UW Badgers fire head football coach Paul Chryst

I want to thank everyone for joining us on this sunday evening, um Jim Leonard has been named the interim football coach at University of Wisconsin replacing paul Chryst, who was here for eight seasons. We’ll take some opening questions from director athletics chris McIntosh as well as some comments from interim head coach. Jim Leonard. After that we’ll take questions and we’ll have microphones at both sides of the room. Please request *** microphone before you speak and if you can identify yourself with your name and your affiliate prior to asking the question. Thanks Yeah. Thanks Patrick. Um it goes without saying today is an incredibly tough day uh for our program, uh specifically for the players on this team. Um going forward. Our priority is to support them both immediately and as the season unfolds, um had to make an incredibly difficult decision today for *** change in leadership of our football program. Um couldn’t have more respect for coach chris, for who he is, for what he stands for, for his commitment to this place. Um, first and foremost to our student athletes, to our players. Nobody has their best interests at heart or cares about them. Like coach chris. And so um, just couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t say, couldn’t say anything better about coach chris right now. Um I’m tasked with making difficult decisions about the future and the direction of this program and I felt at this point in time that *** change was needed. I met with coach chris this morning, we had *** long meeting, we talked about it and we agreed to move on with this change in this decision. Um fortunate to have Coach Leonard here on our staff, uh confident that he can lead this team through the balance of this season, that’s our priority right now. Our priority is make sure that these kids get the most out of this season and out of their experience at Wisconsin. Uh so I’m comforted by the fact that jimmy’s on staff um and I’m confident that he’ll do *** great job again. Uh I can’t discredit the amount of the amount of people this affects specifically uh coach Chris and his family are current players and staff around this. It’s *** big decision, it’s got implications that are not lost on me. Um but uh really really thankful to have been able to work side by side with coach Chryst through uh some incredibly exhilarating uh positive moments and um and some tough ones like today and so we’ll push forward uh and we’ll push forward this season under Coach Leonard’s leadership and our focus will be making the most of this season for our team. Thanks obviously *** very emotional day for myself and our staff and our players. We have *** tremendous amount of respect for coach Chris and everything he’s done for this program and his family and this program means everything to him and um I think it’s it’s it’s…