FORT WORTH, Texas — Bill Montigel now joins Bill Belichick and Wade Phillips as examples of coaches who are considered “too old” to do their job when all they want to do is to just keep coaching.

And yet none of the above is quite old enough to be President of the United States.

Among the many differences between the former TCU men’s golf coach and the former NFL head football coaches, only one was willing to sue over it.

On Monday, one of TCU’s longest serving members of its athletic department filed an age discrimination lawsuit against the university. This is awkward, sad, and it didn’t need to come to this.

Some of the allegations in the lawsuit filed by Montigel’s lawyer, Rogge Dunn in Dallas, are personal, salacious, ugly and in the end this will probably be settled with a “go away” check.

Montigel was TCU’s men’s golf coach from 1987 to the end of 2023 season. He was upset, and hurt, when in the summer of 2022 TCU director of athletics Jeremiah Donati basically asked that he step down/retire after the 2023 season.

TCU’s desire was to use the 2023 spring season as a celebration of Montigel’s Hall of Fame career, but he had no interest in participating. Montigel, who had built one of the NCAA’s better men’s golf programs in his career, had zero interest in retiring. Or quitting.

He wanted to keep coaching the TCU men’s golf team.

The disagreement became a quiet fight, and now there is a lawsuit complete with an assortment of ugly allegations.

Donati did not respond to a request for comment for this column.

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