FanHouse GeneDiFilippo

Jeff Jagodzinksi, the current head coach of Boston College's football team, is, according to the Boston Globe, about to get fired at a press conference today because he chose to interview with the New York Jets, despite the team's insistence that he would lose his job for such an action. Even if they do not actually can Jago, there's still going to be a press conference to "discuss [the] football team and its coach." Update: They did indeed fire Jagodzinski.

Jeff Jagodzinski will be fired as the Boston College football coach this morning in a meeting with athletic director Gene DeFillippo, according to sources close to the program.

After meeting with the New York Jets yesterday in New Jersey regarding their opening for a head coach, Jagodzinski called DeFilippo last night, setting up a face-to-face meeting this morning. They will finalize the details of his termination in the meeting. Jagodzinski has three years remaining on the contract.

This isn't that huge of a surprise, I suppose; you can only have so many publicly scrutinized people playing a game of chicken before someone gets in a wreck.

At the same time though, it was a pretty bold move on Jagodzinksi's part to pull on the interview if he wasn't completely confident he would get the job. That being said, Gene DiFilippo only comes off looking worse if the outcome is termination, so he should probably be able to land on his feet elsewhere soon enough if the Jets gig doesn't come through.

The hottest new trend of 2008 and 2009 appears to be a diseased athletic department. See: West Virginia, Rich Rodriguez, and Bill Stewart or Auburn, Tommy Tuberville, and Gene Chizik. You can add Boston College to the list, too, as they've declared they'll fire Jeff Jagodzinski if he dares to interview with the Jets.

In a word: bats. Jagodzinski has been good, not great in his two years as BC's head coach. He's highly unlikely to get an NFL head coaching gig off the back of a Music City Bowl loss. But he's been successful enough for Boston College to hope there's some later date at which he'll have the resume for an NFL head job. So you're basically firing a guy good enough to get interviewed by the NFL but not good enough to get hired, which is the exact profile of coach you should be looking for at a school like Boston College.

Add in the strange departure of Tom O'Brien, who made an at-best lateral move to NC State for no apparent reason, and you've got the makings of a power-mad or incompetent athletic director with no idea how to maintain stability at his program. One incident is strange. Two is a trend.

How are you going to hire a promising replacement when you've just fired a coach for daring to interview somewhere else? How are you going to recruit when you're on your third coach in four years and the previous two left suddenly? You won't, and you can't.

Congratulations, Gene DiFilippo: you've managed out-dumb the rest of the country in a year in which a special teams coach from Mayberry and a 5-19 Iowa State coach were hired.