Six weeks ago, during the last episode of the Craig Robinson-starred soap opera at Oregon State, coach Obama-in-law received a hollow backing from his athletic director.

Robinson's six-season act had grown tired with fans, but also he'd chapped athletic department staffers with the way he paraded around, and especially with the comments he'd made along the way to failing again to reach the NCAA Tournament.

But Robinson had a job.

Today he does not.

Oregon State fired Craig Robinson on Sunday. Not because he broke NCAA rules, or because the Beavers finally came up with enough money to buy out the $4 million remaining on his contract, but because Bob De Carolis knew he made a mistake and needed to fix it.

Give Beavers fans an assist here. They weren't happy about Robinson having a job, and they refused to stop saying it. De Carolis is grounded and wise enough to listen to his customers.

De Carolis said the decision to fire Robinson was his and his alone. But he said he was thinking of his players, boosters and fans when he changed his mind: “They deserve more. They deserve success… we need a fresh start."

Took guts. It's a big thing for a man in a position such as head of the athletic department to admit he was wrong. De Carolis was reminded on a daily basis as donors emailed to say they weren't giving a penny with Robinson around and droves of season-ticket holders weren't going to renew. OSU players such as Hallice Cooke and others announced they'd had enough. Boosters were done. And at some point, De Carolis must have looked around and asked himself, "Why am I the only person still supporting this?"

He fired him. The AD disagrees with me, but six years later, even with a practice facility, I'm skeptical that OSU is a more attractive job than when it hired Robinson. De Carolis is going to have to make a much better hire, though. De Carolis said he does not yet have a replacement in mind, but I'm not buying that for a second.

Why now? Wrong question. Try this on: Why not now?

De Carolis backed Robinson after the end of the regular season. He issued that letter in which he pointed out that Robinson had six victories over top-100 teams, and that eight of Robinson's players had achieved conference player-of-the-week honors.

We all knew it was a stretch.

I'd felt in the days around that letter that De Carolis was wavering. I went from believing Robinson was absolutely coming back to wondering if OSU could afford to keep him. Even in the hours before the letter of support went out I could feel De Carolis trying to find a clean way out of this, and

. Remember, Robinson had finished the season with an embarrassing home loss to Radford, then commented after, "If I get fired, it's been nice knowing you guys."

That remark alone put De Carolis in a terrible position. The ultimate insult from an embattled coach to his boss. Robinson was daring the AD to fire him. How difficult was it for De Carolis to not pull the trigger on Robinson right then and there? De Carolis scheduled two separate meetings, one to address Robinson's lousy comment, the second to talk about his future.

"I needed to put some space between those two meetings," the AD told me then.

Robinson was 93-104 in his time at OSU. The Beavers athletic department had withstood cries in the past to fire the football assistant coaches, or get rid of Mike Riley after a bad loss. Those things eventually die down over a few days, but according to one athletic department insider with Robinson, "It was non-stop, day after day, fans in the super market surrounding staffers, saying 'We're never buying tickets, we're not coming back.'"

No starters coming back.

No tickets sold.

Worst of all, no hope.

Robinson kept a tight circle around the Oregon State athletic department. He wasn't a monster to his fellow employees, but he had a way of chapping his co-workers. He threw players under the bus after tough losses, including the 24-point loss against Washington earlier this season in which the coach said his players, "got caught up in enormity of the situation." Also, Robinson went on his own weekly radio show and predicted his team, despite losing all of its senior leadership, would surely reach the NCAA tournament next season. Administrators in Corvallis nearly drove their cars off the road when they heard it.

I'm not sure what happens to Robinson after this firing. He receives a $4 million parting gift. He's a smart guy, with a well-connected family. He'll figure something out. But we all know that Oregon State is at a critical juncture. It's faced with making the perfect hire, and trying to win back the confidence of its basketball fan base. De Carolis made a tough, but necessary, decision on Sunday.

It wasn't that De Carolis found a donor with $4 million gift. It wasn't that a coach OSU coveted suddenly came available. It's that he knew, down deep, that he was wrong to keep Robinson and had to fix it.

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