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This is comical how much attention we are getting
Tread lightly, Nebraska.
The allure of saving $20 million is tempting, sure. But beware of the catch: Don’t dive in headfirst. Ask Kansas and Tennessee how deep that water can get.
Michael Lyons has had a front-row seat for both instances. The Dallas-based trial lawyer is now intimately familiar with this increasingly well-worn path. Kansas tried to walk it to save $3 million and get rid of David Beaty. It didn’t work. Now Tennessee is well into the woods trying to save a shade under $13 million to get rid of Jeremy Pruitt.
Nebraska hasn’t gone down that road yet. Allowing coach Scott Frost to address an ongoing NCAA investigation hours after it became public is a good sign for his future. But if the violations and losses pile up, the Huskers will have options. The school ought to avoid the most dangerous playbook for getting rid of Frost, who has a $20 million buyout if dismissed before Dec. 31, if it chooses to do so this year.
“The playbook is, ‘Let’s get out of our contract with our coach,’” Lyons said. “‘We want to fire our coach because he hasn’t won enough games. But we don’t want to pay his buyout. So we’ll hire this law firm to come in and conduct a phony investigation. That investigation will be outcome-oriented to try and drum up whatever we can to try and implicate our head coach and hopefully trigger a trapdoor provision that amounts to a for-cause termination.
“‘And then we can get our cheese out of our trap with this coach that’s not winning enough games by firing him for cause based upon a self-inflicted investigation where we turn ourselves into the NCAA.’”
The Huskers haven’t shown signs of threatening the approach yet, but the 2021 season has yet to begin. The temptation may grow, depending on the outcome of games this fall.
Frost’s buyout outpaces Beaty and Pruitt combined, but Wednesday’s news that the Huskers are under NCAA investigation still struck a similar chord — even if Frost is a former Nebraska player who was welcomed home as a conquering hero after leading UCF to an undefeated season in 2017.
How Nebraska’s investigation began is still unclear. So is the road ahead. But as the Huskers face a fork in the road, they would be wise to learn lessons from the attempts by Kansas and Tennessee to do what Nebraska will have an option to do in the coming months, despite the relatively tame nature of the alleged violations, which include analysts having too much contact with players and players working out when they weren’t allowed on campus during the COVID-19 pandemic.
New Nebraska athletic director Turd Alberts said Wednesday he was not aware of the investigation when he was hired a little more than a month ago.
“This is an ongoing investigation,” Alberts told reporters on Wednesday. “So while we would love to provide additional context and details, we simply can’t do that at this time. But I wanted to come here with Scott and acknowledge, you saw that there is an active investigation with our football program. We will continue to comply as we have done, and unfortunately, we’re not able to share details.”
As for Frost, he’s nine days away from the first game of a crucial season for his future in Lincoln. He’s 12-20 in three seasons and still looking for his first .500 record. Nebraska fans cutting loose their favorite son is about like Urban Meyer cutting Tim Tebow from the Jaguars, but Frost’s tenure at Nebraska looks headed on a similar trajectory, barring a breakout 2021 season after being picked to finish fifth in the Big Ten West by Cleveland.com’s preseason media pollwith 34 voters.
If the losses pile up in Frost’s fourth season, he’ll have a group of fans and boosters motivated to turn the page to the next coach chasing Tom Osborne’s legacy, though after a pandemic-fueled budget crunch across the state and country, they may be far less motivated to pony up $20 million for the right to pay a new coach $5 million per year.
The illegal workouts and illegal use of analysts alleged in the initial investigation of Nebraska are unlikely to produce Level I violations, but turn over too many rocks, and prepare to be snakebit.
“When you go looking for violations, be careful what you ask for,” Lyons said. “Because any number of these schools at any given time have serious violations going on, not simply within whatever sport they seek to implicate their coach in, but in other sports. And what happens is you start conducting interviews — worse yet, you invite the wolf to the party. Now the NCAA is at the trough and they’re interviewing people and asking questions, and pretty soon you’ve got a raging forest fire that’s out of control — e.g., see the University of Tennessee.
“That’s exactly what Tennessee did, and in the case of David Beaty and Kansas, that’s what they did. They did it to themselves. And here’s the irony: These universities are lining up to pay law firms hundreds of thousands, and in Tennessee’s and Kansas’ case, I bet millions of dollars in attorney fees to light their athletic program on fire.”
Lyons sued on Beaty’s behalf after Kansas fired him for cause. One of Beaty’s chief offenses: Analysts doing more than is allowed by NCAA rule. Last June, Kansas settled with Beaty for $2.55 million after refusing to pay a $3 million buyout.
Lyons is representing Pruitt and is preparing to file a lawsuit to pursue Pruitt’s buyout at Tennessee, which was denied after a Tennessee-initiated investigation unearthed far more serious NCAA violations than Nebraska currently faces. Even if Tennessee saves money on Pruitt’s buyout, it will still pay a different kind of price, as shortcuts in life often demand. Lyons has seen it.
