“The Maryland Board of Regents probably kept DJ Durkin because they didn’t believe he was responsible for what happened in the tragedy... I don’t think DJ Durkin is a good enough football coach for them to be saying ‘We’re going to protect him like Ohio State did for Urban Meyer.’”
-- Clay Travis.
The death of 19-year-old University of Maryland football player Jordan McNair was one of the saddest sports tragedies of the decade, but in the last few months, the story has shifted to an unfortunate series of finger pointing into who is to blame for the teen's death.
McNair died of a heat stroke on June 13th, 2018, two weeks after collapsing during a series of on-field sprinting workouts on an 81-degree day on May 29th. Much of the criticism surrounding his death has to do with how staff members of the football team reacted to McNair’s apparent symptoms, and how they failed to properly assess his deteriorating condition.
The investigation, however, took a quick turn from focusing on the specifics from May 29th and instead turned into a major inquiry into Maryland football as a whole under head coach DJ Durkin.
Over the next few weeks, repeated series of findings were released that implicated Durkin’s ‘toxic culture’ at the school and included bizarre locker room revelations that resembled more of a smear campaign at Durkin’s expense, rather than direct evidence into Jordan McNair’s death.
On Tuesday, October 30th, Maryland’s Board of Regents voted to retain Durkin as Maryland HC after coming to the conclusion that he wasn’t responsible for McNair’s medical handling. However, a day later, amid massive blowback from the public, the school fired Durkin on Wednesday, October 31st.
Clay Travis thinks the school panicked and it was the classic case of the internet mob swarming around the biggest story they could find, and fiercely fighting for the most prominent name involved in the story to be sacrificed, even at the expense of legitimate reasoning and evidence painting another picture.
Listen to the full audio below as Clay thinks Durkin, who was 10-15 at Maryland in two seasons, was certainly not notable enough of a name for Maryland to maliciously fight for, like Urban Meyer at Ohio State, and thus any decision of him to remain head coach was out of safe conviction, not adulterated deception.