I’ve long held that you can learn a lot more from bad management practices than you can from good ones, and people like Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell and former Circuit City chairman Phillip Schoonover are living proof of that. They offer lessons on the dark side of workforce management and how NOT to get the most out of people, and in my experience, those kinds of horror stories speak louder and resonate longer than the good ones do.

And, that’s why even the long-anticipated firing of Oakland Raiders coach Lane Kiffin, who was given his walking papers this week, is a situation worth examining.

Here are the elements: A 79-year-old control-freak owner (Raiders managing general partner Al Davis) who has gone through eight head coaches in the past 14 years looking for a puppet who can read his mind and do his bidding without question, hires a 31-year-old college assistant coach with a reputation as being too cocky for his slim résumé, and, makes him the youngest head coach in the history of the National Football League. The cocky young coach isn’t a yes man or a puppet, however, and soon he is butting heads with the control-freak owner.

Guess where this one ends—with the nasty, public firing of the cocky young coach, of course, but only after many months of media speculation on when the control-freak owner would actually get around to it. And over the many months of media speculation, the cocky young coach turns into a mouthy young coach who seems to relish giving the media many of the details of his situation with the control-freak owner. That’s what makes the public firing all that much nastier.

“Al Davis did the worst thing possible,” wrote San Jose Mercury News columnist Ann Killion. “He dumped all the dirty, disgusting laundry out in front of the television cameras and microphones and notebooks. And the stench was awful. … Davis confirmed it all. Not only all the rumors and whispers that have been building for the past 20 months about his deteriorating relationship with Kiffin and all the little grudges held. But Davis also confirmed the Machiavellian, paranoid nature of his rule. He is an owner who sends his coach—a man who was in his office from dawn to dark every day—a Federal Expressed three-page letter of accusations to create a paper trail so as to have evidence in court. … Davis has hated Kiffin for a long time … yet he allowed the situation to fester and grow and distract his team while he was Fed Ex’ing letters and documenting ‘lies and propaganda.’ ”

Coaches get fired all the time, as do business executives and managers at organizations big and small. Sometimes those terminations are there for all to see, but usually the protocol is that these departures are about “leaving to pursue other interests.” That’s not how Al Davis does it. “It didn’t have anything to do with winning,” Davis said in the San Francisco Chronicle. “It had to with personality. It’s the first time I ever let anyone go based on what I call just being a flat-out liar.”

Is this how to fire a person? Of course not, but don’t think that this kind of over-the-top abusive behavior is confined to professional sports. I once worked for a guy who rivaled Al Davis as a control freak. He was an entrepreneur who also wanted yes men and puppets, and he hired and fired generations of managers who tried to exercise a little independent thinking. He wouldn’t stand for that, of course, and he seemed to revel in the power he had to fire people and make them feel powerless.

 There’s a special place in hell for people like that. It makes me wonder: Why would anyone want to publicly make it clear that he is a bully and control freak, more consumed with revenge and hurting someone than he is with building character and strength in his organization?

If anyone has a good answer to that question, I’d love to hear it.