DJ Durkin Was A Bridge Too Far
Maryland’s far too tardy decision to release their coach proves that there are still lines that can’t be crossed, provided we back our words with action.
The news came as a surprise.
Come to think of it, it’s hard to imagine a better summation of where we are as a society in 2018, really, than the fact that when the University of Maryland announced they were parting ways with DJ Durkin, a man whose 10–15 record as Terrapins Head Coach was thoroughly uninspiring, a man who according to a report delivered to the Board of Regents, oversaw “a culture where problems festered because too many players feared speaking out”, and a man who, no matter the attempts to shift and spread responsibility, oversaw a football program that failed to protect Jordan McNair’s life… When that man was actually, finally, mercifully let go by President Wallace D. Loh on Wednesday night, the news still managed to come as something of a shock.
What does that say about us?
Well, for starters it says that we’ve come to expect less and less, from each other, from ourselves, and god knows, from our “leaders”, or what passes for them, within the sporting sphere and beyond. We teach our children the virtue of “The Buck Stops Here”, and feed them a lot of bromides about personal responsibility, about owning your mistakes, about how the head of an organization must always face the music for what happens on their watch. Then they enter the real world, and these days, they quickly learn how utterly absent these values are in the real world they’ve inherited.
That certainly appeared to be the case in College Park, as of Tuesday, when the University announced that despite the incredibly damning report on the football program’s culture, which reportedly included homophobic slurs, abusive workouts, and a lack of communication and oversight, Durkin would be allowed to return to his post. The decision, one could only assume, was about dollars and cents, given that Maryland Football has existed in a state of perpetual budget crisis, and that removing the coach would require either paying the millions remaining on his contract, or entering into what was sure to be a protracted legal battle should they attempt to fire him for cause.
But then, there was a pretty powerful force compelling Maryland to go ahead and oust Durkin regardless of the financial realities: Shame. Remember shame? It used to have quite an impact, in the before-times, when public opinion and widespread outrage could still compel public figures to clean up their messes, change their behavior, and, if they’d well and truly screwed up, in a serious way, to exit stage left. The entire sordid mess at Maryland has felt, for months, like the sort of thing that would never have dragged on like this just a few years ago. A player suffering from heatstroke, breaking into seizures, and not having a 911 call made on his behalf for nearly an hour? This was the sort of out and out institutional failing that would have justified clearing out the entire football program, root and branch, and starting over.
Sometimes it feels like shame was well and truly laid to rest, sometime around, oh, let’s say two years ago. After all, if shame still had its place in a healthy society, then a man who launched a campaign on Mexico “not sending their best”, who bragged of sexual assault, who kept his finances a secret, and his ignorance, laziness, and narcissism anything but, if shame still existed, a man like that would have to withdraw from public life, to go live the rest of his life as a hermit in a cave in the middle of nowhere, or else be subjected to heckling and scorn and reprisals every time he showed his face in the daylight, all of which would be deeply justified.
Instead, we made him the most powerful man on the face of the earth, and wouldn’t you know, ever since then our political reality has been one long stretch of “god, just how much do you think we can get away with, really?” Operate your Cabinet Department like a personal checking account? Sure why not! Provide obvious falsehoods and childish indignance after being credibly accused of sexual assault? Here’s a lifetime appointment! Run a Openly embrace white supremacy as you campaign to retain your seat in Congress? Have at it!
It shouldn’t come as any surprise, then, that this same level of shamelessness also found its way into the sports world. Public pressure and recrimination wasn’t enough to get Colin Kaepernick back into the league whose rejection of him grown more farcical with every Nathan Peterman start. On Friday, against any semblance of decency and respect, the WWE will still, remarkably, move forward with Crown Jewel, their paid propaganda effort for a government that just murdered a journalist, and continues to pursue a brutally inhumane intervention in Yemen. Within college football, the situation at Maryland is far from the only major scandal to unfold this year, as Urban Meyer was, quite remarkably, allowed to keep his job despite a flurry of evidence that he had botched the handling of domestic abuse allegations against an assistant coach.
On Wednesday, we learned that apparently, there is still a limit to our tolerance for wrongdoing, and scandal, and reprehensible behavior. There is, in fact, still a point at which conduct can be so egregious, and its outcome so devastating, that powerful establishments can still be forced to take action. Not that the University of Maryland really deserves any credit for this, of course. Their reversal of course, their decision to remove Durkin, only came as a result of outside forces refusing to accept their complacency. Much of Maryland’s political leadership, including Governor Larry Hogan, expressed their displeasure with the initial decision to retain Durkin. Additionally, University President Loh noted in his statement that meetings with university Deans, department chairs, and campus leadership also influenced his decision.
It also can not be overstated just how important a role Maryland’s players themselves took on in the process. Immediately after Durkin’s initial reinstatement, a number of Terrapin athletes tweeted, and expressed their displeasure with the decision, amidst reports that some members of the team walked out of the initial meeting with the coach on Tuesday morning. And so, just 24 hours following what seemed, so obviously, to be a preposterous effort to keep Durkin in charge, it quickly became evident that his continued employment was untenable.
There’s a lesson here, one that all of us would do well to keep in mind, as we attempt, with elections approaching, to once again enforce standards, to reconstruct norms, to rebuild the wreckage of any number of powerful institutions. Shame still works, and can still perform its critical functions, but only when it’s accompanied by direct action, by real pressure, by individuals speaking out, and standing up, and refusing to accept a toxic status quo brought upon by bankrupt leadership who think that we’ve all been beaten down to the point that they can get away with anything.
The task for us, for all of us, is to do what the brave members of Maryland’s football team managed to. Even in the midst of an unimaginable grief, they managed to organize, to agitate, and to make their voices heard, and their power felt. In so doing, they did more to stand up for Jordan McNair than the people who were charged with protecting him. That’s something our society desperately needs to take to heart.
No-one is coming to save us.
All we have is each other.
