Two years!

Just two years!

Geeeesssshhh!

That’s all the longer Dusty May stayed as the head coach of the University of Michigan men’s basketball team.

Now, granted, though short, it was a time to remember for Wolverines fans, as he guided the program to a national championship this past season. But it was only two years nonetheless as news broke Monday that he was leaving to become head coach of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.

Don’t blame May. He’s a good guy, and a great coach. He has always wanted to coach in the NBA, and this was apparently a deal that was too good to pass up. That’s the way it is now in major college and pro sports. Coaches don’t stick around long anymore. They chase the money and the better jobs, just like the players.

When I heard the news about May, I thought about Paul Brown, the head coach of the Browns for the first 17 seasons of their existence from 1946-62. He no doubt would’ve stayed longer — probably a lot longer, in fact, and maybe even as long as until his retirement, whenever that would’ve been — but Art Modell put a stop to that when he unceremoniously fired him just weeks after the 1962 season ended.

Brown liked it in Cleveland. He didn’t want to leave, but when the owner of the team decided it’s time for you to go, you have to go.

Along with Brown, there was George Halas, the longtime head coach of the Chicago Bears, and later, Tom Landry, who coached the Dallas Cowboys for nearly 30 years.

Had Brown not gotten fired, how would the Browns had done throughout the rest of the 1960s and into the ‘70s following the NFL-AFL merger? Would the Browns have won the NFL championship in 1964? Would they have gotten back to the title game in 1965? Would they have played for the NFL championship in both 1968 and ‘69? And instead of starting to struggle soon into the 1970s, would Brown have been able to keep them competitive with their rivals in the AFC Central, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Cincinnati Bengals, with somebody other than Paul Brown as their head coach, and the Houston Oilers?

We’ll never know any of that. But there are still people around who were following the Browns when Brown got fired and have never forgiven Modell. They didn’t like it then, and they still don’t like it now.

If you stay around long enough, then you’re bound to make some people mad. But if you don’t stay long at all, then you’re not going to get people ticked at you. And you’re also not going to have people praise you to a great extent because there just isn’t time.

Dusty May left after that title season. He wasn’t going to stick around and see if he could do a repeat, so that job will be up to somebody else. You gave to hand it to the guy, for when you win a championship, there’s nothing you can do in the following season to beat that. And if you don’t beat it, then your season is viewed by some as a failure.

The Browns won league championships in each of their first five seasons. When they failed to do so in 1951, losing to the Los Angeles, Rams 24-17 on a late touchdown pass, Brown about blew a fuse. He deemed the season a complete failure and spent the entire offseason analyzing every single aspect of the organization to try to make sure it never happened again.

Steve King