Do you agree with the decision to fire Tubby Smith?

By now you may have digested all of the ins and outs of the firing of University of Minnesota basketball coach Tubby Smith and his $2.5 million contract buyout.

MPR News is now trying to gauge your reaction in Today’s Question:

So far, reader John Olson writes:

What infuriates alums like myself is that Norwood Teague gave Tubby a contract extension a year ago with a buyout clause that went from $1.5 million to $2.5 million. There should have never been an extension in the first place. … I won’t be the least bit surprised to see the fallout from this spread over to the State Capitol as budget bills come together.

And yet “reggie” agrees with the decision:

Although winning is the easy metric, making players better — on and off the basketball floor — is what we should expect of a great head coach. Smith has recruited some very talented young men, but individually they don’t get better under his tutelage, and as a team they haven’t consistently played together. Smith deserves credit for cleaning up a mess of a program, but he just isn’t the guy to carry it forward.

Put in your two cents here.

About the blogger

Alex Friedrich

afriedrich@mpr.org

Alex Friedrich reports on higher education issues for MPR News. Among the stories he has covered: the fall of the Berlin Wall, aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, 2003 Moscow suicide bombing and 2004 presidential elections in the Republic of Georgia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and a master’s in European political economy from the London School of Economics.