It's Never the Owners' Fault. Just Ask Them.

It's Never the Owners' Fault. Just Ask Them.
January 1
New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden
"Just as we were getting over a string of head-coach firings in the N.F.L., the stunning news came out of Denver on Tuesday that the Broncos' president, Pat Bowlen, had fired Mike Shanahan.

Bowlen walked into Shanahan's office and, in the course of a five-minute conversation, ended a 14-year marriage.

Why? After all, they had made pretty good music together, winning two Super Bowls. Perhaps Shanahan had become too entrenched. Perhaps Bowlen, like Jerry Jones when his Dallas Cowboys had Jimmy Johnson, wanted his franchise back.

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"After giving this careful consideration, I have concluded that a change in our football operations is in the best interests of the Denver Broncos," Bowlen said in a statement Tuesday.

A day later, Bowlen was teary-eyed at his news conference as he discussed Shanahan's dismissal. But all these news conferences have the same feel: gloom with just a tinge of excitement about the execution.

Once, just once, I'd like to hear an owner call a news conference to make the following announcement: As the quarterback of this franchise, I realize that I've made a number of bad reads. I've held the ball too long and taken some bad sacks. We are where we are today because of my bad decisions. I'm going to make a good decision today. Effective immediately, I am firing myself as owner.

This is a dream, of course.

The reality is that team owners place the blame for failure everywhere except in the owner's suite. That's one of the perks of being an owner: you can fire the coach in midseason, make folks push other folks overboard, make employees take the fall for your frailties.

They do this with impunity. Owners are, as B. B. King astutely points out, paying the cost to be the boss.

Before the season, the Jets' owner, Woody Johnson, called Eric Mangini one of the great up-and-coming coaches of our time and said he would be back in 2009.

Four months later, he fired Mangini. I know; that was then, this is now.

As the former coach Bum Phillips is often quoted as saying, "There's two kinds of coaches, them that's fired and them that's gonna be fired."

Shanahan's firing brings to seven the number of coaches who have been dismissed since the 2008 season began. This week, Romeo Crennel of the Cleveland Browns, Rod Marinelli of the Detroit Lions, Mangini and Shanahan were all axed."
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