O'Brien awarded $2.2 millionSchool ordered to pay coach for wrongly firing him
Wednesday August 2, 2006
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Ohio State, fresh from a trip to the Final Four in 1999, was desperate to keep Jim O'Brien as its men's basketball coach.
With no major problems in his past and a bright future beckoning, the university's attorneys crafted a contract that would lock O'Brien into the job through 2008. It also gave him the benefit of the doubt if his program ever ran into trouble with the NCAA.
That last provision will cost Ohio State $2.2 million plus interest, a judge ruled on Wednesday, saying Ohio State did not follow terms of the contract when it fired O'Brien in 2004.
"The contract is extremely favorable to the plaintiff but it is not unreasonable," Ohio Court of Claims Judge Joseph T. Clark said in his decision on Wednesday. "The parties in this case negotiated a contract virtually guaranteeing plaintiff (O'Brien) that he could not be terminated for an NCAA infraction, without compensation."
Clark agreed with Ohio State that O'Brien broke NCAA rules when the coach gave 7-foot-3 recruit Aleksandar Radojevic a $6,000 loan in 1999 because the player's father was near death and the family needed the money.
Andy Geiger, then the Ohio State athletic director, didn't find out about the payment for five years. Six weeks after O'Brien told him of the loan, he fired the coach -- despite a contract that required Ohio State to await an NCAA investigation that determined major violations had occurred before dismissing O'Brien.
O'Brien, 56, charged that the university breached the agreement. Clark ruled in February that O'Brien broke his contract by giving the money and failing to inform university officials, but the error was not serious enough to warrant firing.
The two sides spent the past six months haggling over how much O'Brien was owed. O'Brien said it was $3.6 million. Ohio State said it didn't owe him a dime.
On Wednesday, Clark ruled that Ohio State had to pay O'Brien for the more than 3 years left on his contract, plus interest.
Clark did limit the amount of money O'Brien was due because the coach's NCAA violations would have prevented him from receiving two extra years on his contract for winning Big Ten titles in 2000 and 2002.
Ohio State officials said they would appeal the ruling and the award.
"We continue to believe that the university acted appropriately in dismissing coach O'Brien," Ohio State vice president and general counsel Christopher M. Culley said in a statement. "The NCAA sanctions that followed the court's initial decision in February 2006 validated the serious nature of the violations."
O'Brien's lead attorney, Joseph Murray, declined comment.
In a cold, marble hallway outside the courtroom last February, the seven-year coach of the Buckeyes said, "I still don't really feel that there are any real winners in this thing."
A lengthy NCAA investigation that ended in March concluded Radojevic and another player, Boban Savovic, received improper benefits. Ohio State faces three years of probation and has repaid $800,000 to the NCAA in tournament money during those tainted seasons when Savovic was on the team. In addition, the university has wiped clean its record book and stripped its arena of any references to the accomplishments during the O'Brien years _ including that trip to the Final Four.
And it all stemmed from Ohio State trying to keep a seemingly honest coach in charge of its basketball program.
"It is clear that this seemingly unfair result arises from the extremely favorable provisions of the contract," Clark wrote in his decision on Wednesday.
O'Brien coached the Buckeyes to a 133-88 record that included two Big Ten titles and a conference tournament title.
Radojevic never played for Ohio State and never put on a Buckeyes jersey. Before enrolling at Ohio State, he was ruled ineligible by the NCAA for accepting $9,000 to play in Yugoslavia. Ohio State then appealed to the NCAA to restore Radojevic's eligibility -- with O'Brien not mentioning the payment during the lengthy appeal process.
The NCAA has prevented O'Brien from taking another college coaching job for five years. At 56, O'Brien's collegiate head coaching career is likely over.
"I can go on for days about how sorry I am that this even happened," O'Brien said after winning in court last February. "My reputation in this business has always meant a lot to me and without question that has been soiled."
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