Yeah, they can do as they please, but he might prove to be their Frank Solich in the long run. I still find it hilarious that Nebraska (another school with location issues, and a program built on steroids, advanced weight training, and training tables before anybody else realized muscle mass could be helpful in football) fired a guy who finished in the top 7 in three of his six years and in the top 20 on two other occasions.
Of course, I also thought Georgia firing their all-time greatest HC (Mark Richt) was about the dumbest thing ever, but sometimes rolling the dice pays off.