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The president, sports director and football coach of the University of Maryland were all facing the prospect of unemployment when they ended up in a meeting with the Board of Regents last week.
For months, the College Park campus was in turmoil after heatstroke and the possible death of 19-year-old offensive lineman Jordan McNair. A majority of board members were about to recommend the dismissal of university president, Wallace Loh, sports director, Damon Evans, and football coach, DJ Durkin. , repurchasing the rest of his multi-million dollar contract, according to several sources knowledgeable about it. But they agreed to hear each man one more time before acting.
Then Durkin started talking.
In a one-hour interview at Baltimore headquarters in the national university system, Durkin made a speech that dramatically changed the course of events and convinced board members that he would stay, according to several sources.
"DJ has delivered one of the best half-time speeches of all time," said one source. "It must be one of the great speeches of all time. He talked about his mission and his pbadion. He convinced the board that we were about to beat Ohio State and Penn State if we stayed with DJ. "
In his interview with Loh, however, he warned the reaction jury in case of a recommendation to keep the troubled coach: "Hell will give way," said Loh, according to a source.
Some members felt that the only way forward was to fire the three men. But in the end, Durkin won the majority of the regents.
They recommended keeping Durkin and Evans, and telling Loh that he was due to retire at the end of the school year. "Their first vote was DJ must stay. Then the inconsistency appeared to them. If they wanted to keep Durkin, they had to keep Evans, "said the source.
Robert Caret, the chancellor of the university system, is not a member of the board of directors, but was present during the debate. He acknowledged that there was disagreement within the board as to whether Durkin, Evans and Loh should stay.
After an "active dialogue", said Caret, the council reached a consensus. "That does not mean we all agree," he said. "We have advanced as one self-respecting body."
The council asked Caret to meet Loh and inform him: "They will allow you to stay until June 2019, but you have to keep Durkin," according to a source. Loh agreed to leave.
But when the chairman of the board, James T. Brady, announced the decision on Tuesday, Loh's initial warning proved decisive. The reaction was fast and deafening.
The students protested. Donors said they would not give money anymore. Politicians across the state have condemned the message sent. McNair's father said that he felt as if someone had spit in his face.
Republican Governor Larry Hogan appointed Brady to the board after being Hogan's campaign chairman. Now, Hogan was furious. The controversy erupted a week before the governorship elections.
On Wednesday afternoon, Hogan issued a statement urging the council to reverse the trend and began an investigation into what had happened.
Later on Wednesday, Loh took matters into his own hands and sent Durkin away.
On Thursday, Brady announced his resignation. Reached by phone on Friday, he declined to comment, saying, "I have finished talking about that."
The university was faced with personnel decisions as a result of two damning survey findings launched as part of its football program.
One of them found that the staff had made a lot of mistakes, including not plunging McNair into cold water, which, according to experts, constitutes the best practice and could have saved his life. The report determined that the coaches had failed to move the immersion tanks to the field that day because the location of the practice had changed at the last minute.
The second survey focused on the culture of the football team, following an explosive article published in August by ESPN and describing the atmosphere as "toxic." A commission of eight people said that the football program "favored a culture in which problems multiplied because too many players feared to be heard". Their report highlighted cases of mental and physical abuse of players and deepened two years of problems within the sports department.
Although Brady, as chairman of the board, was a public face of the controversy, staffing decisions were made by the 17 members of the Board of Regents, the board of directors of the university system. 'State. Members include business leaders, lawyers and two members of Hogan's firm. Most were named by Hogan, some by former Gov. Martin O'Malley.
The board includes pbadionate supporters of the College Park campus and its sports program. Six are elders. Vice President of the Regents, Barry Gossett – currently Acting President – is a major sports coach who donated $ 10 million in 2007 to build the home of the football team that now bears his name. Another member, William Wood, is founding president of the Alumni Association of the University of Maryland College Park.
Earlier in the week, Brady spoke on behalf of the board of directors to defend the decision to retain Durkin in an interview with The Sun. He stated that the process followed by the regents was "considerable" and that he was proud of his thoroughness.
He acknowledged that one of the board's options was to "blow everything up", but instead chose to evaluate the current leadership of the university in order to "determine if they are willing and able to make the necessary immediate changes ".
The regents – at least the majority of them – thought Durkin was a starter, he said.
"He's a good man and a good coach," Brady said in Wednesday morning's interview.
At Tuesday's press conference, he also spoke about the persuasiveness of the Durkin meeting with the board of directors.
"Our meeting with DJ Durkin was very informative," he said. "His pbadion for the university, for the football team and for the players was absolutely impressive and very credible."
It was perfectly clear that students, donors and politicians disagreed.
Charles P. Scheeler, a lawyer who oversaw the cultural survey of the Maryland football program, said the commission had interviewed many current and former players – and found that they too had views. very divergent on Durkin.
"You had a very large group of people who just loved DJ Durkin," Scheeler said. "And on the other side, there was a very large group of people very critical of DJ Durkin. I was surprised that there was not more people in the middle.
"It's not unusual for different people to see the same environment in a very different way," he said. "What was unusual was how remarkably different the views were."
Baltimore Sun reporter Scott Dance contributed to this article.
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