Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Uncommon indecency

 You can go ahead and give Utah State a gold star this morning. And not the good kind of gold star, either.

No, sir. Utah State gets a gold star for "Most Appalling Cheap-Shot Firing For 2024." You're No 1, Utah State-ians!

This after Aggies women's basketball coach Kayla Ard had to announce her own dismissal last weekend during the postgame of Utah State's 80-49 loss to Boise State in the first round of the Mountain West tournament. Someone asked how she was going to rebuild after a disastrous 5-25 season, and Ard said she didn't know because she'd just coached her last game at Utah State.

Apparently she was informed she was canned a microsecond after the horn sounded. Or maybe she was told prior to that and Utah State just didn't bother announcing it, which frankly seems all kinds of weird.

 Either way, the school clearly hadn't informed anyone publicly yet, leaving Ard to do something she never should have been expected to do. It was classless and cruel.

Look, 5-25 is what it is. It's going to get any coach fired. But if you're Utah State, and Kayla Ard has (presumably) worked her tail off on your behalf, don't you think it's simple common decency to let her go in such a way that she retains a little dignity? Don't you think you owe her that much, instead of giving her a heapin' helpin' of uncommon indecency?

Apparently Utah State didn't think so. Apparently common decency is not a thing there.

And you know what? 

If you're a coach angling for a head coaching position, and you see the Utah State job is open, how do you look at that and think "Yeah, boy, that's the place for me"? How does the way it treated Kayla Ard not give you at least a little pause?

It sure ought to. And if you go ahead and apply for the position anyway, it ought to be the first thing you address in any interview process. 

Or so it says here.

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