Calls for Michigan coach Juwan Howard to be fired over Wisconsin incident are way over the line

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He still is new to this. Juwan Howard became a Division I men’s basketball coach in the spring of 2019, and pretty much every professional experience he’s had since is something he never encountered before. It was inevitable there would be mistakes made.

Of course, they did not need to be as egregious as this. On Sunday afternoon, near the end of a game in which his Michigan Wolverines did not perform well enough to avoid a significant defeat, Howard invented a provocation against himself and his team. Then he vented the anger from that imaginary slight in a handshake line quarrel and then an open handed-blow that struck an opposing coach and ignited a brawl that involved a total of three athletes from UM and Wisconsin swinging punches.

There was no way Howard was going to avoid significant punishment for this, and a day later the Big Ten Conference and the University of Michigan announced he would be suspended for what remained of the regular season, five games in all, each of them containing overwhelming value to the Wolverines’ pursuit of an NCAA Tournament bid. That’s more than 15 percent of UM’s season, and clearly the most important segment.

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This is a harsh penalty. Anyone who understands competition should comprehend this. It also is a just penalty. It was precisely what Howard’s offense called for and this seems to be worth mentioning for a couple of reasons:

1) There still are some, including ESPNU radio host Ben Hartsock, either calling for his outright dismissal or suggesting that a coach without Howard’s prominence would have lost his or her job.

2) This was a very public circumstance for the Big Ten headquarters and the league‘s commissioner, Kevin Warren, and it was handled seamlessly and adjudicated ideally. Given the overwhelming criticism he received for the abortive cancellation of the 2020 football season, which likely wasn’t even his decision, and his role in blocking college football playoff expansion, he and his office deserve this win, not more speculative criticism.

The Big Ten’s part in all of this has been handled, and deftly so. Wisconsin coach Greg Gard could have allowed his counterpart to pass – even with his unnecessary “I’ll remember that” comment ringing in the air – but instead chose to grab his elbow and try to explain why Howard was wrong. Gard caught too much blame from Howard’s supporters, but the $10,000 fine levied by the conference was a demonstration he could have handled this better.

An examination of footage from the brawl clearly showed three players – Moussa Diabate and Terrance Williams II of Michigan and Jahcobi Neath of Wisconsin – throwing blows subsequent to Howard striking Wisconsin assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft. Those were the three suspended for a game – and, appropriately, only a game – for their actions. There was no collateral damage among the other athletes, and there easily could have been had the league not taken such a precise approach.

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Michigan still has work to do. “Simply put, there is no room at UM for the behavior we saw,” Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said in a prepared statement. “We will learn from this incident as a department, work to improve ourselves while operating under a spotlight, and move forward in a positive light."

One of the reasons some have called for Howard’s dismissal is that this was not his first sideline incident, coming less than a year after he incited an argument with then-Maryland coach Mark Turgeon, but a more reasonable approach is for Howard and his employer to address whatever led to these behaviors. It is not enough merely to say: Don’t do it again, or else.

Coaches, though, should not be viewed as disposable merely because they make a lot of money. They are people with the same desire for happiness and success as anyone else. If their behavior warrants punishment, it should be administered, but that always should be tailored to the severity of the offense.

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Indeed, if we were dealing with an unpopular coach whose program was failing, behavior such as Howard displayed the end of the Wisconsin game would have provided justification and athletic department might be seeking to dismiss that person for cause. We have seen several colleges endeavoring to find causal action to remove coaches without being required to pay massive buyouts. This would have been a gift to an administration in that circumstance.

Howard, even in a disappointing third season, is immensely popular with Michigan fans and perhaps even more so with the constituency that matters most: the Wolverines players. UM does not want to be rid of him; it merely wants the best possible version of Juwan Howard.

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Mike DeCourcy is a Senior Writer at The Sporting News