Let me preface this entire story by saying that if Sylvia Crawley is indeed sick I wish her nothing but a quick and speedy recovery. The point of this article is not to trivialize or discredit her illness in any way, but to question the way she has been dismissed. That fact that it is "non-life-threatening" shouldn't really matter, because although other coaches like Joe Paterno and Jim Calhoun coached through cancer, each person should be respected in their recovery.
Now with that out of the way, I want to say that the way that Boston College Athletics and Gene DeFilippo is handling this whole situation is bizarre. First off, the "health reasons" resignation eerily parallels the way BC decided to get rid of Kevin Rogers. Rogers was not getting along with Spaz. Crawley was losing basketball games. So they both needed to go. Both Rogers and Crawley were Gene hires, so is this voluntary resignation becoming his MO for covering his butt?
I am sorry if I seem cynical that two times in less than a year GDF has pulled out the "respect her privacy, but they are gone" card out when they needed to get rid of a coach. Flip is quick to go to the press and make other coaches look bad, but they are usually not "his guys." Al Skinner, Cathy Inglese and Jeff Jagodzinski were all guys that disagreed with GDF publicly and this made it really easy for them to be fired. But Rogers and Crawley were "Gene guys," and it seems clear now that Gene guys need to be handled with kid gloves, and will never ever get the send off that coaches that disagree with him do. This all just appears to be a face saving measure.
Secondly, the Gene DeFilippo propaganda machine, the Boston Globe, has not said a single word about this resignation other than throwing up a three sentence Associated Press article that you can find on any website that subscribes to this service. I know that most Boston sports fans don't care about BC sports, and even less care about BC women's basketball. But why isn't the Globe dispatching their "BC Beat Writer" Mark Blaudschun on this? It seems pretty clear that the school controls the editorial and content of all BC-related sports discussion at the Globe, and the way that Crawley hasn't been discussed just reeks of BC Athletic's editorial discretion over the Globe.
I don't want to doubt her illness, but the timing of this announcement seems odd. If BC wanted to fire Crawley for the poor coaching performance and her team's record, they should have just done that. No one would have blinked an eye as the program had an atrocious season. After firing a successful coach in Cathy Inglese, Crawley was a questionable coaching hire to begin with, and the way that she was removed appears to be Gene DeFilippo and his crew trying to save face. My question is how long will it be before we see Crawley coaching at another school? And if Gene guys get this kind of treatment, can you imagine what will happen when Spaz mercifully leaves?