Sunny Golloway, who served as Auburn head baseball coach for the previous two seasons, has been dismissed by Auburn Athletics Director Jay Jacobs, announced Sunday.
"I regret to announce that earlier today I dismissed Auburn head baseball coach Sunny Golloway with cause,” Jacobs said. “My commitment will always be to provide the best student-athlete experience in the nation, and we will not accept anything less.”
Greg Norton, former major leaguer and current Auburn assistant coach will be responsible for baseball operations until a new coach is hired. Golloway was fired with cause according to AuburnTigers.com, so his contract will not be paid out.
Golloway's firing comes after only his second season on The Plains. He came to Auburn from Oklahoma, where he reached the College World Series once, in 2013, signing a five-year contract that had stipulations for extensions to his contract at Auburn that were contingent on various benchmarks of competitive success.
"My feeling is, is that it's not good timing for Auburn," said Kendall Rogers, a national analyst for D1Baseball.com. "You better have a really good reason for (the firing), because if you don't there could be some legal ramifications."
Then on Monday, Golloway's lawyer, John D. Saxon, P.C., of Birmingham, sent out a press release promising to defend Golloway's "outrageous" firing.
"For Coach Sunny Golloway to be fired is outrageous. The allegations against him are pretextual. Coach Golloway has made no mistakes. If some, who want him gone, say mistakes were made, they are the mistakes of others, who have conspired to make him the victim. If it is necessary in the coming days to air these matters, folks from Jay Jacobs on down--but not Sunny Golloway--will be the ones wishing Auburn had handled this differently. As for President Gogue, he does not know the facts. If he did, he would not have acquiesced in this decision.
This is a program that hired a disgraced Bruce Pearl, yet now seeks to make a good man and a good coach, who is nothing but a winner, the fall guy.
Sunny Golloway is not only a winner; he is a fighter. He has four years left on his contact. There are good arguments, which we are prepared to test in court, that he actually has a lifetime contract. If serious offers of severance are not soon forthcoming, we will fighting this matter in some forum, quite visibly, as long as it takes to redeem Coach Golloway's good name and to provide just compensation for him and his family."
As the legal process unfolds for Golloway and Auburn, Jacobs will begin a search for a new coach immediately. But with an Auburn program needing a stable presence at the helm, Jacobs can't afford to strike out on his next hire.
"While Auburn is in a precarious spot because we're in the middle of the fall, they could end up with a really good coach, potentially somebody that will mesh a little bit better with Jay Jacobs," Rogers said. "(Firing Golloway) could either pay off, or it could be just another item to put on the list of issues with Auburn baseball over the last two decades."
Sunny Golloway Dismissed as Auburn Baseball Coach http://t.co/VbqN1z1e2Q
— Auburn Baseball (@Auburn_Baseball) September 27, 2015
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