I am of that era. and like some others here I had a relative who invested in the original Patriot stock offering. The Sullivans started to show show their true colors when the literally stole the team from the share holders for pennies on the dollar in the 60's. They continued to mismanage the team right through the 70's. They missed opportunity after opportunity to build in Boston and squandered many more opportunities to sell the team to owners with enough money to run it properly.
IIRC - Fairbanks did the best he could with the very limited resources the Sullivans offered him. He was a great coach. However when the opportunity came to run a good (at the time) college program he would have insane not to take it. More money, better facilities, more professional management support.
But here's the way I recall it. Faribanks told the Sullivans that he was going to leave at the end of the season and take the Colorado job. But he would stay for the playoffs. The Sullivans like the hotheaded idiots that they were, threw him out of the facilities and didn't let him say good by to his team.....and then had their drinking buddies in the press spin it like he left the team in a lurch.
Compared to the Sullivan's Woody Johnson is a Bob Kraft Clone. They were THAT bad. It still pisses me off whenever Billy Sullivan is named he's praised as the guy who brought pro football back to NE. That's BS. Boston was a great sports down, and the 6th larges TV market in the country. The NFL was coming to Boston whether Billy Sullivan was here or not. The Boston Market was at the top of the list for an expansion team before they got an AFL franchise. Do you really think it made more economic sense to give expansion franchises to towns like NO and Tampa over Boston, if Boston had been available? I don;t think so.
The Sullivans were a cancer they Patriots had to overcome to be what they are now. They god they are gone and any vestige of their ownership long gone.
To repeat, I wasn't a fan at that time, but I have good reason to think that things were just as PFK describes them.
In which case:
1. Fairbanks has done a good job with an impossible boss but wants out. IMHO, he's entitled to decide that, whether the team is in the playoffs or whatever.
2. He's offered a decent job at Colorado. OK, the timing isn't great, but that's the way with football -- we all know that colleges' recruiting season means that they need coaches in place even when the NFL season is still going on. Was Bill O'Brien not entitled to take the PSU job?
3. He tried to handle it as discreetly as possible.
4. The Sullivans blew it up.
To my mind, the blame should go to them (if those really were the facts).
As I understand your post, Shmessy, you think that, even if 3 and 4 are true, Fairbanks was a traitor for taking another job.
There's where we disagree.
