Ask most sports fans how to fix what's wrong with his or her favorite team, and they'll issue a simple answer.
"Fire the coach."
Unless you're talking about baseball.
Then it's "Fire the manager."
Whatever the title of the chief game-day decision maker, he's the primary target of hostility from press and patrons alike when things go badly, or even slightly less well than expected.
Changing leaders can bear dramatic, immediate dividends -- witness the Dallas Cowboys' drastic reversal of form under Bill Parcells.
The Buffalo Bills' transition in the public mind from Super Bowl contenders to bumbling fools over the past month makes head coach Gregg Williams' position -- already shaky as he works through the final season of his contract -- particularly tenuous.
The Bills' hockey cousins haven't done much for the job security of their bench boss, either.
Then there are the two managers whose teams came up short in the American and National League Championship Series. Boston's Grady Little and Chicago's Dusty Baker made remarkably similar decisions in abetting the collapses of their respective teams, but only one figures to walk the plank in the offseason.
Here's a look at each potential dismissal, and why he should or shouldn't head to Kinko's to print up some resumes.
GREGG WILLIAMS
Maybe Williams ordered Rusty Jones, the Bills' strength, conditioning and nutrition guru, to put his charges on a steak, fudge and beer diet after their Week 2 romp in Jacksonville.
Maybe the agony of defeat in Miami a week later was too much for their fragile psyches to bear.
Or maybe they were never as good as just about everyone, present company included, thought they were through August and the first two weeks of September.
Whatever the case, Buffalo's steadily plummeting production over the past month has fans and radio talkers howling for Williams' job, their voices conveying the sort of deep injury you'd expect to hear from a betrayed spouse.
Taking any sport that seriously borders on the ridiculous, as does the notion that replacing Williams at this point in the season would solve all of Buffalo's problems.
Not that Williams deserves a lot of defending. He's made, or allowed his subordinates to make, a series of game-day decisions that veer between misguided and ridiculous. The sight of his team surrendering to the winless Jets won't easily be erased, no matter what happens between now and the bye week most firing advocates point to as the moment of truth for Bills President and General Manager Tom Donahoe.
In other sports, it's not uncommon to spark a stumbling team by changing jockeys in mid-race. The Florida Marlins' run to the World Series after replacing Jeff Torborg with Jack McKeon is just the most recent example.
Football, though, involves complex systems that take months to fully install. Unlike baseball, basketball or hockey, you can't change styles simply by switching tacticians.
When NFL teams change coaches in midseason, it's generally a sign that the season is already lost, and the front office is trying to give fans a reason to keep coming to the stadium. That's why the Bills dumped Hank Bullough for Marv Levy in 1986 with Buffalo holding a 2-7 record.
Whether fans and the media like it or not, Williams is most likely here to stay until January. If his team is still playing late in the month, he'll keep his job. If not, we'll be speculating about his replacement.
LINDY RUFF
The winningest coach in Sabres history is in his seventh season behind Buffalo's bench, a time span that usually includes several National Hockey League lifetimes.
Some of Ruff's longevity can be attributed to the fact he's a pretty good coach. But there are better who have been fired, rehired and fired again during his tenure with the Sabres. Chaos in the front office from the beginning of his reign helped him get the job in the first place.
Reaching the Stanley Cup Finals earned Ruff a second honeymoon. The Rigas family's well-documented troubles and resulting ownership uncertainties put worrying about how the coach was doing pretty low on the list of priorities.
When Tom Golisano bought the team, he put Larry Quinn -- who created the mess that led to the departures of John Muckler and Ted Nolan in the first place -- back in charge. Since one of Quinn's machinations led to Ruff's hiring, ordering General Manager Darcy Regier -- another survivor of Quinn's first go-round -- to fire the coach would amount to admitting a mistake way back when.
But the optimism fueled by Golisano's rescue of the franchise and the addition of center Chris Drury hasn't translated to success on the ice, and doesn't figure to do so during the longest road trip in team history.
Loyalty, at least to Ruff, has been a hallmark of Regier's reign. But if things don't improve markedly by Thanksgiving, we'll see how much loyalty Quinn allows Regier to have.
GRADY LITTLE
The laid-back style of Boston's manager coaxed career seasons out of almost everyone in the Red Sox lineup, triggering the most productive offensive season in the game's history. His handling of a shaky pitching staff got his team into the playoffs and five outs from the World Series.
His failure to yank Pedro Martinez in Game 7 didn't just keep the Curse of the Bambino alive. At the risk of hyperbole, Little's inertia while Martinez squandered a three-run lead in the eighth inning to the New York Yankees constituted the most colossal stupidity by a coach or manager in the history of American team sports.
Little nearly matched it two innings later, when instead of giving the ball to Scott Williamson, Boston's flame-throwing closer in the 10th inning, he brought in Tim Wakefield. As clutch as the knuckleballer had been in winning both his starts to keep the Red Sox alive, he had struggled in the early going of each. Pitching in extra innings on the road presents absolutely no margin for error, as Boston painfully discovered.
Saving your closer, ostensibly your best relief pitcher, to protect a lead that you might never get makes little more sense than leaving your top starter in long after everyone in the country, besides you and him, has realized he's out of gas.
DUSTY BAKER
Little's negligence came one night after Chicago's manager stuck with his starter far too long for the second straight night.
Lost amidst the furor over a fan's instinctive attempt to catch a foul ball was Baker's refusal to pull Mark Prior until after the clearly spent 23-year-old had coughed up a three-run lead.
Twenty-four hours later, Kerry Wood had the same lead in the same situation, with the same end result.
Baker's relievers hadn't performed nearly as well in the postseason as Little's, making his reluctance a bit more understandable.
Another big difference between the two managers -- Baker just finished the first season of a four-year contract that reportedly pays $3.5 to $4 million per year. Little's two-year deal expired the moment Aaron Boone's blast cleared the left-field fence at Yankee Stadium.
The Red Sox do hold an option for next season. The likelihood of the team exercising that option rates slightly above the city of Boston throwing a ticker-tape parade for the Yankees.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | October 21 2003 |