Shooting An Eagle: Why Jagodzinski Was Fired And Why The Jets Can't Hire Him

I am taking this post in two different directions; but in the interest of brevity I will make sure that both directions are short and both lead to the same conclusion…

The New York Jets should not hire Jeff Jagodzinski.

Direction 1: Why did BC Fire him?

Jagodzinski was fired after two years as the head coach of BC. In those two years he made it to the ACC championship game twice and also made Matt Ryan the most sought after QB in the 2008 rookie class.

I guess what I’m trying to say is; Jagodzinski did nothing but succeed at BC. There is absolutely no way that meeting the Jets caused this firing.

I call it the Jermaine O’Neal rule. Jermaine O’Neal destroyed his knee by awkwardly sliding as he punched a Detroit Pistons fan in the face. The Pacers however didn’t want that to be his defining image, so they swiftly changed the cause of injury to “playing basketball.”

There is absolutely no way that a head coach who won 20 games in the last 2 years would just be dismissed for interviewing for another job…I don’t even care if it’s a Catholic school. For this to have happened, Jagodzinski must have been a world class prick.

His most recent actions would indicate that as well. Jagodzinski, who was apparently very close with Boston College AD Gene DeFilippo, did not even call him to let him know when he would be interviewing with the Jets.

There has to be some other reason why he was fired. There is no way a job interview led to his canning, or else 90% of America would not be employed. Which leads me to…

Direction 2: Nobody enjoys sympathy play.

So we’ve all been there. There is a girl (or guy) sitting across from you telling you how miserable they are and how their romantic lives are in the crapper. You know what needs to happen, even if you don’t want to do it. You put your arm around this individual and then proceed to have dumb emotionless sympathy play.

Here’s the problem. The Jets might be the only team dumb enough to turn this situation into Jeff Jagodzinski mercy play. The Jets need more than a successful college coach right now. This rings especially true for a Jets team that in the past has experimented with college coaches, and failed miserably.

I don’t know very much about the history of Jagodzinski, but I really don’t need to. I know that he is nowhere near being the most qualified candidate for the Jets job.

If the Jets do end up hiring him, I can’t help but think that it will be very similar to the case in Direction 1. There is more than appears on the surface.

It’s the same thing that you tell yourself the next morning when you wake up next to them, hitting yourself in the face over what you just did. It’s okay to feel bad for them. But once you screw them, you screw yourself too. Because then you are in for years of emotional strain.