Why Chris Doyle's departure at Iowa is no surprise
Yahoo Sports' Pete Thamel and SI's Pat Forde discuss the school's decision to part ways with its strength coach - and why he won't leave empty handed.
Video Transcript
PAT FORDE: Pete, let's start with the news out of Iowa that broke shortly before we started taping here, Chris Doyle separation agreement with Iowa. Nobody can ever just be fired these days. It has to be a separation agreement, so I think Gary Barta will be talking about it later today. But the news broke already about Doyle being out.
Not a big surprise, I don't think, to anybody. Doyle has been the strength coach right hand man of Kirk Ferentz for his entire tenure there going back to the 1990s. Doyle was the one who former players came out from all over the place to criticize recently for what, I guess, you would say, at best, was racial insensitivity, if not outright racism, bullying, degrading players, particularly black players. And he was suspended last week, and his tenure is over as of today. What are your initial thoughts there, Pete?
PETE THAMEL: Yeah, this was completely predictable. The surprise is probably it didn't happen sooner. There wasn't due process. I thought Kirk Ferentz would have announced this at his press conference last week.
Chris Doyle had next to 0% chance of surviving. The way I read the-- you know, I think there were over 50 players came out and spoke up. And it was essentially fostering an environment of racial degradation. That was probably the best way to put it, where the word ghetto, for example, was used, and there were just they were just different terms.
I mean, I was blown away, Pat, that they couldn't wear hoodies in their facility until recently. Like there were just some-- you know, there were just some backwards things happening at Iowa football that give Kirk Ferentz credit that he is now recognized he needs to change immediately. And I think publicly, he has handled everything well.
The separation of Chris Doyle was obvious. The signs were on the wall from his suspension to his son, who is a promising young linebacker entering the transfer portal. Those signs were happening. I think almost the most significant thing about today's news was that it was just Chris Doyle. There were no assistant coaches. There was no one else on the staff that we've been made aware of publicly that is going to, yet, anyway, any type of tangible reverberations.
PAT FORDE: Yeah, no, that's for sure. The one thing that is somewhat, I think, troubling is Chris Doyle apparently gets $1.1 million out of the separation agreement. I'm not sure that's a great signal about how Iowa handled this. I mean, obviously, look, it is difficult to make people go away these days. But $1.1 million to be ushered out of a job, where you were bullying players for two decades, I don't know. You know, it's one thing to get a buyout, because you were losing games. I'm not sure about the buyout there, but--
PETE THAMEL: That is a buyout to avoid court.
PAT FORDE: Yeah.
PETE THAMEL: Because, if they tried to take Chris Doyle's money that was left on his contract, Kirk Ferentz would have been deposed. You know, the whole staff, they would have trotted up all the former players on the stand, and that is $1.1 million to avoid a spectacle. I am not defending it, but that is clearly what Iowa was doing and thinking.
