It's pretty simple, actually. You can lose games and survive, but if you lose your team you are gone.
Although Pete Mangurian was 3-27 in three years as head football coach at Columbia, school president Lee Bollinger sent a memo to the Columbia Football Players Club before the final game last month acknowledging calls for a coaching change. He wrote that the school would be "maintaining our course in helping an extremely young team grow, recruit top-flight student-athletes to bolster our depth, and ultimately work with the new Athletics Director to do everything we can to make Columbia football every bit as competitive as the rest of our thriving intercollegiate athletics."
Yesterday Mangurian resigned.
What changed? He appears to have lost his team. Or at least part of it.
The Wall Street Journal has a story HERE that details a letter sent to university officials by a group of players with complaints about Mangurian. The letter was subsequently withdrawn without explanation (although the Journal story notes that some players were surprised to find their names affixed to it). The Journal looks into the letter and gets comments from several players as well as Mangurian's wife.
Bloomberg News has a story HERE.
