From The Athletic
Hamilton: Juwan Howard’s job at Michigan should be in jeopardy after embarrassing display
By Brian Hamilton 37m ago 66
Juwan Howard probably won’t be fired for what he did Sunday. Because he’s Juwan Howard, and because of what Juwan Howard’s name means to Michigan athletics in general, and because bureaucrats who run athletic departments and universities don’t like to make really hard decisions. Especially not in the cases of very popular head coaches whose programs win and bring millions of dollars into the mix. We usually get a lot of creative deflection and excuse-making in these scenarios. Maybe a cynical play to the emotions of the fan base. Semantics and lawyering, but not a severance package.
But Juwan Howard absolutely should be fired for what he did and said Sunday, if only because he doesn’t seem to grasp that the head men’s basketball coach at Michigan shouldn’t act like a child. Emotions run high in February, everywhere. Things are said and done, and competitive people get really mad about them, just about every game. But Michigan’s coach is the one who throws a tantrum after someone grabs his arm and says mean words. Who takes two steps back before reengaging an escalating situation by taking a swing at an opposing coach’s face, who instigates a brawl, who has to be restrained by a police officer and subsequently has the gall to brush off embarrassing himself, his program and his employer by claiming self-defense.
When Juwan Howard wants to grow up, then maybe Michigan considers letting him back in the building.
What part of the scene following the Wolverines’ loss at Wisconsin on Sunday wasn’t exactly the opposite of what a head coach should do in that situation? A late timeout he didn’t like, and Badgers coach Greg Gard touching him in the handshake line, spills into a cataclysmic failure of leadership. The worst possible example-setting for a team and an abject failure to represent your employer as your employer expects you will. Snicker if you want about any of these being categorized as core head-coach responsibilities. (We get a kick out of the leader-of-men stuff, too.) But these are the responsibilities of a head coach. Juwan Howard would’ve told you as much before tipoff Sunday. He might’ve waxed on about how fundamental they are, too, to his identity as a coach and to the program he’s leading.
And Michigan’s guy abdicated every one of those responsibilities in one moment.
That Howard demonstrated an almost inconceivable lack of self-awareness after the fact underscores the very large problem Michigan has. “I think that was very uncalled for, for (Gard) to touch me as we were communicating with one another,” Howard told reporters in Madison after the game. “At that point I felt it was time to protect myself.”
This is a delusion. This is arrogance. This is a guy who believes he won’t be held accountable for whatever he does, because whatever Juwan Howard does at Michigan can’t possibly be wrong. He’s saying this all while the Big Ten has a statement released within 90 minutes of the incident, announcing as expected that it will review the matter and will take “swift and appropriate disciplinary action.” The only person named in that statement is Juwan Howard. He’s saying this all while his boss, athletic director Warde Manuel, is absorbing the optics and putting together his own statement that pronounces there’s “no excuse” for what occurred, deeming it “totally unacceptable behavior.”
Everyone gets the message except Juwan Howard, who appears to be immune to understanding what’s expected of him in the job he has. If Howard hadn’t previously gotten big mad and rushed an opposing coach with the intent to kick ass in front of the whole wide world, maybe there’s a way to reason this mess into a one-off product of the heat of competition. But it’s been less than a year since Howard charged after then-Maryland coach Mark Turgeon, getting himself kicked out of a Big Ten tournament game in the process. Less than a year. And this is worse, much worse.
To be clear and fair: Gard wasn’t exactly a picture of quietude when the two came together, and Howard made clear he was in no mood. And Wisconsin assistant Joe Krabbenhoft, the receiver of the blow to the face, absolutely should not interject himself into the situation.
Howard doesn’t want to hear what either of them has to say? Sure. Fine. Cuss out Gard and every Wisconsin staff member he sees and move along.
Instead, we end up with Michigan’s coach bear-hugged by a uniformed police officer while his players throw punches a few feet away.
He had to defend himself?
Come on, man. Have you seen Greg Gard?
No, Sunday should be the last time Juwan Howard coaches a Michigan basketball game, by any sober interpretation of the expectations he’s paid handsomely to meet.
A program and a university, awash in embarrassment due to the actions of the one Michigan guy in the building who is, arguably, most responsible for preventing such a scene from happening in the first place. A group of players — his own and Wisconsin’s — put in harm’s way and facing their own suspensions because Michigan’s head coach can’t control himself. A nearly 50-year-old multimillionaire pretty much literally dragged kicking and screaming away from all hell breaking loose at the Kohl Center because he opened the gate.
It won’t be Howard’s last game as coach, of course. The school statement issued Sunday afternoon makes note of “instigating factors,” and while Michigan hardly absolved Howard of what he did, those six syllables don’t appear in the official dispatch from Ann Arbor if the higher-ups involved aren’t looking for any sliver of daylight to shove the head men’s basketball coach through.
If Howard is to remain Michigan’s coach? Well, then at minimum there’s no justification for him appearing on the sideline for the remainder of the 2021-22 season. Leave the fine print of that arrangement to the lawyers, but the message must be as clear as it is apparently overdue: Howard won’t have the privilege of coaching Michigan basketball until he fully understands what it means to be the head coach of Michigan basketball.
That starts with acting like an adult. On Sunday, Juwan Howard didn’t look like he knows how.
