Stanford chose to fire Jerod Haase after its college basketball team loss to Washington State in the Pac-12 Tournament. It did not take the administration long to sever ties.
The eighth-year head coach was relieved of his duties within minutes of leaving the court for the last time. The body wasn’t even cold.
Stanford wasted no time.
A final score was posted on X at 8:07pm local time from Las Vegas.
An announcement of Haase’s ouster was posted exactly eight minutes later. The Cardinal fired him in under 10 minutes.
In doing so, Stanford revealed its truly bizarre title for “men’s basketball coach” in a way that only Stanford can. Its post about Haase’s dismissal referred to him as the “Anne and Tony Joseph Director of Men’s Basketball,” which is just way too complicated and extremely unnecessary.
Boosters actually donated money to the athletic department and requested that their name be part of the official title for “men’s basketball coach.” Seriously. It is, apparently, a real thing in real life.
To make the entire sequence of events even more brutal, Haase had to speak with the media immediately after being fired. The 49-year-old took the high road and offered a profound perspective on his time with the program when he easily could have offered a scathing rebuttal to the decision or skipped out on the press conference all together.
The Cardinals’ loss on Thursday put Haase below the .500-mark during his tenure. He finished with 126 wins, 127 losses, and one NIT appearance. Unfortunately, his best team was unable to show its full potential because of the pandemic in 2020 that cancelled the NCAA Tournament.
Even though Haase spent most of a decade coaching college basketball in Palo Alto, Stanford cut him loose less than 10 minutes after a loss at the conference tournament. It serves as a reminder that sports are a ruthless business!