More Media Coverage on Our Client -- Coach Randy Palmer

Coach Randy Palmer, a client of R L Wilson, P.C. Law Firm received formal notice of his termination as the Athletic Director and Head Football Coach for the Poteet ISD this week. Cary Clack of the San antonio Express News published this unnerving but accurate analysis of the Coach's dilemna:

Last month, the Poteet school board voted to not renew the one-year probationary contract of its athletic director, Randy Palmer.

To dismiss a popular and competent administrator who, as head football coach, led Poteet High to a playoff berth in 2008, the board's reasons must have been unimpeachable.

One reason is that Palmer used a baseball field for football practice. That meant that instead of athletes running on the field with cleats, he had athletes running on the field with cleats, an unforgivable violation.

Another reason Palmer's contract wasn't renewed is, as Express-News reporter Zeke MacCormack wrote, "he failed to quell the outpouring of support for him after the board's preliminary vote Feb. 23 to not renew his contract."

So the school board's timeline looks like this: The board fired Palmer in a preliminary vote in February, and because he was so popular, there was an outpouring of support for him, and because he didn't use his popularity to stop the outpouring of support for him, the board fired him for good in March.

So if there had been no outpouring of support for him after he got fired in February, he wouldn't have gotten fired in March?

In essence, Palmer was fired in March because he couldn't keep people from being upset that he was fired in February.

How do you do that? What's in your strawberry shortcake to produce that logic?

This is Alice in Wonderland meets George Orwell meets H.G. Wells because somewhere in there you're going to need a time machine to make sense of it.

"Son, we're firing you?"

"Why?"

"Because when we announced we were firing you last month you didn't keep people from protesting that we fired you."

"So you're firing me because, after announcing previously you were firing me, people were angry that you were firing me, so to punish me you're going to fire me and anger more people that you're firing me?"

"Yes."

The day after the board's second vote to fire Palmer, in an admirable display of civil disobedience, more than 100 students at Poteet High left their classes.

You've done some good when that many students risk punishment for you.

What was Palmer to tell his admirers who have publicly stood in solidarity with him during the past six weeks?

"I appreciate your support and the fact that you are upset with my firing, but please do not show your support for me over my firing or I will get fired."

Since Palmer was fired because he didn't quell the outpouring of support after the preliminary vote to fire him, does the fact that he wasn't able to quell the support for him after the second vote to fire him mean that his next employer must fire him?

Do you even understand that last paragraph?

Neither do I.

But it's at least as clear as the reasons for firing Randy Palmer.