Sparano Home Up For Sale
MIAMI (CBSMiami.com) – The rumors have been circling around Miami Dolphins head coach Tony Sparano's job security all season.
Now, CBS4/790 The Ticket's Jorge Sedano has confirmed that a home owned by Sparano has been placed up for sale.
The 5,182 square foot Broward County home has an asking price of $1.5 million.
According to Sparano, he said he's selling the house because it's too big now with his daughter off to college and added that he and his wife are "empty nesters."
Rumors have swirled for weeks that Sparano was about to be fired by the organization as the Fins collapsed to a 0-6 start. Sparano received a vote of confidence earlier in the season from Dolphins owner Stephen Ross.
But Tuesday, reports surfaced that Ross is using intermediaries to gauge the interest of former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Bill Cowher in taking the Dolphins job.
It's the second time this year that Ross has began flirting with other coaches while Tony Sparano is still under contract.
With each passing week, Sparano's job security has been questioned more and more by fans and the media. The Dolphins don't have a lot of options behind him when it comes to an interim head coach if the franchise decides to fire him.
Dolphins defensive coordinator Mike Nolan is a former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, but his credibility wouldn't be high considering his defense is one of the worst in the NFL.
Brian Daboll, the team's offensive coordinator has never been a head coach.
Past that, the team could turn to wide receivers coach Karl Dorrell. He's a former head coach at UCLA and coached for the Broncos as well.
For Sparano, it's been a long slow fall for a coach who took a team that won only one game in 2007 to the playoffs and 10 wins the very next year.
But, since then, the Dolphins have gone through consecutive losing seasons and this year's 0-6 start.
If Sparano is indeed fired, the speculation will then turn to general manager Jeff Ireland. Fans have been calling for Ireland's head because he has been the architect of the current team.
The other person Dolphins fans hold in little regard now is former football czar Bill Parcells. The current ESPN analyst came to the Dolphins in 2008 and installed Sparano and Ireland into their current positions.
Once the team started going downhill, Parcells jumped ship and landed with a golden parachute of money.
All of it has contributed to Dolfans refusing to buy tickets and losing faith that the team will ever get out of the tailspin it has been in since Dan Marino hung up his cleats in 1999.
