DePaul coach Jerry Wainwright was fired in the middle of yet another disappointing season Monday, and this one had to sting. Wainwright was forced to face the media and receive his walking papers with a giant brace on his left leg, the product of a fractured tibia and torn MCL he suffered in a sideline collision with Villanova last Wednesday. It's never easy to lose one's job (I learned this from Up In The Air -- thanks, Jason Reitman!); feebly doing so on a busted left leg has to make it considerably worse.

It's hard not to feel for Wainwright, and that has to do with more than appearance. By all accounts -- that cliché rings true here; literally everyone who talks about Jerry Wainwright mentions how nice of a person he is -- Wainwright is one of the best people in college basketball, a capable coach with a rich sense of humor and a personality to light up a room. That's one of the consensuses the media has reached in the aftermath of Wainwright's firing. The other? That no one but no one can win at DePaul.

Go down the list. John Gasaway. Mike DeCourcy. Brian Hamilton. Seth Davis. Mike Miller. Rush The Court (who are a little more optimistic, or naive, than most). Almost everyone who wrote about Jerry Wainwright's firing wrote two things: 1) Jerry Wainwright is a really nice guy, and 2) DePaul isn't going to get good anytime soon.

Sometimes consensus is wrong. Sometimes Derek Jeter isn't as good as everyone would like to think. But sometimes consensus is dead on, and this is one of those times.

Why? Why can't DePaul win? After all, it's nestled in Lincoln Park, one of the nicest and youngest neighborhoods in a city positively brimming with basketball talent. It has the strength of "tradition," a run of Ray Meyer-led glory years that peaked in the 1980s. It has a really nice student athletic facility on campus where some of the best pickup basketball in the city goes down. (OK, so that last one doesn't have anything to do with anything. I just wanted to give my gym a shout-out.)

None of those things seem to matter, for at least two reasons. First, DePaul is playing in the Big East, and top recruits from Chicago and the Midwest apparently don't grow up dreaming of Big East glory. Second, DePaul is playing in the Big East, and the Big East, in case you hadn't noticed, is really, really good. There is no forgiveness in the league, no real opportunity to recover from playing a national power or two. It's a week-in, week-out buzzsaw, even in years when the conference doesn't seed three No. 1 teams in the NCAA tournament.

Throw in DePaul's lack of a football team and its questionable "home" gym -- Allstate Arena, located all the way out by O'Hare Airport in the Chicago suburbs -- and you've got a recipe for a perennial Big East doormat.

DePaul might be better off back in Conference USA. It might need a new hoops venue in the heart of Chicago, or at least somewhere relatively close to campus. Until that happens, DePaul basketball is going to continue to wallow in sub-mediocrity, and it won't be Jerry Wainwright's -- or any other coach's -- fault.