My vote goes to Jimmy Johnson. As much as i hate the Cowboys in general and Jerry jones in particular, the firing of Jimmy Johnson stopped a potential unprecedented dynasty in the NFL. Johnson built a juggernaut through the draft, with his big three of Aikman, Smith, and Irvin on offense, and won two straight Super Bowls before failing to reach Super Bowl 29. Jones took the opportunity to hire Barry Switzer, and the Cowboys won Super Bowl 30. With the team Johnson built, a monkey could have coached that team, and Switzer proved it. Jones then believed he could draft the players and have input on coaching, and basically killed the best team of the 1990’s and possibly beyond.
I believe Jimmy Johnson was a great talent evaluator, and would have continued to keep the Cowboys loaded with a super bowl caliber team for years to come… And he had the brains to coach them.
Jones’ ego did the haters of the Cowboys a favor by getting rid of Johnson. And they have not won a playoff game since SB 30
Nitpickery: Jimmy Johnson wasn’t technically fired, he and Jerry Jones agreed to rip up the rest of his contract because their relations had become so strained.
That, and the Cowboys have won at least one playoff game since SB30 (they beat the Eagles 34-14 in 2009).
Jerry Krause getting the go ahead to force out Phil Jackson … The owner Jerry Reinsdorf was far too concerned about the Chicago White Sox… The Chicago Bulls could have won a seventh title because that season was a strike shortened year… they had time to get refreshed and could have added a seventh banner…
Instead we got Tim “Pink” Floyd… that less than average cheater who has since been banned from college coaching…
The White Sox firing Tony LaRussa. That happened for all the wrong reasons. It was pandering to fans that had been influenced by a Cubs biased press. The decline after 1983 had nothing to do with LaRussa. It was a team that didn’t have the resources to reload when the stars started aging out. LaRussa proved them wrong in Oakland a St. Louis.
The only glimmer of redemption is that the WS have won a World Series since then and the Cubs still suck lizard dick and ask for more.
My personal worst is the Astros firing Larry Dierker for being unable to take the team “to the next level” and replacing him with Jimy Williams, who’d already proven that he couldn’t take talented teams “to the next level”; not surprisingly, it took firing Williams to get the team back to the playoffs.
The Orioles (Peter Angelos, really) dumping Davey Johnson after the team went wire-to-wire and lost the ALCS in 1997. Johnson managed for 2 years, taking a team that was below .500 in 1995 to the ALCS in both seasons… then Angelos and Johnson butted heads, and the Orioles lost. After Johnson was fired, the O’s went through fourteen straight losing seasons and five different managers (Ray Miller, Mike Hargrove, Sam Perlozzo, Dave Trembley, and Juan Samuel) before Buck Showalter got the team back into the playoffs this year.
The team wasn’t probably not going to be very good anyway, and their problems went deeper than the manager. The Bulls of the mid-'90s won championships in Jordan’s last six full seasons and probably could have won a few more. In fairness that also was not just a manager issue, but the acrimony between the front office and Phil Jackson had a lot to do with everything else that happened.
Thanks for clearing up the Jones/Johnson parting. I knew he wasn’t fires, but I couldnt remember the exact scenario that forced him out. Bottom line was he was gone, and basically fired for the purposes of discussion,
And I must have blocked out that playoff win, because i was sure that Romo hadnt won a playoff game in Dallas. Or did someone like Kitna win thst gsme? (time to do some research).