Why did phil lie to seth? *SPOILERS

In the end the management suspends phil,but then he tells him he quits. Afterwards seth asks if they suspended him,and he says,"No,i quit." Did he have too much pride to tell him they suspended him before he told them he quit? On a sidenote,i was little when this came on SHOWTIME,and my dad was watching it in the livingroom with my mom,who hates football and wasn't paying too much attention. I went into the kitchen and heard a little of it,but wasn't paying too much attention and went to bed before it was over. My dad did not like it very much becouse he told me,"I don't like to see my favorite sport shown in that bad of light." I had a habit when i was little of asking what happened at the end of movies,so i first asked mom if she liked it, and she said, "No,it was crummy." I asked her what happened at the end,and she said Nolte's character got fired from his job. For years i visualized the ending being the coach telling phil,"Your'e fired" and he cleans out his locker. A year before i saw this film,i told mom this was critically acclaimed, and she said,"It just goes to show what i think about football." First in november 1987, i taped the edited for tv version on WGN. A month later i rented the tape, and a week later the ABC evening news on saturday had a piece about foot ball managers, and showed under a minute of footage of the confrontation of this film where they introduced it as, "The scene where Nick Nolte's character gets fired," which isn't 100 percent accurate.