Tom Coughlin Gets The Boot
I knew Tom Coughlin was a cranky old jerk but damn.
When Coughlin was in NY he famously didn’t get along great with his players. Strahan has been very open in his disdain for Coughlin’s early tenure with the Giants. Tiki Barber also didn’t get along with him. Most players say he was an unrelenting hardass. When he opened up a little bit (the year he expected to get fired) the team came together. 4 years later, the cycle had repeated. Coughlin’s hardassery came across as just…his style. It didn’t make him friends, but it got results. Coughlin was a good football coach and the pathetic teams we’ve had since have made it clear how much he held that team together, even as the sport passed him by and the talent drained.
But one of the most notable things that came out of the Tom Coughlin Bullshit stories was his infamous Coughlin Clock. Essentially, if you showed up on time, you were late. If a team meeting started at 8am, you were late if you showed up at 8am. You had to be 5 minutes early. If you showed up “late”, you’d be fined. By basically any measure this was fucking ridiculous and I’m glad that, even after bonding with him and winning a championship with him, Strahan still won’t defend this shit.
I am personally what comedian Mike Birbiglia (shameless plug, he rules) calls an On-Time person. Being late gives me anxiety. My wife is not an on-time person and if you are like me, you know the sheer frustration of waiting for people to be ready. But even like that I cannot possibly defend Coughlin’s early policy. If a meeting starts at 8, then that is the fucking start time. Not 7:55. Punish the people who show up at 8:10.
Jaguars fans have been calling for Coughlin’s head for a while now but this week some information regarding his totalitarian nonsense started reaching the general NFL public and it quickly snowballed into Coughlin being let go, rightfully. It started when Dante Fowler and the NFLPA won a grievance against the Jags for when Fowler was fined for not doing something he was legally not required to do. If the NFLPA, as weak a union as it is, wins a case, you done fucked up. As soon as the NFLPA sent out letters telling free agents to avoid Jacksonville, the absurd stories of Coughlin’s bullshit came with it.
He fined two players for sitting on the bench during games in which they were inactive. The amount? 99k. Almost 100 thousand dollars for sitting during a game that they wouldn’t be playing in anyway. I can’t even fathom what justification Coughlin could have for that being fair. There is none. A player got fined for missing a workout even though he missed it due to his flight being cancelled by a lightning storm. It’s easy to see why Jalen Ramsey and other talents they didn’t retain might have wanted out of Jacksonville if this is the kind of ridiculous shit that Coughlin was up to. Who knows what other petty things Coughlin fined people for. There is being a tough-love hardass and being a complete dictator. Coughlin needs to step away from football. He’s 73 and still running things like it’s the 50’s.
Thanks for 42 and 46 though *blows kisses*
Treating grown ass men like children just to show you’re the boss is such a pathetic but common leadership style. I don’t think it works in a league where players have actual agency to choose whether they stay on a team or not.
It doesn’t work on men who make more money than you either.
coughlin? more like coughlOUT, Amirite?
His “style” got results in Jacksonville. Just not the ones he thought he might get.
They did at least get an AFC south title and a conference championship appearance.
If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late. If you’re late, you’re fired.
By the transitive property if you’re on time, you’re late.
Doesn’t it also mean that if you’re early, you’re fired? =/
I fucked up the joke, but there was no way to go back. You had the right idea.
If only you wrote the joke 5 minutes before posting it, you might have been alright. š
And Iām still not really sure what his job with Jaguars really was, other than to be a killjoy
Assistant GM
Even the hardline “millenials are pansies” folk have to draw the line at outright wage theft right? Fining people for stupid bullshit like that is stealing money they are contractually owed.
I used to have a boss that had Giants season tickets who would jokingly say our unit meetings were on “Coughlin time”.
I found it funny at the time. Of course I didn’t find it funny that he ignored civil service lists to pass me over for promotions and I’m convinced he badmouthed me to other units I interviewed with as well, so fuck him and the PSL he aid for.
In 2012 or 2013, he once called a time out after a controversial call so that he could have time to think about challenging it, challenged it, and lost the challenge. That is a thing that happened in real life.
Honestly, if it wasnt for the whole Dante Flower situation, I think Tom Coughlin should have kept his job.
Hence why when Coughlin was let go after 2015, the problem wasn’t that but whom they replaced him with. It’s kind of like how some bad trades wasn’t the trade itself, but the return.
I mean for me, I set my clocks forward 5 minutes. And I live by the motto of “if you’re early, you’re on time, if you’re on time, you’re late.” But that’s because in the corporate world, if you are in a meeting to start at 8AM, you’ll have people straggling in at 8:10AM, then you have to set up all the conferencing software.. then people shoot the shit for 10 minutes, and now it’s 8:25 and you’ve not even got the meeting started.
I hate that shit.
Getting in trouble because you missed an appointment even though that was because your flight was cancelled due to weather? Damn…sounds like being in the Army.
Fournette just won his settlement for 100k after being fined by Coughlin in 2018, expect to see more Jags players do the same thing and recoup some money.