A weird school year at Alabama just got weirder.

On Thursday, Alabama announced that it fired baseball coach Brad Bohannon just 3 days after ESPN reported that “suspicious wagering activity” led to the halt of bets on all Tide baseball games in Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

It was already a weird spring for Bohannon. His firing came weeks after he — along with Alabama team trainer Sean Stryker and pitching coach Jason Jackson — was sued by former Tide pitcher Johnny Blake Bennett for negligence related to an arm injury he suffered in 2019.

Yikes.

This wasn’t a performance-based firing in any way for an Alabama team that still has a shot to make the NCAA Tournament. The statement from Alabama confirmed that:

“Alabama director of athletics Greg Byrne announced he has initiated the termination process for head baseball coach Brad Bohannon for, among other things, violating the standards, duties, and responsibilities expected of University employees. Bohannon has been relieved of all duties and Jason Jackson will serve as the interim head coach. There will be no further comment at this time pending an ongoing review.”

Strange times, these are. To say that this school year hasn’t been the best for Alabama’s public image would be an understatement.

Let’s move beyond the fact that Alabama football was an overwhelming preseason national title favorite that had its worst regular season in over a decade, and for the sake of this argument, let this be the last time we mention that No. 1 overall seed Alabama basketball face-planted against San Diego State in the Sweet 16.

That’s sports. The bizarre nature surrounding 3 big revenue sports in Tuscaloosa goes beyond wins and losses.

Alabama basketball player Darius Miles was kicked off the team mid-season because he was arrested on charges of capital murder. It added insult to injury when Nate Oats repeatedly stuck his foot in his mouth for how he handled Brandon Miller’s alleged involvement in the tragedy. It wasn’t just that Oats refused to suspend Miller; it was that he claimed he was in “the wrong spot at the wrong time” after an investigator named Miller as the person who brought the gun that was used to kill 23-year-old Jamea Harris.

Oats, who apologized for his poor choice of words, looked like someone who hadn’t been prepped on how to handle such a sensitive issue wherein his star player was named as having a potentially pivotal role of an ongoing murder investigation.

It didn’t help matters that between Miles’ arrest and Oats’ admittedly regrettable comments, Byrne announced that the basketball coach received a lucrative contract extension that made him 1 of the 10 highest-paid coaches in America.

Optics haven’t been on Byrne’s side all year.

They certainly weren’t on his side when Nick Saban refused to suspend Jermaine Burton for striking a woman while walking off the field after the Tennessee loss, either.

Yep. Alabama messed that up, too.

Ah, now we’ve reached the part in this story wherein I’m reminded Saban has never made a mistake in his coaching career because he won 6 national championships at Alabama, and this entire “what’s going on at Alabama” is just some media narrative.

Sure, skeptic. If that sequence of events happened at Auburn, tell me you wouldn’t question the athletics department as a whole.

This all falls under Byrne. That’s reality when you’re in the position of power that he’s in. While you can argue that Saban answers to no one, there’s still a certain standard that an athletic director must uphold.

With Bohannon, Byrne made the move he felt was upholding Alabama’s standard.

We don’t know know if we’re going to find out any more specific details about what led to those states banning bets on Alabama baseball. All we know is that Luke Holman was a late scratch as Alabama’s starting pitcher on Friday night against LSU, and reliever Hagan Banks was given the nod “an hour before” first pitch (H/T AL.com). Per reporting from NOLA.com and ESPN.com, there was a large wager on LSU to win straight up and there was another that had the LSU-Alabama as part of a parlay. Both bets were placed at the BetMGM sports book inside Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati while the Reds were out of town (LSU won the game 8-6).

According to multiple reports, we also know that no Alabama players are believed to be involved in the betting probe:

The timing of Bohannon’s firing and the subsequent explanation would suggest there’s at least something going on here. What Bohannon’s exact connection remains to be seen.

Whatever that turns out to be, this has Byrne in a spot he hasn’t been in his 6-year tenure. Never before has there been a serious question about whether he’s the right person for the short- and long-term future of Alabama athletics. After the year that’s been, that’s no longer the case. How and if he can bounce back from this strange school year could define his time in Tuscaloosa.

Alabama athletics is in a much different place from when Byrne started, or even as recently as 2 years ago. Go back to March 2021. Alabama football just delivered one of the most dominant seasons ever. The baseball program was beginning a run to its first NCAA Tournament appearance in 7 years while the softball program was about to reach the semifinals of the Women’s College World Series. Alabama basketball had just pulled off a sweep of the SEC regular season and postseason titles for the first time since 1987.

Life was good in Tuscaloosa. It’s what prompted Oats to say after the SEC Tournament title that “we don’t have to be a football school or a basketball school. We can just win championships. We’re a championship school.”

It ain’t that simple for anyone. Even Alabama.