or more games for the fourth time in Chryst's first five years.

This proves a few things.

One, that college football is a purely business enterprise whose priorities largely begin and end with the financial ledger.

Two, that past performance does not guarantee future employment.

And, three, that major football schools are more than willing to flush an entire season in order to secure a return to profitability. See: Purely business enterprise.

That there is no sentiment nor patience in what was initially imagined as a mere diversionary part of the college experience is a story decades old now, and there remains nothing revelatory about it. Offloading coaches before the season's barely begun only reinforces that reality.

At Wisky, Chryst won 67 of the 93 games he coached plus a Cotton Bowl, an Orange Bowl and three Big Ten West titles. The Badgers slipped to 4-3 in 2020, but rebounded to go 9-4 and beat Arizona State in the Las Vegas Bowl last year.

But this season got off to an awful start, with a loss to Washington State (4-1 now, with only a three-point loss to Oregon), a 52-21 humiliation to an Ohio State powerhouse that humiliates everyone, and a 34-10 loss to 4-1 Illinois on Saturday.

So the Badgers are 2-3 now, with more than half the season in which to improve. It's happened before, and not just at Wisconsin. And a whole lot more than just once.

But five games was all Wisconsin decided it could spare, even for a native son -- Chryst was born in Madison -- with a mostly sparkling track record. Which makes you wonder if there's something more going on here that management (oops, I mean "the administration") isn't saying out loud.

In any case, if this all sounds heartless to you, well, that's how the business world works, surprise, surprise. And this was a business decision.

Loyalty doesn't enter it. Never has.