Griz fans deserve answers

Griz Nation deserves an explanation — something, anything that would shed more light on why Grizzly football coach Robin Pflugrad and Athletic Director Jim O’Day were abruptly fired last week.

But unfortunately, University of Montana officials are entirely mum on the subject, obviously under the advice of legal counsel regarding touchy personnel matters.

What is obvious is that this is going to be an expensive severance matter for the university, one calculated elsewhere as being at least $147,000. But our guess is that it will be much more expensive than that.

And the impacts on the beloved football program are likely to be profound. Losing the leadership team that got the Griz to the semifinal playoff round last year — during spring practice, no less — is surely going to be felt.

All for what? No one knows.

For now, there is no reason to think that Pflugrad or O’Day really did anything wrong other than being at the helm during a period of bad publicity. It’s widely assumed their termination had something to do with players being involved in alleged sexual assault incidents or other types of misconduct which these officials had no direct control over.

If that’s the case, UM President Royce Engstrom seems to be just as accountable for off-field player behavior as Pflugrad and O’Day. And what about applying the same standard to academic departments where individual students are accused of crimes, sexual or otherwise? Should deans and department heads be fired? If that seems ridiculous, then consider this: Maybe it’s the players themselves who should be held accountable for their own behavior not coaches or athletic directors.

But this is all speculation. Until the university comes clean, we don’t know any of the reasons for the dismissals. And Griz Nation is left with a mess of costs, uncertainty and ongoing bad publicity that very likely all could have been avoided. What a sorry deal.