It appears CU football coach Karl Dorrell actually believes it when someone tells him, “it’s not you, it’s me.”
How else can we explain the “he said, he said something else” back-and-forth that accompanied the departure of Buffs defensive line coach Vic So’oto for the Cal Golden Bears?
While the staff inside the Grading the Week offices can sympathize — our bachelor days may have included a few embarrassing break-ups — we also can’t help but think the whole thing could’ve been avoided.
Karl Dorrell — D
For those who missed it, here’s a brief recap of Dorrell’s latest dumping:
On Monday, the CU athletic department announced So’oto decided to leave the program to move back to his native California, with Dorrell emphasizing in a statement that the move was “purely family related.”
Given that the former USC D-line coach had been hired to take over the Buffs defensive line room just two months earlier, the news came as a bit of a shock. But things come up with family, so it felt safe to chalk the whole episode up to bad timing for Dorrell and CU, with well wishes sent So’oto’s way.
Except, less than 24 hours later, it was revealed So’oto left to take over as Cal’s outside linebackers coach, with the 34-year-old father of five rebuffing Dorrell’s version of events in a , claiming the reason for his swift exit was in no way motivated by family.
“I’ll address this once since I now have family and close friends reaching out to check on us. Proximity to ‘support’ was not on the list of my reasons to leave CU,” So’oto tweeted. “This next opportunity was purely one I couldn’t pass up. I’ll go anywhere to coach if the opportunity is right.”
It’s bad enough that Dorrell and the Buffs were jilted so publicly — again.
What’s worse is what So’oto’s statement implied: That a seemingly lateral move from CU defensive line coach to Cal outside linebackers coach was a better opportunity he “couldn’t pass up.”
If that isn’t an indictment of CU’s standing in the current college football landscape, we’re not sure what is.
For his part, Dorrell stuck by his story when asked for clarification from BuffZone’s Brian Howell. While we don’t doubt So’oto may very well have told his old boss he was leaving for family reasons, we also think Dorrell should know when he’s getting dumped.
Given how much it’s happened the past few months (see: Portal, Transfer), we’d think he’d be used to it by now.
MLB owners — F
If forced to pick sides in a battle between millionaires and billionaires, we’ll choose the former.
Especially because in the case of the Major League Baseball Players Association — currently locked out by MLB’s 30 owners — many of its members aren’t actually millionaires.
Thanks to arcane rules that allow owners to control young players during some of their most productive seasons (their first six years of MLB service time), they have long been able to keep payroll down for a significant portion of their roster. In fact, MLB salaries have decreased by 4.8% since 2019, .
That same report indicated 62% of all major leaguers (417) on 2021 opening day rosters made less than $1 million, and 35% were paid less than $600,000.
While the Grading the Week staff would happily take a third of that, those figures at least dispel the notion that these are two wealthy parties squabbling over who gets a second beach house in Biscayne Bay.
Throw in the fact that the owners’ leader is a guy practicing his golf swing while his league slips into irrelevance, and we’re pretty sure which side of the fence we stand on.