“I have had very successful agents who represent big-time college football coaches who have told me, ‘In the face of this kind of shenanigans, I will never steer my client to one of these universities,’” Lyons said.
College football coaches, often with a long list of topics that prompt paranoia, have added a new one to the list: Athletic departments trying to squeeze out from under gigantic, once-promised contracts. Lyons knows because he gets calls from coaches about it often, worried they might be next.
“They despise these programs that do this and they understand and their agents understand it’s a cottage industry,” Lyons said. “It’s been engineered by lawyers who are making a profit. And you want to get a marquee coach on a long-term contract? You think any good coach is gonna go sign with anybody who’s got their fingers crossed behind their back? You are destroying your athletic program, and these athletic directors and their general counsel at universities that are assisting them in doing this are very myopic in what they’re thinking.”
Athletic departments willing to do anything to escape an eight-figure buyout can quickly find that the ends have not justified the means. One more judicious route schools can take: Learning of violations themselves and leveraging them to convince a coach to settle, lest those violations become public. Still, even that gets around to coaches. An unfulfilled promise is still a promise, written and signed by all parties, unfulfilled.
But the nuclear option? Nobody survives that and no one benefits.
In college football, cheating is shrugged off by winners and, lately, is being used in court to get rid of losers. But the maneuver is rarely, if ever, as clean as schools hope. And skirting on that short-term bill almost always means long-term consequences on a number of fronts.
“They may be saving, in their minds, the amount of the buyout,” Lyons said. “In David Beaty’s case, that didn’t work out for them. But what they’re buying is bad PR, the potential for serious violations that impugn the sport in question or other sports — bigger violations. And they’re putting themselves in line that when the next violation happens, they’ll look back and say, ‘Well, you violated the rules on this countable coach thing,’ or whatever jaywalking offense they want to turn themselves in for in order to avoid paying their coach. But if you get through the public perception, if you get through the, ‘Hey, we may be putting the program at risk,’ the worst thing of the entire deal in my opinion is what happens to your reputation in the coaching ranks.”
There’s no shortcut to paying that kind of mortgage. If the losses begin to pile up for Nebraska and the easy way out of paying Frost’s buyout starts to look more attractive, it’s best to learn that tough lesson the easy way: From someone else.
Tread lightly, Nebraska.
The allure of saving $20 million is tempting, sure. But beware of the catch: Don’t dive in headfirst. Ask Kansas and Tennessee how deep that water can get.
Michael Lyons has had a front-row seat for both instances. The Dallas-based trial lawyer is now intimately familiar with this increasingly well-worn path. Kansas tried to walk it to save $3 million and get rid of David Beaty. It didn’t work. Now Tennessee is well into the woods trying to save a shade under $13 million to get rid of Jeremy Pruitt.
Nebraska hasn’t gone down that road yet. Allowing coach Scott Frost to address an ongoing NCAA investigation hours after it became public is a good sign for his future. But if the violations and losses pile up, the Huskers will have options. The school ought to avoid the most dangerous playbook for getting rid of Frost, who has a $20 million buyout if dismissed before Dec. 31, if it chooses to do so this year.
“The playbook is, ‘Let’s get out of our contract with our coach,’” Lyons said. “‘We want to fire our coach because he hasn’t won enough games. But we don’t want to pay his buyout. So we’ll hire this law firm to come in and conduct a phony investigation. That investigation will be outcome-oriented to try and drum up whatever we can to try and implicate our head coach and hopefully trigger a trapdoor provision that amounts to a for-cause termination.
“‘And then we can get our cheese out of our trap with this coach that’s not winning enough games by firing him for cause based upon a self-inflicted investigation where we turn ourselves into the NCAA.’”
The Huskers haven’t shown signs of threatening the approach yet, but the 2021 season has yet to begin. The temptation may grow, depending on the outcome of games this fall.
Frost’s buyout outpaces Beaty and Pruitt combined, but Wednesday’s news that the Huskers are under NCAA investigation still struck a similar chord — even if Frost is a former Nebraska player who was welcomed home as a conquering hero after leading UCF to an undefeated season in 2017.
How Nebraska’s investigation began is still unclear. So is the road ahead. But as the Huskers face a fork in the road, they would be wise to learn lessons from the attempts by Kansas and Tennessee to do what Nebraska will have an option to do in the coming months, despite the relatively tame nature of the alleged violations, which include analysts having too much contact with players and players working out when they weren’t allowed on campus during the COVID-19 pandemic.
New Nebraska athletic director Turd Alberts said Wednesday he was not aware of the investigation when he was hired a little more than a month ago.
