Ed Puskas: No shock Durkin was fired

SEE ALSO: DJ Durkin fired one day after reinstatement

People finally noticed Maryland football and it was for the worst possible reason anyone could imagine.

Jordan McNair didn’t have to die and that’s why Terrapins head coach DJ Durkin — a Boardman High School graduate and Mahoning Valley native — was fired Wednesday.

Durkin’s firing — a day after the University System of Maryland board of regents recommended he keep his job — should not have come as a surprise.

In this day and age, Durkin returning to the Terrapins’ sideline simply wasn’t going to fly with most people.

It didn’t take long for a public outcry to change the minds of those in power at Maryland. The only question was why the board felt it could reinstate Durkin and athletic director Damon Evans and no one would notice or care.

Yes, it’s Maryland football. This is not Ohio State, Michigan State or Penn State, all of which boast top-flight college football programs and have dealt with various levels of scandal in recent years.

Each situation cast Columbus, East Lansing and State College in the harsh glare of a justifiably unforgiving spotlight, with breaking news on each scandal coming out in seemingly every news cycle.

But Maryland football has long operated far from the limelight of the Big Ten Conference. That could be why the board felt moving on from what happened to McNair and the accompanying news of the Terrapins’ troubled football culture would be easier to accomplish in College Park than in other places.

But McNair died on Maryland’s watch and it didn’t have to happen.

Evans said in August that an investigation revealed that the 19-year-old McNair “did not receive appropriate medical care, and mistakes were made by some of our athletic training personnel.”

You think?

Another investigation revealed that more than an hour passed between when McNair began to have symptoms of heatstroke and when Maryland officials finally called 911.

That negligence is unconscionable.

Everything changed in that hour or more. Jordan McNair lost his life and his family lost him.

Durkin and the others fired in the wake of McNair’s death and the ensuing investigations lost only their jobs. They’ll live to work another day, perhaps even in their chosen field, although that seems unlikely.

McNair will never get that chance.

Durkin and his staff had been charged with turning Maryland football into something resembling its storied basketball program. The tactics employed to accomplish that appear to have had horribly unintended consequences.

That said, Jordan McNair’s parents entrusted his safety to the University of Maryland and those in its employ failed them.

The university could not, in good conscience, keep them on and it was ridiculous that it even tried.

Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.