Jordan McNair's Parents Say DJ Durkin Should Be Fired
The parents of Maryland offensive lineman Jordan McNair say that head coach DJ Durkin should be fired and not allowed to coach anyone else.
McNair, a 19-year-old offensive lineman, and other Maryland players were participating in a workout on May 29 when McNair showed signs of exhaustion. He died two weeks later.
"He shouldn't be able to work with anybody else's kid," Jordan's father Martin McNair said Thursday on ABC's Good Morning America. "You don't send your kid away to college. You send your kid away to college for them to be developed into young people—and that's physically, emotionally and spiritually. And teach our young kids, our young people that we worked so hard to get there, to 'Hey, I'm giving my child to you. Keep him safe.'
"They did anything but that. So of course he should be fired."
Two months after McNair's death, ESPN.com published a lengthy report detailing the culture of the Maryland football program, which included intimidation and verbal abuse.
Durkin and two members of the training staff were placed on administrative leave while the school looks into the circumstances surrounding McNair's death as well as the abuse allegations.
McNair's parents revealed additional details to ESPN on Thursday afternoon, saying that they received a phone call on May 29 asking them to come to the hospital.
"The caller never said what happened to Jordan over the phone," said Tonya Wilson, McNair's mother. "But when we got to the hospital, they said he suffered a seizure."
Wilson also said shared that the family found out just last week that Jordan's body temperature had reached 106 degrees by the time he arrived at the hospital. Jordan's father told ESPN that his son received a liver transplant but "so much organ failure and so much damage was done prior to the liver transplant, that the transplant didn't even do a lot."
Jordan's parents said that no universtiy officials contacted them again after the funeral until last week.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Maryland university president Wallace D. Loh said the university accepted “legal and moral responsibility” for McNair's death.
"The athletic training staff, not the coaching staff—they basically misdiagnosed the situation,” Loh said at the news conference.
Maryland parted ways with strength and conditioning coach Rick Court after the reports of abuse.
"Jordan was the type of person who would give his all, give his best, because someone asked him to do something," Wilson told GMA. "He would always give his all. He wouldn't have stopped. He wouldn't have stopped. If that's the culture, he didn't want to be called any names, things that they say they've been called."
