Welcome, Ralph Friedgen and friends, to the Discarded Coaches' Club

To the surprise of no one, Maryland confirmed coach Ralph Friedgen's exit this afternoon, drawing the curtain on a solid decade at his alma mater. He'll coach the Terps in their Military Bowl date with East Carolina next week, after which the school will terminate his contract, pay the remaining $2 million for the remaining year and begin its pursuit of Friedgen's presumed successor, Mike Leach, in earnest.

Presumably, first-year athletic director Kevin Anderson would have set Friedgen adrift if he'd had the chance last year, when Maryland could at least chalk his exit up to "What have you done for me lately?" in the wake of a 2-10 debacle that sucked any sense of optimism or progress out of the air. This year, though, he has done something for the Terps lately: The team rebounded to 8-4, and Friedgen was voted the ACC's Coach of the Year. Of the 14 coaches who have ever left a job immediately after winning their conference's coach of the year award, he's the first who was fired.

This year, though, he's not alone. Just up the road, Pittsburgh dumped Dave Wannstedt, and West Virginia effectively fired Bill Stewart with 365 days notice, both of them coming off their third consecutive winning season. (Technically, though UConn earned the Big East's automatic bid to the BCS, the Panthers and Mountaineers also shared the conference championship.) Combined, Friedgen, Stewart and Wannstedt are 143-92 (.609) over 19 years with 12 winning seasons, six top-25 finishes and three conference titles – at Maryland, West Virginia and Pitt.

How many coaches get the guillotine with a conference championship and a .600 winning percentage to their name? Enough to fill a small graveyard every decade or so. By my count, Friedgen, Wannstedt and Stewart following eight other … let's say, questionable terminations in the BCS era:

• John Cooper, Ohio State (Final season: 8-4 in 2000). Before he was a punchline for his lame record against Michigan, Cooper was an architect of a string of first-rate, national championship-caliber squads from 1995-98 that always managed to spit the bit in one fashion or another. The Buckeyes slipped to 6-6 in 1999, and a rebound to 8-4 in 2000 couldn't save him.

• R.C. Slocum, Texas A&M (Final season: 6-6 in 2002). The Aggies won four straight Southwest Conference titles under Slocum from 1991-94, and staked an early claim in the Big 12 with a South Division title in 1997; they stunned No. 1 Kansas State for the conference championship a year later. Four years after that, Slocum got the boot for finishing three straight seasons outside the top 25, on the heels of resurgent powerhouses Oklahoma and Texas.

• Frank Solich, Nebraska (Final season: 9-3 in 2003). The other Oklahoma/Texas victim. Solich, hand-picked successor to Tom Osborne's 'Husker dynasty, had a Big 12 title to his name in 1999, and a trip to the de facto BCS championship game in 2001. He rebounded from a 7-7 collapse in 2002 to win nine in 2003, but there was no patience in Lincoln for Alamo Bowls.

• Paul Pasqualoni, Syracuse (Final season: 6-6, Big East co-champs in 2004). Pasqualoni's resumé over 15 years included seven top-25 finishes, at least a share of four Big East championships and only one losing season, in 2002. Three years of stagnation got him fired in '04, but after four years under Greg "Gerg" Robinson, stagnation never looked so good.

• Gary Barnett, Colorado (Final season: 7-5, Big 12 North champs in 2005). Barnett was done in by a renegade program as much as his record, though it didn't hurt that his last team lost its last three games by a combined score of 130-22, including a 70-3 humiliation at the hands of Rose Bowl-bound Texas in the Big 12 Championship Game. In the big picture, though, Barnett – fresh off his miracle-working stint at Northwestern in the mid-nineties – ended CU's decade-plus title drought with a Big 12 championship in 2001, the first of four North Division crowns in five years.

• Larry Coker, Miami (Final season: 7-6 in 2006). Coker is the rare coach fired after delivering a national championship, in 2001, and he almost brought the U another one in 2002, if not for the overtime Fiesta Bowl loss to Ohio State that snapped a 24-game win streak to kick off his head coaching career. It was downhill from there, but there was still another Big East championship, BCS berth and top-five finish in 2003, before the walls started to crumble around him in the transition to the ACC.

• Phillip Fulmer, Tennessee (Final season: 5-7 in 2008). Fulmer is the only other BCS-winning coach later thrown to the dogs, and only a year removed from an SEC East title in 2007 – the Vols' third surprise trip to the conference championship game since 2001. The final collapse in '08 was only the final straw in a long pattern of diminishing returns.

• Tommy Tuberville, Auburn (Final season: 5-7 in 2008). Tubs' ouster a few weeks later was more abrupt: Since surviving an attempted coup in 2003, he'd taken the Tigers to four straight top-15 finishes in the final polls and a 13-0, SEC championship run in 2004 that would have ended in a BCS title shot in almost any other season. His murky exit still makes a lot more sense as a resignation.

The lesson: Old bulls get a short leash when boosters start to grumble and attendance starts to slip. The other lesson: Be careful what you ask for – five of the eight successors to the coaches on this list were fired themselves within five years, and another (Lane Kiffin at Tennessee) bailed on a depleted roster after just one. The new must replace the old, but it doesn't always amount to progress.

- - -
Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

Cindy Taylor Halle Berry Catherine Bell Tessie Santiago Jessica Simpson