Just watched the whole press conference.
Coyle said several times, in response to direct questions, "we will honor the entire contract." someone asked - do you mean the buyout or the full contract, and Coyle said again, "we will honor the entire contract." Then, Joe C comes out later and says they're just doing the buyout. So either Coyle completely misunderstood the question, or he's the worst communicator of all time.
The press conference was really frustrating. Coyle kept saying he couldn't discuss specifics because of privacy laws, but he kept hinting at things without spelling them out. Kept talking about the need for truthfulness - but when a reporter asked him who was lying, he couldn't or wouldn't answer. It was like he had a list of talking points in front of him, and just kept reading them off "world class institution," etc.
Someone asked Coyle if he felt he had any responsibility for the mis-communication with the players, and he gave another waffle answer - privacy laws again.
Also kept repeating his line about "we can compete at the highest levels of the conference" - like it was matter of just hire the right coach and win a conference title.
As I said, Coyle kept hinting or insinuating that there were other issues in the program - talking about a "total evaluation" of the program, and seemed to be saying that there were other factors beyond the Sept 2nd incident or the Tweet - he said that you don't make decisions based on a single incident - but when pressed by the media, Coyle would never get specific about why Claeys was fired - made it sound like he was fired because he didn't win a conference title.
Coyle kept talking about "competing at the highest level." Mike Max asked - this year's team went 9-4 - isn't that competing at a higher level? - and Coyle went back to his line about having a program that operates at the highest level "athletically, academically and socially." He must have repeated that line 7 or 8 times.
I just got the sense that, no matter what Claeys and his staff did, it was never going to be good enough for Coyle. It just seems like he made up his mind a long time ago to make a change, and the Sept 2nd incident just gave him a ready excuse.
