No, his place in history doesn't merit anything. He was a player and this is as a coach. He doesn't owe them anything and they don't owe him anything. It's not some charity. You agree to come on, you don't do a good job, you part ways, simple as that.

The public announcement of it was as nice as can be for this industry, for him and all of the coaches. A statement saying there's a chance they could be retained but it would be up to the new coach. The chance, should they want to apply elsewhere, to have "not retained" on your resume instead of "fired" (there's a big difference in this industry).

People really need to put their big boy pants on. The sports industry isn't about to join the wimpy parts of society that feel it necessary to hand out participation ribbons for every little thing.
I guess you can count me confused at why we should expect anything other than a professional "business-like" way of doing things for anyone.
I mean seriously, how embarrassing would it be to go out of their way with some big thank-you party for a guy who just failed. Why in the world would you want that for him? Or for the school? "Hey, we know you didn't have the resume to be hired in the first place, and the results unfortunately ended up showing that, so we had to let you go, but we wanted to thank you for giving it a shot anyway, and remind you and everyone that your place as a player in history isn't going anywhere."

Yeah, let's keep it business professional. It was done that way and it will stay that way. They get paid a lot to be ok with it. Fans should be ok with it too.