Football: A big mess at St. Paul

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The first lesson in the firing on Wednesday night of St. Paul football Coach Elijah Asante is that private schools can do whatever they want, and they don’t care what people think.

So what do people think?

‘Are we the NFL?’ Chaminade Coach Ed Croson said. ‘We’re school teachers. If it was because of wins and losses, shame on them.’

Yes, St. Paul is 1-5, but it’s hard to believe Asante lost his job because the team hasn’t won enough games, right? Clearly, some people were not happy with him. Asante says the principal, Kate Aceves, told him she ‘did not like the direction of the program.’

So who’s to blame?

St. Paul made a judgment and a commitment in hiring him last December. Supposedly, they did their research. They knew he had been successful at L.A. Jordan and Carson, two LAUSD schools. They knew he was unorthodox in some of his ways. How can you get rid of him after six games? What kind of lesson is that for St. Paul students?

The school was so convinced in Asante that it didn’t even give an interview to Scot Ruggles, who applied for the job last December but ironically was the coach of the Studio City Harvard-Westlake team that beat St. Paul, 44-11, on Friday night.

If it turned out Asante was not a good fit for St. Paul, get rid of him, but to do it in Week 7 offers a not-so-pleasant indictment on the state of high school sports.

-- Eric Sondheimer