If Dan hadn't thrown a hissy fit in his meeting with Brad and Spears, he's likely still be the coach. Going postal in that kind of meeting doesn't give your boss the confidence to keep you on board. And Brad was a Dan fan.
A friend sent me this following transcript. I have no idea where it came from. She didn't tell me where it came from and I did not ask. She just knew I was a Marshall fan and thought I might like to read it. She said it had been verified. So, I'll pass it along because it certainly sounds plausible.
Last summer, Corny was approached by Kevin Keatts, the coach at NC State, about an assistant position on his staff.
Corny, was obviously interested, but also felt an allegiance to Marshall so he went to Dan and asked for some reassurances.
With how Spears wrote Dan's and Corny's contracts (three individual 1-year contracts) there wasn't much Dan could do other than ask for some revisions.
So he went to Spears and asked him to consider revising the contracts. Spears not being happy with the program said no. Then, Dan asked for Corny to be made the HCIW. Spears turned them down again.
At that point, Dan went directly to Brad (which nuked Dan's and Christian's relationship) and basically repeated himself.
Dan - "We need some reassurances."
Brad - "You have them. You have a 3-year contract."
Dan - "No, we don't."
Brad - "What do you mean?"
Dan - "Christian wrote them as three individual 1-year contracts, not a 3-year contract. Now, NC State is trying to hire Corny away so I want to name him Head Coach In Waiting but I want it in writing"
Brad calls Christian and asks him to come to the office
Brad - "Christian, I want you to write a release stating Corny is our HCIW."
Christian goes back to his office pissed off and writes a release stating Corny is now our associate HC, not the HCIW
(which damaged his relationship with Brad)
This was a Brad Smith situation all the way through. From the firing of Dan to the hiring of Corny.
All of this was prior to NC State showing interest of course.
Which brought us to last week.
Prior to last week, I think Dan was safe, but the situation most certainly soured for Dan.
Dan had NO CLUE the firing was coming. He was in his office yesterday (Monday) morning carrying on with business as usual.
He had zero intentions of stepping down and very little interest in reshaping the roster (Corny is already on top of that BTW).
Dan was livid.
For the record, I don't believe that Corny knew what was going down until after Dan was made aware that he'd no longer be the HC at Marshall.
As far as the Huggins information goes, there was zero interest from the Marshall side. That was all donors and fans who generated this nonsense.