Report: Maryland trustees to meet on Friday to discuss future of DJ Durkin, others
Earlier this week, the University of Maryland announced it had “parted ways” with strength and conditioning coach Rick Court following the death of OL Jordan McNair earlier this offseason.
Now, the futures of coach DJ Durkin, AD Damon Evans and president Wallace Loh are up in the air, following an announcement late on Wednesday night.
According to reporter Brett McMurphy, the Maryland Board of Trustees has called a special meeting for Friday, which will reportedly include a discussion of removal or resignation of the parties mentioned above:
Maryland Board of Trustees calls special closed meeting Friday. Topics include “removal, resignation, employment, litigation, legal counsel or personnel matters” related to university’s impending lawsuit & possibly future of President Wallace Loh, AD Damon Evans & Coach DJ Durkin
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) August 16, 2018
Following details about McNair’s death being released by ESPN, a followup report painted the Maryland football culture as “toxic,” leading to even more scrutiny being placed on Durkin.
What happens next remains to be seen, but it appears we’ll have our answer by Friday evening.
Don’t see how Durkin keeps his job after all this. Not sure about the AD and college president.
Maryland is desperate, he’ll be back. Not saying it’s the right or wrong thing to do, but I don’t think they want to start over. The fact that they got rid of the S&C coach first suggests they have interest in retaining Durkin. He has a fall-guy; they’ll probably attribute this all to an anomaly and nothing else.
If it were only a matter of wins & losses, Durkin might deserve to keep his job, as it certainly seemed that he had that program trending upward. If the Maryland administration were focused only on that bottom line, he just might possibly be able to survive this scandal. But the more pertinent question is whether the program can continue to move forward under his leadership now that so much bad has gone public. Durkin has a track record as a good recruiter, but henceforth would parents be willing entrust their sons to play there? And there is also the matter of whether the university could live with the stain on its image that retaining him would entail. Add on top of that the certainty of lawsuits & litigation (which will likely drag on for several years), & the totality of it I think is just too much for Durkin to be able to survive.
Maryland may be desperate for athletic success, but occasionally one faces something more important than wins & losses. The obvious call will be to cut their losses now & start over.
They can cut their loses, start over, and put someone worse in charge(it’s Maryland, not Bama). Or they can conduct their investigation as they should. If the school officials are using confounding words like “deserve”, then they’re not conducting their investigation properly and are most likely jumping to negative conclusions that have not yet happened. The question is, can Durkin’s hand in this entire ordeal be measured, or is it hearsay and speculation from a few voices? Again, the S&C coordinator was let go due to him being directly linked to the situation (that can be measured-fact). Can Durkin claim he was oblivious, and do they have anything tangible to prove otherwise? They also need to be careful because Durkin can sue for wrongful termination if they aren’t sound in their investigation. Ducks better be in a row.