Given a dumpster fire, Gary Goff was at least able to extinguish the flames.

It will now be up to somebody else to clean up the rest of the mess that remains the McNeese State football program.

Goff was fired Monday after three seasons and with one still remaining on his at the time record-breaking contract. 

The move was not a shock, for Goff’s seat has been toasty since last year’s 1-10 disaster. He also knew it might be coming.

When you are walking on eggshells for a year it comes as no surprise when one finally breaks underneath you.

During an interview last week, Goff said he understood the business and believed the team had improved enough for him and his coaches to remain.

Athletic Director Heath Schroyer believed differently.

“I think we have done a good job,” Goff said at the time. “I’m pretty proud of this team and this staff. I think we have made a lot of progress and are on the right path.”

He talked like a coach looking forward to the future and believing things were about to change for the better.

“We are really close to turning this thing totally around,” Goff said.

With a 6-6 finish this season progress was made, but there is also more to fix. Goff wanted the chance to continue as the cleaner and Schroyer wanted somebody new.

It is that simple.

So now McNeese, which hasn’t made the playoffs since 2015 and hasn’t won a postseason game since 2002, will be looking for the next Mr. Fix It. He, or she, will become the fifth Cowboy head coach in nine years.

That is a flammable formula if ever there was one. 

To be fair, the job Goff was originally hired for is not the one he is leaving. He came from Valdosta State, his alma mater on the Division II level, wanting to build a program from the ground up. That’s how he had done things his entire career.

However, they moved the goalposts on him and the rest of college football. This is now a world of NIL money and the transfer portal, and Goff and his staff seemed to be just starting to catch up.

Not only did the game change but Goff seemed to as well.

Last year’s mess seemed to take a lot out of him. That especially goes for the fact he had an assistant coach who he fired for apparently leaking game plays and practice tapes to opponents.

While nothing came of that officially, there was a feeling that Goff and the Cowboys had been sabotaged from within. Many thought it was a big deal, but many others felt it wasn’t.

How big of a rift that caused in the program we may never know. Goff didn’t believe he got the backing of the administration nor that the Southland Conference took his concerns too seriously.

The league did say it conducted an investigation but found nothing.

That was just all part of the dumpster fire that started long before Goff ever heard of McNeese State. 

Now it is up to Schroyer to find the right guy just three seasons after telling us Goff was “the guy” to turn things around.

Back when Matt Viator left at the end of the 2015 season I remember saying McNeese was a decade behind the rest of college football and that it would take seven years to catch up.

I’m already off by two…and counting.

Jim Gazzolo is a freelance sports writer who covers McNeese State athletics for the American Press. He can be reached at jimgazzolo@yahoo.com