Jim Tomsula has been Erickson’d, Nolan’d and Singletary’d, the 13th coach to be fired by a team owner preparing to host a Super Bowl. That’s more than a 25 percent failure rate, and a sign that owners can organize a gigantic party for their peers and still have an office vacated in no time flat.
But now that Tomsula has been sacrificed on the altar of Jed York’s inability to exorcise Jim Harbaugh’s ghost, he will be in decent company. From Tommy Prothro, considered one of the pre-eminent offensive thinkers of his era, through Hall of Famer Hank Stram, rural icon Bum Phillips, the roaringly cantankerous Buddy Ryan, Alabama godhead Nick Saban and television icon/professional character Jon Gruden, the Super Bowl experience is littered with those who quit, fired or were just eased out for being contraindicated to the owners whom they served.
This, and $10.5 million, will keep Tomsula warm at night while he considers the real value of being a good soldier to a general who is lousy at warfare.
[RELATED: Tomsula last man to find out 49ers gave him the ax]
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The results are in, and the best team against the line this was . . . A.J. McCarron’s Cincinnati Bengals. The worst was Marcus Mariota’s Tennessee Titans, the best against the total were the New York Giants, and the worst (and subsequently the best bet on the board if you had to bet them every week) the Atlanta Falcons, who finished a steamingly bad 2-14.
And our less-than-beloved locals? The essence of mediocrity. The Raiders were 8-8, the 49ers 7-9. Maddeningly inconsistent to the end.
Oh, and in case you’re feeling a case of the smugs coming on, your fantasy team was horrible this year. Trust us. We know.
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Black Monday has been extended to an entire this week, as you know, and though Chip Kelly was the first to take it upside the head, Cleveland’s Mike Pettine took general manager Ray Farmer with him as owner Jimmy Haslam showed his usual patience. Johnny Manziel, who clearly has a larger alcohol problem than just being a young’un can cover, is likely to be freed as well, to become someone else’s Instamigraine.
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Thad Matta, the double-starched-and-buttoned-down Ohio State basketball coach, stood behind his forward Marc Loving’s postgame interview Sunday and said, “Heisman” several times in an obvious middle-fingered homage to the Stanford dimwit who kept yelling it during Christian McCaffrey’s interview after the Rose Bowl.
We say dimwit because we are more charitable than Deadspin, which came out in favor of interview decorum by naming the loutish investment guy/carny barker as “Stanford S---head.”
He has been Internet-identified, but that’s not good enough for us. We just know that Deadspin rarely comes out in favor of decorum, so he must indeed be as it describes him. Maybe he can get it monogrammed on its shirt cuffs.
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The Minnesota Vikings passive-aggressive’d their longtime mascot Ragnar (or as it is known around here, “Yorked”) out of the organization, leaking among other things that he was greedy, so he promptly became a Packer fan.
This, and the fact that they lost to the 49ers in September, should chasten them despite beating Green Bay and bulling their way into the playoffs. It won’t, but damn it, it should.
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And finally, here’s to Jim Tomsula, who joins the pantheon of fired York coaches. He is the sixth, or five less than Eddie DeBartolo, who fired Monte Clark, Pete McCulley, Ken Meyer, and Bill Walsh – Walsh about eight different times.
Happy days.
