The snowball effect does not ignore steamy Southern states. On Monday it continued to barrel over UCF's football team with the firing of Coach Mike Kruczek. A number of factors likely ended Kruczek's UCF career, including the team's 3-7 record this season and the suspensions last week of four players for rules violations.
It's another surprise-but-not-beyond-belief news story in an incredible seven days for UCF's football program. On Nov. 4, the college careers of quarterback Ryan Schneider and another player were cut short when they were suspended for the season, apparently for forging class attendance sheets. UCF tried to focus instead on that same day's announcement that UCF would join Conference USA, bringing all of UCF's sports under a single conference. That night, however, cornerback Omar Laurence was arrested and charged with possession of two firearms on campus. Two days later, two more players were suspended. Then, last Saturday, the team bottomed out with a loss to 115th-ranked Eastern Michigan.
Assistant Coach Alan Gooch will fill Kruczek's shoes until a replacement is named. But there must be a great deal of politics involved in this monumental firing, more than is apparent on the surface. UCF Athletic Director Steve Orsini hasn't said what Kruczek was fired for, and why it's happening now - which means there could be an ongoing investigation into the forged attendance slips that warranted the players' suspensions. Will we know more later? Hopefully.
The trouble with this hit, combined with last week's decision to change conferences, is that these moves aren't free.
Kruczek still has more than four years left on a five-year contract extension he signed only this fall. That means it'll cost UCF about $849,000 to get rid of him. Moving football and all other UCF sports over to Conference USA and breaking the university's contracts with two other athletic conferences will cost another $2.6 million.
Orsini plans to borrow $1.6 million from a UCF discretionary fund to pull off the conference shift. Yet the expenses represent the kind of conflict that got those four players suspended to begin with - sports clashing with academics. In this case, it's on a much broader scale than a few players perhaps missing a few classes. It's a matter of the university being a few million dollars shy of making it through this budget year, which ends in mid-summer, while the sports program just racked up $3.4 million in charges.
Right now UCF predicts it will be about $5 million short of paying to run the school this summer. To get by, some classes are being shed, some are getting bigger, and needed faculty aren't being hired. UCF faces a huge debt, and now even more money is slipping away.
The talk at last week's Faculty Senate steering committee included the prospect of capping enrollment next fall if UCF's financial situation doesn't improve. This would be far less necessary if we could save money on our sports programs - like, for example, football.
Why did UCF sign a contract that was so long, with a guaranteed pay even if Kruczek got the boot? It's a worst-case scenario set up in advance. Now we're watching that scenario play out - Kruczek has been fired less than a year into his contract, and UCF is legally bound to pay a huge mound of money to him.
When it comes to snowballs, this could be a big one. What started as a few lost games and a quarterback suspension could end with hundreds of rejection letters for students applying for admission, and a damaged school in its trail of destruction.
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