We’re not even a week in and I already have coaching search fatigue. I’ve hit refresh on Reddit and Twitter constantly. I’ve gotten irrationally angry about true-to-life memes. I’ve listened to five different podcasts discussing Louisville City’s plight, as I’m sure many of you have. Perspectives range from “this is a complete systems failure, we’re totally screwed” to “eh, everything’s fine, this is just a blip on the radar.” The former position brings up some salient points but is a bit reactionary, while the latter discredits how much effort and skill James O’Connor expended and applied to his role with the club.

I understand that O’Connor built a system that has the ability to “run itself,” but there’s a reason the head coaching position exists. If a system in soccer, or any other professional sport, really could run itself, then there would be lots of teams without head coaches. There aren’t. There’s a reason Pep Guardioala, Jose Mourinho, Nick Saban, Phil Jackson, Greg Popovich, Steve Kerr, and Bill Belichick get paid gazillions of dollars to oversee their respective systems. That’s because they don’t actually run themselves. Our players are great, and they’re high character people, but they aren’t any more professional or insightful than any of the players working for Manchester City or Golden State Warriors. There’s no way on Earth the entities that own those teams would let Yaya Toure or Klay Thompson take over for a few weeks.

As I said last week, I think the season can survive for a few weeks with players running the show. I’m not getting caught up in semantics with respect to how The Triumvirate is being labeled. I do think that if Luke Spencer, George Davis IV, and Paolo DelPiccolo are still in charge at the end of July, we’re in trouble. That sounds arbitrary, but locker rooms and organizations are ecosystems like anything else. Add in a new element or take one away, and everything changes to some degree or another. What the vacuum that O’Connor’s exit has or will create is anyone’s guess.

I understand that change is inevitable. I understand that the Chinese word for problem also means opportunity. I understand that the stadium is what is going to make the club’s operations sustainable for the distant future, not James O’Connor or any other coach. I understand that the backup plan was Daniel Byrd, and we weren’t expecting him to leave, too. I understand that one month without a head coach at Louisville City doesn’t mean the club is going to shut up shop forever and we’ll all be stuck with a bunch of purple t-shirts and scarves with nowhere to wear them. But it isn’t good, either.

Long term, if the club finds the right coach and continues to have on-field success, yes, we’ll be fine. I believe the club when they say they’re taking this problem very seriously, even if naming players as interim managers was their stop-gap. I’m not sure what else they could have done, really. But this isn’t a situation that can be allowed to fester. All we can do now is hope the owners find and, more importantly, listen to people who know what they’re doing. I don’t know if they’ll be able to really replace James O’Connor, but as long as everyone in the club recognizes the standards that he set and held everyone else to, then they’ve got no better benchmark for the next head coach of Louisville City FC.

How about some links: