For those of us that weren't involved in the Maryland coaching, let's go with meltdown, it seems like it escalated rather abruptly and out of no where. But according to Jeff Barker of the Baltimore Sun, the wheels of this divorce had been set in motion over a month ago. Barker describes a dinner that Friedgen attended with Kevin Anderson a few weeks ago.
"We talked (at the dinner) about philosophy and everything else, and then he talked about a contract extension," Anderson said. "He told me at that time that he didn't want to be a lame duck. I told him I wasn't prepared to talk about or to offer him an extension."
Once Anderson expressed that he would be unwilling to give Friedgen an extension, and Friedgen reiterated that he did want to coach as a lame duck, they had reached the point of no return. Once James Franklin left to coach at Vanderbilt the whole situation became much more of a priority. As for the way this whole thing played out, it wasn't exactly like Anderson may have wanted.
"I tried very hard not to have this happen, and it's unfortunate," Anderson told The Baltimore Sun Monday. "This was not my intent for it to go down this way."
You can try as hard as you want to, but if you want a guy to go away and he doesn't want to, it's bound to get ugly.