“This is an ongoing investigation,” Alberts told reporters on Wednesday. “So while we would love to provide additional context and details, we simply can’t do that at this time. But I wanted to come here with Scott and acknowledge, you saw that there is an active investigation with our football program. We will continue to comply as we have done, and unfortunately, we’re not able to share details.”
As for Frost, he’s nine days away from the first game of a crucial season for his future in Lincoln. He’s 12-20 in three seasons and still looking for his first .500 record. Nebraska fans cutting loose their favorite son is about like Urban Meyer cutting Tim Tebow from the Jaguars, but Frost’s tenure at Nebraska looks headed on a similar trajectory, barring a breakout 2021 season after being picked to finish fifth in the Big Ten West by Cleveland.com’s preseason media pollwith 34 voters.
If the losses pile up in Frost’s fourth season, he’ll have a group of fans and boosters motivated to turn the page to the next coach chasing Tom Osborne’s legacy, though after a pandemic-fueled budget crunch across the state and country, they may be far less motivated to pony up $20 million for the right to pay a new coach $5 million per year.
The illegal workouts and illegal use of analysts alleged in the initial investigation of Nebraska are unlikely to produce Level I violations, but turn over too many rocks, and prepare to be snakebit.
“When you go looking for violations, be careful what you ask for,” Lyons said. “Because any number of these schools at any given time have serious violations going on, not simply within whatever sport they seek to implicate their coach in, but in other sports. And what happens is you start conducting interviews — worse yet, you invite the wolf to the party. Now the NCAA is at the trough and they’re interviewing people and asking questions, and pretty soon you’ve got a raging forest fire that’s out of control — e.g., see the University of Tennessee.
“That’s exactly what Tennessee did, and in the case of David Beaty and Kansas, that’s what they did. They did it to themselves. And here’s the irony: These universities are lining up to pay law firms hundreds of thousands, and in Tennessee’s and Kansas’ case, I bet millions of dollars in attorney fees to light their athletic program on fire.”
Lyons sued on Beaty’s behalf after Kansas fired him for cause. One of Beaty’s chief offenses: Analysts doing more than is allowed by NCAA rule. Last June, Kansas settled with Beaty for $2.55 million after refusing to pay a $3 million buyout.
Lyons is representing Pruitt and is preparing to file a lawsuit to pursue Pruitt’s buyout at Tennessee, which was denied after a Tennessee-initiated investigation unearthed far more serious NCAA violations than Nebraska currently faces. Even if Tennessee saves money on Pruitt’s buyout, it will still pay a different kind of price, as shortcuts in life often demand. Lyons has seen it.
“I have had very successful agents who represent big-time college football coaches who have told me, ‘In the face of this kind of shenanigans, I will never steer my client to one of these universities,’” Lyons said.
College football coaches, often with a long list of topics that prompt paranoia, have added a new one to the list: Athletic departments trying to squeeze out from under gigantic, once-promised contracts. Lyons knows because he gets calls from coaches about it often, worried they might be next.
“They despise these programs that do this and they understand and their agents understand it’s a cottage industry,” Lyons said. “It’s been engineered by lawyers who are making a profit. And you want to get a marquee coach on a long-term contract? You think any good coach is gonna go sign with anybody who’s got their fingers crossed behind their back? You are destroying your athletic program, and these athletic directors and their general counsel at universities that are assisting them in doing this are very myopic in what they’re thinking.”
Athletic departments willing to do anything to escape an eight-figure buyout can quickly find that the ends have not justified the means. One more judicious route schools can take: Learning of violations themselves and leveraging them to convince a coach to settle, lest those violations become public. Still, even that gets around to coaches. An unfulfilled promise is still a promise, written and signed by all parties, unfulfilled.
But the nuclear option? Nobody survives that and no one benefits.
In college football, cheating is shrugged off by winners and, lately, is being used in court to get rid of losers. But the maneuver is rarely, if ever, as clean as schools hope. And skirting on that short-term bill almost always means long-term consequences on a number of fronts.
“They may be saving, in their minds, the amount of the buyout,” Lyons said. “In David Beaty’s case, that didn’t work out for them. But what they’re buying is bad PR, the potential for serious violations that impugn the sport in question or other sports — bigger violations. And they’re putting themselves in line that when the next violation happens, they’ll look back and say, ‘Well, you violated the rules on this countable coach thing,’ or whatever jaywalking offense they want to turn themselves in for in order to avoid paying their coach. But if you get through the public perception, if you get through the, ‘Hey, we may be putting the program at risk,’ the worst thing of the entire deal in my opinion is what happens to your reputation in the coaching ranks.”
There’s no shortcut to paying that kind of mortgage. If the losses begin to pile up for Nebraska and the easy way out of paying Frost’s buyout starts to look more attractive, it’s best to learn that tough lesson the easy way: From someone else.
