Brad Bohannon found a way.
In a business where college coaches who make termination-worthy wrongs receive grief after grief, as long as they deliver wins and championships, there is an inexhaustible supply of second chances, one's coaching career It is very difficult to destroy without repair.
The former Alabama baseball coach has done it, though. He's burned the half-million-dollar-a-year gig beyond recognition.
The gambling scandal that rocked the Crimson Tide's 33-16 team last week blackballed Bohannon's future in the game more thoroughly than any ncaa sanction. Alabama begins proceedings to fire Bohannon on Thursday official language that matches the take-out clause of his contract. linked by Bohannon to bets against his own team gambling regulator, Credible reporting placed him on a phone call with the bookie as bets were being placed.
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still not Solid evidence The connection between the wager and the decision to strip Alabama's best starting pitcher, Luke Holman, occurred shortly before the game in question, an 8–6 loss to LSU on April 28. The scratches that caused it – the players have not been made available to comment on the scandal – are left to say how we smell it.
And it stinks.
This news broke when I was on a brief vacation last week, hence the lateness of this writing, and it is no less so today.
Some of the relevant facts and details of this embarrassment are still unknown, but some blanks have not yet been filled in, and no case will be made for Bohannon anyway. Whether he was prepared to profit from the winning bet doesn't matter. Ultimately, whether Holman's back was really barking loud enough for him to pitch is not a question that would exonerate Bohanen as well. There are also unknowns that could uncover more rot. Was Bohannon the first to be caught associating himself with the bet against Alabama? Common sense says that it is impossible. For all this scandal may go on for years, and absent a conclusive investigation to the contrary, Bohannon may carry the depths of that rot to his grave.
What is known suggests that Bohannon betrayed his own players – people he recruited and sold into his leadership – in the darkest, most egregious way imaginable. More mistakes have happened to them than anyone in all of this. More than the fans, more than the UA administration, more than the gamblers who may inadvertently lose money in a tainted contest. Athletics director Greg Byrne has not disclosed what he said in the wake of the disaster, but his words weren't enough. It will not belong to anyone. The bond between a coach and an athlete is a special and unique one, and while that bond is often broken for many reasons, it has never been broken in such an abominable way.
No athletics director in his right mind, from Division-I to the NAIA, would go ahead and touch Bohannon. Even a high school AD would have some explaining to do. We're talking scorched earth here, the kind of career explosion that sends people into completely different, and far more low-profile, lines of work. Pro Baseball? Gambling is not tolerated there.
Bob Petrino has a second chance on tap.
Urban Mayor got it.
Hugh Freeze. Will Wade. George O'Leary.
The disturbance that all of these coaches had created for themselves was different for each, and of varying severity. They shouldn't be compared, but they all have this in common: another shot at another compound. However, none of his offenses interested him in losing his own teams games. One key difference between them at Bohannon? For one thing, they actually won enough to warrant the kind of clout that usually calls for a second chance at coaching.
Bohannon did not.
And maybe he didn't always want to.
Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23 and the Talkin' Tide podcast. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow on Twitter @chasegoodbread.
This article originally appeared on the Tuscaloosa News: Fired UA Baseball Coach Brad Bohanen's Betrayal Blows All Second Chances