Chargers Needed the Boss to Mediate Employee Feud

Imagine, if you will, Terry Donahue becoming the coach of an NFL team.

And Ted Tollner serving as his top assistant.

Believe it, Los Angeles. An organization that would separate football’s best general manager and its best coach certainly would think nothing of uniting a Bruin and a Trojan.

That organization is the San Diego Chargers, which months ago was one of football’s finest but is now perhaps its most disgraceful.

No, they have not called Donahue and Tollner to fill two spots on their suddenly empty coaching staff. But they might, and maybe both men should think twice if they do.

Less than two years ago, the Chargers were in the Super Bowl, a sparkling attraction with a foundation as solid as the Green Bay Packers.

Today, they are just another decrepit border bungalow.

What happened, officially, is that Coach Bobby Ross resigned because of philosophical differences with General Manager Bobby Beathard.

What happened, unofficially, is that two of football’s best minds were allowed to bicker like old guys at the end of a bar until one of them walked out before he was thrown out.

Instead of forcing a compromise, old-school owner Alex Spanos sided with Beathard.

Instead of making his two favored but fighting children stay in a room until they emerged with a truce, Spanos simply disinherited one of them.

The result was nearly as bad as when Jimmy Johnson left the Dallas Cowboys.

But even the Johnson situation made more sense because his problems were with the owner.

Ross is gone because he couldn’t get along with another employee?

OK, so it was his supervisor. But last we looked, neither of them are signing the checks.

“It’s a difficult and delicate thing to explain,” said Dean Spanos, the owner’s son, later adding, “Bobby Beathard is our guy and will be our guy in the future.”

Difficult and delicate? No, it’s plain and simple.

The Charger owner blew it by thinking one part of football’s best duo was replaceable.

Just as obviously, he thinks the sort of fans who once filled a stadium simply to welcome home his team from a playoff game are also replaceable.

Gone is the man who coached the Chargers to three playoff appearances in five years after they had failed to qualify in the nine consecutive years before he came.

Gone is the man who coached the Chargers to their only Super Bowl appearance.

Gone is the man who brought such integrity and interest to the organization that only two of the 40 regular-season home games under his direction were not sold out.

Before Bobby Ross arrived, 33 of the previous 40 games did not sell out.

They called him “Boss Ross,” but he increasingly wasn’t feeling like it.

After this year’s 8-8 season and failure to reach the playoffs, he didn’t want to let Beathard fire his two coordinators.

Ross also was growing weary of Beathard’s second-guessing of his decision not to play some of Beathard’s surprise draft picks.

Ross wanted to win now and thought that would be easier with players such as veteran running back Leonard Russell instead of rookie Freddie Bradley.

That is understandable.

It is also understandable that Beathard wanted Ross to follow orders. Or, at least, engage him in constructive debate over those orders.

The public reaction in San Diego is that Beathard is the bad guy.

That opinion is too quick and easy.

To boo Beathard now is to forget that it was he who hired Ross in the first place, doing the near-impossible by finding a college coach who would excel in a higher league.

To boo Beathard is to forget that he built the Super Bowl team with a string of surprise picks and acquisitions, from Stan Humphries to Ronnie Harmon to Junior Seau to Natrone Means.

And, oh, yes, we’ve been hearing a lot about how Beathard blew it last year by releasing Means and Leslie O’Neal.

Guess what? Ross agreed with him on both decisions.

Beathard was right to expect some deference to his opinions, even if those opinions can be so strong he also would part ways with the other great coach he once hired--Joe Gibbs in Washington.

Backing Beathard was proper in theory. In the NFL world of free agency and the salary cap, the best teams have strong personnel bosses who do not double as coaches.

But the best teams also have owners or ownership groups who make sure that those coaches and general managers get along.

Can there be any two more forceful men than Green Bay Packer Coach Mike Holmgren and General Manager Ron Wolf? Yet how many times do you hear about their fights?

There’s one guy out there who could speed the recovery here. Like most disaster specialists, he will not come cheaply.

But, after proving again he cannot impress anyone with his brains, the least Spanos could do is try with his wallet.

The man’s name is Gary Barnett, he is the coach at Northwestern, and he has been touted as the next . . . well, the next Bobby Ross.