Now that college football’s regular season is over, athletic directors around the country have broken out their firing sticks. How quickly yesterday’s hot young coach becomes today’s old news, the man fans can’t wait to be rid of. 

Hey, it happens.  Who among us hasn’t felt the wrath of The Man before?  When I was working for a landscaping company in high school I had a small incident with a truckful of manure and a roadside ditch.  It’s not fun to shovel crap and get fired in the same day, let me tell you.  Remember Back to the Future 2?  I was the only one in the theatre who didn’t laugh at Biff when he got that manure dumped on him.  But I digress.

There’s a little bit of difference between losing a high-school job and a $1 million a year pressure-cooker college coaching gig.  It happens all the time, though.  This season alone, Ron Zook got canned at Florida, Tyrone Willingham was handed his marching papers at Notre Dame and David Cutcliffe got the boot at Ole Miss.  That’s not to mention Gerry DiNardo’s ouster from Indiana or Buddy Teevens’ dismissal at Stanford.  And this is not a complete list, by any means.  Suffice it to say, ‘tis the season to freshen up the resume.

So here’s the Average Joe Official Assessment of each situation.  We’ll start with Florida’s hiring of Urban Meyer, because it affects not only Gator fans but the Notre Dame mess too.  It’s a great move for Florida.  Meyer is going to make $2 million a year for seven years, and if he can make the Gators play like his Utah team played, he’ll be able to stick around as long as he wants.  Zook didn’t leave a bare cupboard at Florida, not by any means.  His two recruiting classes were highly-ranked, and quarterback Chris Leak will be around for two seasons for Meyer to build on.  It doesn’t take the best recruiter in the country to get talent to Gainesville, and the young, energetic Meyer should do well.  This is a blockbuster hire for Florida, especially the way they stole Meyer right out from under Notre Dame’s nose.

Which brings us to the Fighting Irish.  That may be a very telling moniker now that Plan B is in effect.  Basically, Willingham got the ax because Notre Dame didn’t want to miss its golden opportunity to get Meyer.  Now that Meyer is no longer available, you can be sure there will be some nasty infighting among Irish faithful.  This is the equivalent of dumping your girlfriend because you want to go out with that cute chick in your science class, then getting turned down by her for some jock.  Except in this case, you don’t just get laughed at in the halls of your high school, you get blasted by every talking head in the national media.

Notre Dame’s Plan B isn’t very clear right now.  Most believe there wasn’t one in place.  Now that the Irish have been passed over by Meyer, it’s anybody’s guess who will wind up in South Bend.  It’s a demanding job with some definite hurdles to overcome, but it’s still one of the most prestigious coaching jobs in the country, and Notre Dame will have some options.  Keven White, the athletic director, had better make a good hire.  After all, he is the same guy who presided over the George O’Leary resume disaster three years ago.

Ole Miss, meanwhile, has gotten as much heat or more than Notre Dame about dumping a fairly successful coach.  Cutcliffe did a pretty good job over his first five years, but his sixth was an unmitigated 4-7 disaster, and when he refused to make changes following the season, he was canned.  The national media has presented a united front in criticizing “poor little Ole Miss” for not knowing its role and being happy with 7-win seasons with a few losers mixed in.  To hell with that, I say.  The Average Joe has never seen such concerted opposition to a program attempting to move up in stature.  I’m all for a new level of commitment to football excellence, and I’m puzzled why so many pundits seem righteously outraged by Ole Miss’ action.  It’s like the Rebels came to the house and kicked their dog or something. 

Ole Miss has its sights set on Louisville’s Bobby Petrino, who stands to make about $1 million more than the $550,000 he’s currently pulling down.  Cardinal AD Tom Jurich is set to fight tooth and nail to keep Petrino, and it should be a good battle.  Being a Rebel fan, I sure hope Petrino will choose the chance to coach at an SEC school with a bigger stadium, more season ticket sales and better facilities.  And oh yeah, the $1 MILLION DOLLAR RAISE. But that’s just me.

It’s going to be fun to watch how the firings and hirings pan out.  And this is just the college ranks, mind you.  There’s going to be a jump in NFL coaches in the soup line soon.  Jim Haslett is just wondering if the Saints are going to let him serve out the string or if he’s going to be sent packing mid-season.

In the spirit of things, I’ve drawn up my own list of people who need to be fired.  It’s headed by the manager at Pizza Hut who continues to put only crappy pizzas on the lunch buffet.  It also includes the security guards at the football stadium who all but strip-search me for liquor as I stumble into games, the old people who stare at me in horror when I “cheer too much”, and columnists who want to act like college football is supposed to be run like a Sunday School class.  As far as I’m concerned, these people need to find something else to occupy their time with.