Nothing seems to last forever but Mark Stoops and Eddie Gran show there can be exceptions to that feeling

Mark Stoops (UK Athletics Photo)

Nothing seems to last forever. At least that’s the way it appears to me. Companies are in business one year and out the next. Couples get together, date a while, and then go their separate ways. Musical groups form and play in obscurity for years until they finally catch a big break, they become famous, and all of a sudden they can’t get along. Inevitably they come apart and the members go their separate ways.

The same thing happens in sports. Players come into a situation, perform well (or not so well) and the next thing you know they are gone, either playing for someone else or not playing at all. It’s the same with coaches and coaching staffs. Nothing lasts forever.

But when those relationships end, be it head coaches, their assistants or even players on the same team, there always seems to be some type of fallout, drama, back-stabbing, name-calling; call it what you will, but it always seems to happen.

Every once in a while the split is amicable and both sides move on with great respect for each other, but it is rare.

I was thinking about that a couple of weeks ago when I saw that former UofL assistant basketball coach Dino Gaudio had pled guilty to a federal charge of trying to extort money out of his good friend of 30 years and former boss, head coach Chris Mack at Louisville.

I kept thinking how could that be? How could two guys who had known each other for over 30 years, coached together at Xavier as assistants, and then coached together at UofL since 2018 end up in a situation where one is charged with felony extortion because the other decided to not renew his contract.

It seems like Gaudio was unceremoniously given the boot by the Louisville staff and then he threatened to expose U of L recruiting irregularities if he was not paid an additional 17 months of salary — the equivalent of $425,000. And somehow the Louisville athletic staff got all the threats on tape, along with a text where Gaudio repeated the same threat.

Now I know most of you are saying, “Yeah that’s old news,” and I realize it is but it was not the news that struck me so much as the startling difference that I saw in how the relationship breakup occurred between good friends — Mack and Gaudio — and how I saw the breakup occur between UK head football coach Mark Stoops and his long-time offensive coordinator and good friend Eddie Gran back in December of 2020.

Prior to Stoops letting Gran go both he and Gran had had several conversations about the situation and they mutually agreed that parting ways was the best option.

Not so much at Louisville where Gaudio seemed to be caught totally off guard by his dismissal. Gaudio’s attorney, Brian Butler, indicated in his statement that Gaudio was “shocked” by the firing.

He went on to recap the March 17th dismissal meeting between Gaudio with this statement, “When he (Gaudio) went into that meeting, unfortunately, his contract was not renewed,” Butler said. “He and Chris Mack had been friends for 30 years. That conversation became heated. Coach Gaudio had hurt feelings. He was angry and he made statements in that conversation that he regrets making and he said things that he shouldn’t have said. Unfortunately, that conversation was taped and it was turned into law enforcement before there was really a good time for reflection and a chance to walk those things back and his hope is that the people that know him and love him will consider those 40 years of valuable service to not only college basketball, but all these communities and consider this lapse in judgment and the mistake he made in the context of those hurt feelings based on that 30-year relationship and the contributions that he made to this program and reflect well on those 40 years. It is his intention to take full responsibility for the mistakes he’s made.”

Now compare that situation to the one at UK where Gran, after his dismissal, said this about his former job, “Everybody told me when I came here that this is a basketball school. It is, but I’m gonna tell you this, it’s a football school as well. And man, I always just appreciated the passion of BBN and the people here and the positivity. How they treated me was always fantastic.” Gran went on to say how much the job and the community meant to him as a coach and member of the Big Blue Nation. He said, “I had some opportunities to leave Kentucky and did not. And I didn’t because I love this state. I love where we were going, what was happening. I wanted to keep being a part of something special. And my working conditions, who I was working for and all those things, where I’m living, the community, all those things made my decisions, actually, really easy.”

Now, contrast that with what occurred 80 miles up the road in Louisville. No mention of great community, great working conditions, wonderful people to work with and for — just a federal indictment of extortion because one coach, who was a friend, fired another coach after many years of friendship because the ship was sinking at U of L. It’s amazing that when it comes to money and pride entire lifetimes of friendships and relationships can be thrown out the window.

It doesn’t have to happen that way. Eddie Gran is a wonderful example of that. When things didn’t work out well he was the first to take the blame. When the team accomplished a lot he was the first to compliment the players. It’s just who he is.

He said last year about his time as offensive coordinator in Lexington, “To be great on offense is about execution. And at times we didn’t do that. That always was on me. When we did something well and we had success, it was always about our players. It’s not Eddie Gran, it’s those guys that executed. They took the game plan and they did what they were supposed to do and that’s all offense. When you’re not successful, then that’s on me. Because you can always go back and say, ‘Man, we should have done this better,’ and as a coach that’s what you should have done. You learn from that. Hopefully, our players always knew that about me. That this program and people out there always understood it was about the players first and me second, and when things don’t go right, it was on me and nobody else.”

When you see those statements from Gran — no whining, no threatening, no public feuds or drama – it just stands out like a black mark on a white wall. It tells so much about who he is and how he thinks versus the situation that occurred between Mack and Gaudio.

It just seems that life should be about more than wins and losses or who gets the credit and who takes a backseat. It should be about people, relationships, and mutual respect. UK football has provided a great example of that. Good guy (Eddie Gran) gets fired after leading his football team to the best five years in the school’s history. A few months later he is invited back to that same school for a golf outing honoring the late John Schlarman, one of his former colleagues, and when he gets to the event he gives his former boss (Mark Stoops), the guy who fired him, a big hug.

You don’t see that often in sports; in fact, you don’t see that often in life. It takes a special person and a special relationship to create that kind of respect and caring after a very public breakup. Obviously, Gran and Stoops have that and, based on what we saw in Louisville, Mack and Gaudio do not.

Unfortunately, it has destroyed one man’s career and created another scandal in a long list of scandals at the University of Louisville.

— Keith Peel, Contributing Writer