Terminating the employment of any person from any job at any business for any reason is a serious situation. Firing a fast food worker, earning minimum wage, is not a matter that the operators of the business should take lightly. There are always costs.
If the person being let go is being fired for cause, there is already some net loss, short term or long term, the business has incurred due to the deficient performance of the employee which, directly or indirectly, can be tied to a dollar amount. If the person is terminating employment, voluntarily or involuntarily,and will be replaced, the business will incur the costs of recruiting, hiring, and training the replacement. If that person is being laid off due to economic constraints, a business is losing a qualified employee, an asset, production capacity, and is placing economic turmoil on that person, his or her family, and the economy as a whole.
Those costs are applicable for any person being terminated, even a person earning less than $8.00 per hour. When the person being considered for termination is being paid over a million dollars per year, and the costs to terminate that individual could total several million dollars, it is a decision that should be taken extremely seriously. There will be very substantial costs to the organization making that decision. Terminations should never, ever, be made prior to serious consideration of the impact and evaluation of the circumstances leading to such a decision. With that being said, I would like to make this suggestion to the Athletic Department at University of Notre Dame:
FIRE BRIAN KELLY TONIGHT!!!
As almost all savvy followers of sports, and many casual and non-followers, are aware, The University of Notre Dame endured a senseless tragedy when 20 year old student videographer Declan Sullivan was killed on the football practice field after the hydraulic lift he was on toppled over in winds in excess of 50 miles per hour on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 27, 2010. Notre Dame Head Football Coach Brian Kelly made a decision to hold practice outdoors, in spite of the high winds. Nobody prohibited Sullivan from getting on the lift and video recording practice.
As serious and potentially costly as a decision to fire a person as powerful and important as the head football coach at, arguably, the premiere institution in college football is, the Notre Dame football program will stand to gain by firing the head football coach. It is the proper ethical decision. Notre Dame will stand to gain in future recruiting efforts, as I believe Coach Kelly's credibility with parents, expecting the coach to care for and act in the best interests of their children, has been irreparably harmed. Due to the net gain in future recruiting talent by firing Coach Kelly, Notre Dame will enjoy a net gain in future revenue from its football program by maximizing its ability to compete and therefore maintaining the support of its fans, sponsors, and boosters.
Coach Brain Kelly is ultimately responsible for this tragedy. Coach Kelly is the CEO of the Notre Dame football program. What he says goes. There are a number of individuals under Coach Kelly who could have also prohibited Declan Sullivan from boarding the lift. While I do not know whether or not someone under Coach Kelly suggested that the lift not be used to record practice, I do know that Coach Kelly chose to conduct practice outside, in very windy conditions, and should have been aware that the videographer, recording while on the lift, would be in extreme danger. The buck stops with Coach Kelly.
I personally believe that the danger of the tropical-storm-like wind conditions were ignored by Coach Kelly and those below him. Major college football programs are in an extremely competitive environment in a game that is often decided by inches. I think that, without the benefit of hindsight, the possibility of the lift tower crashing was not considered or thought of as very unlikely and Coach Kelly and others thought that the benefit of video recording practice outweighed what were thought to be minuscule risks.
The negligence demonstrated by Coach Kelly and his staff was egregious. The windy weather, in and of itself, was accompanied by danger for anyone who was simply outside. Living in Louisiana and having endured dozens of tropical storms and hurricanes, I would like to offer the following news flash to Coach Kelly: wind at the velocity experienced last Wednesday at Notre Dame is capable of picking up objects. Those objects are MISSILES. Missiles can injure and possibly KILL people.
Second, I do not believe, for one minute, that nobody noticed that there was a young man being lifted high into the air, starting with the lift operator. I do not believe, for one minute, that the thought never occurred to anyone, other than Declan Sullivan, that there could be life-threatening danger for anyone on the lift (or on the ground near the lift). Sullivan expressed reservations and then fear, through his Twitter account, of doing his job in what would turn out to be fatal weather conditions.
Finally, I do not believe, for one minute, that Sullivan believed he had any choice but to execute his job duties until relieved. The position that Sullivan held is the opportunity of a lifetime for any college student, especially a film student like Sullivan. The Coach of the Notre Dame football team is larger than life. The coach uses practice video to do his (seven figure) job. If Sullivan would not get on to the lift, Coach Kelly could find a replacement willing to do so, next time, as easily as blowing his nose. In addition, Sullivan was a student and an adult (a full-grown, mature, responsible adult) should have been supervising any endeavor involving heavy machinery and heights that are potentially lethal in the event of an accident. For Declan Sullivan to have spoken up, alone, and refused to record the practice would have been tantamount to risking being dismissed from a dream job that could help launch his future.
Notre Dame has some fundamental interests that it will protect by firing Coach Brian Kelly. The football program, the most storied in all of college sports, has a pristine reputation to maintain. Coaches that are so hyper-competitive that they would sacrifice the life of a student in exchange for not missing any practice footage do not fit that reputation. The football program is a reflection of Notre Dame as an institution and one of its most powerful marketing tools. Notre Dame's action or inaction in response to this tragedy will frame its image in the future. Finally, as cold as it may sound, but is nonetheless relevant, Notre Dame may be able to mitigate some of its inevitable legal liability in this tragedy by taking immediate steps to demonstrate a response to Sullivan's death that will punish the poor judgment leading to the accident and help prevent a senseless loss of a young life from this type of negligence from ever happening again.
Coach Kelly will carry a stain from this incident for the remainder of his coach career. That bell cannot be un-rung. Kelly is an offensive mastermind at the college level, by the accounts of many, and has enjoyed success at every stop he has made in his coaching career. However, he is not the only uber-talented up and coming coach. His stain from this dark incident in the annals of Notre Dame football history taint his legacy and, in my opinion, make the next rising star in the college coaching world more valuable to Notre Dame than Kelly. And here is another news flash: plenty of very talented coaches would line up and dive in to the Notre Dame Football Head Coaching position faster than one can say, "FIRE BRIAN KELLY TONIGHT!"
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