it failed to be mentioned as one of the top five reasons in a survey in the 1990s, where coach/player relations was considered the primary reason, indicating a shift of emphasis to public relations.
A follow-up article by Scantling and Lackey (2005) extended lackey's previous study to the 2000-2004 period, with the primary reasons for dismissing coaches being: poor player-coach relationships; lack of coaching skills; improper conduct of the coach; failure to win; and a tie between poor public relations and failure to motivate players. Again, the principals ranked the main sources of pressures on the coaches as parents, fans/boosters, coaches themselves, school boards, and athletes, so little seems to have changed since the previous surveys. Team sports resulted in more coaches being dismissed, with the most occurring in girls basketball, followed by boys basketball, football and girls volleyball.
Similar findings were obtained by Miller et al (2005) in looking at the dismissal of coaches in Texas high schools. They fou
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