Broncos radio announcer loses high school football coach job

0

The team’s radio play-by-play announcer, Dave Logan, three days after his call of Tebow’s game-winning playoff touchdown pass (1/11), was fired from his coaching position at Mullen High, an independent Catholic school in Denver. He was 110-12, with four state titles, in nine years at Mullen, following successful runs at two other Colorado high schools.


According to a 1/13 Denver Post story, wins and losses weren’t the issue in Logan’s firing. A big problem was Logan could not get on the good side of Mullen president and CEO Ryan Clement.

Like Logan, Clement wanted to have a coaching job, too, according to the Post: “But sources confirmed that trouble started before last season, when Mullen administrators wanted as many as three in-building assistants on Logan’s staff, including Clement as a possible quarterbacks coach. Logan would only allow that change as “their prerogative.”

New Mullen principal Jim Gmelich and Clement were prominent in making the decision to fire Logan, along with the board of trustees, which approved the move.

Clement, however, told the Post the issue was Logan’s celebrity (he’s also a radio talk show host) and a desire to have a full-time staff member as Mullen’s coach. Logan was unpaid, and spread what would have been his salary to his assistants. From the Post:

“[Clement said] the popular talk show host and longtime Broncos announcer had become the face of the school and that’s not what the new administration wanted, especially from someone who didn’t work at the school full time. In the case of Coach Logan, he had a greater celebrity outside, which was even magnified more. The analysis of the impact on our culture is magnified by how the head football coach engages within the school. For that position, we felt we needed to have (the coach) be full-time faculty. If our greatest asset is our football coach, who’s not here very often, you can see it’s not who we’ve been.”

Logan won’t be out of work as a coach for long. Denver media report schools are already lining up to make him an offer. That’s no surprise. Not only has he won (his career high school coaching record is 201-43), but he’s also extremely popular both among his Mullen players and students (who staged a protest after his firing), and among the Denver public at large.