(Green(halgh) and Langford, shown in happier times. Photo taken from Hell’s Donut House’s Flickr stream)
Absolutely, if you ask former Fairleigh Dickenson University Men’s basketball coach Tom Green, sacked despite a 263 Northeast Conference career victories. Green, FDU’s all-time winningest coach finds the circumstances surrounding his termination more than a little suspicious, writes the New York Post’s Lenn Robbins.
“For 26 years I was the coach of this team and an ambassador for this university,” Green said. “I called this place home. For them to treat me this way shows a complete lack of respect for me as a person, as a coach and as a loyal employee.”
When reached by phone this week, FDU athletic director David Langford said, “How do you hear that,” when asked why the university was making a change.
Langford said he would have not a comment for the next day or so, and refused to confirm or deny the firing. When told it seemed odd for a coach with 26 years of employment to be fired this late after the season Langford said: “That’s an interesting supposition. I appreciate that. I’m not commenting.”
Green described a bizarre series of events last Friday that sounded more like the kind of corporate termination one would expect in a John Grisham novel than the firing of a basketball coach.
“Last Friday, May 29th at 2:30, my athletic director David Langford asked me to meet with him in the human resources office at 4:30,” Green told The Post in an exclusive interview. “He pulled out a release saying he had the support of the president, Dr. [Michael] Adams and he provost, Dr. [Joe] Kiernan to move in another direction and I had been relieved of my coaching duties.
“I had no knowledge, no inkling of this whatsoever,” Green said. “I went to lunch with David three weeks ago and we talked about nothing but the upcoming season. Then they fire me on the last Friday afternoon in May and here we are on June 3rd and there’s not a head coaching job out there.”