Legal expert breaks down Bill Belichick and UNC's coaching contract and options for both sides
What what what bar would UNC need to meet to
be able to fire Bill Be under his contract Under
Bill Belichick's contract they can fire him at any time
They would need to pay him $30 million if they
didn't fire him for cause
If they do fire him for cause they would need
to show that he you know committed some sort of
egregious act or that he was engaged in behavior that
constituted some sort of lack of institutional control
So the lack of institutional control part is what I
think people have been talking about because there's no other
grounds currently to fire him for cause under that contract
And again firing him for cause is the only way
to fire him and not have to pay him that
guaranteed $30 million
Absolutely
So so unpack that lack of institutional control
What does that really mean So lack of institutional control
is this sort of moving target that was developed or
not developed but it's been the basis for NCAA violations
and penalties in the past
When the NCAA determines that a school is doing something
that it shouldn't be doing under the rules the school
will then be accused of a lack of institutional control
and that gives way for the NCAA to institute major
penalties against the school like fines loss of bowl game
loss of scholarships things like that
A lack of institutional control typically is made up of
a lot of sort of lesser violations so you could
see a lot of like recruiting violations or a lot
of situations where players were getting impermissible benefits
But in the past it's typically been something that the
NCAA will raise as opposed to a school raising it
as a way to get out of a contract
Um so in this particular case in I'm sorry I
didn't mean to cut you off there
No please go ahead
OK
In Bill Belichick's contract there's a provision where they can
fire him for cause if there's a lack of institutional
control and it's unclear whether that means a finding of
a lack of institutional control by the NCAA or if
the school could simply allege that there has been a
lack of institutional control because of things that are going
on around the football program
So for instance If the school discovered that a large
number of athletes were receiving impermissible benefits or there was
some situation where the school was allowing violations to continue
recruiting violations player violations violation of school rules they could
allege a lack of institutional control and fire Bill Belichick
for cause
The problem is that it's unclear what a lack of
institutional control really means
And so any allegation that Bill Belichick had not met
that standard or that there was a lack of institutional
control in the program would likely be met by a
counterargument by Belichick that he He had not done these
things wrong and whatever he had done wrong or was
wrong in the program did not actually constitute a lack
of institutional control
And the problem is is that there's no set definition
of what it means
So the various things that we've seen come out in
the news about the program lately
Um I think there's an assistant coach who was giving
sideline passes to people and that was an impermissible benefit
There are allegedly players who are selling their tickets and
receiving impermissible benefits that way those two things combined would
not constitute a lack of institutional control historically speaking
The school could always allege that they do now and
it would be up to Coach Belichick to fight those
allegations if they wanted to go that route
But given the history of how that term has been
used and the things that have been used to constitute
a lack of institutional control I think it would be
a difficult case to make that those two violations if
you want to call them that constitute a lack of
institutional control on the part of Coach Belichick
So so give me a sense I mean you say
historically what has been lack of institutional control what have
we seen in the past Sure so um the big
examples that people point to are the Penn State case
where the coach Jerry Sandusky was alleged to have molested
several underage kids under over a vast number of years
and the USC case where Reggie Bush and uh OJ
Mayo were receiving impermissible benefits
And in both of those cases in the Sandusky case
it was alleged that he had engaged in this pattern
of behavior for a long time
There were people that had been whistleblowers who had come
forward and said you know this is going on
The school had done nothing about it
There was evidence that the school had covered it up
to protect Joe Paterno's legacy
And so all of those things combined ended up being
alleged to be a lack of institutional control
Now
At that point I believe Coach Paterno passed away and
the school basically agreed you know so there was no
fight there but those are the kinds of things that
that sort of cascading number of violations over several years
are the kinds of things that were pointed to as
a lack of institutional control
USC it was primarily Reggie Bush was a player there
who received a house for his family to live in
and all kinds of impermissible benefits that were apparent to
anyone looking at the program
OJ Mayo received or allegedly received all kinds of impermissible
benefits
It was alleged
that those were facilitated by assistant coaches and that the
head coach knew about it the compliance department knew about
it and they ignored it
All of those things combined constituted a lack of institutional
control and that was again alleged against USC and USC
ended up being put on you know fairly significant probation
for that after that allegation was made
So the other thing that we've been hearing is as
we've talked to players as we've talked to parents um
have been accusations that that Belichick and his coaches have
you know had a a very dysfunctional program that communication
is bad that it has been a toxic culture in
the the locker room and practices um does any of
that at all move the ball when we talk about
you know finding a way to fire him with cause
So there is a provision in the contract that says
that he's expected to run a I can't remember the
exact terminology but it basically amounts to a championship caliber
or a high caliber NCAA program
And if you really stretch it I think maybe you
could put all those things together and say you were
firing him for cause but by sort of along the
same lines in fact in that same paragraph
There's a provision that says that wins and losses and
things like that do not constitute cause to fire him
so or do not constitute a reason to fire him
for cause
So it would be hard I think to separate those
things you know at this point the only metric that
you can really look at is wins and losses because
if he was running the program a certain way and
he was winning then it would be pretty hard for
anybody to allege that there's some problem there
He's running the program a certain way and he's losing
games
If I were arguing the other side of it I
would say well the only difference here is the wins
and losses and that specifically in the contract is not
grounds for a termination for cause
So while I think those things are concerning and would
be concerning to any athletic director I don't think that
those things constitute a reason to fire Coach Belichick for
cause
Got it
Um Andrew that was everything I wanted to run through
Is there anything else that that jumps out that you
saw in this contract that's interesting noteworthy No I think
I mean the interesting thing is that you know these
contracts are they're always huge contracts but his contract is
for 50 million
A total and it has a buyout or not a
buyout but a termination clause whereby he would get paid
30 million no matter that's the guaranteed amount of the
contract
That's actually slightly different than a lot of coaches' contracts
where the entire contract would be payable if the person
wasn't fired for cause
So in a certain I mean it's hard for people
to believe but to a certain extent the contract is
actually slightly advantageous to UN
See only because they don't have to pay him the
entire salary if they fire him which is sort of
an unusual provision in these contracts when you know people
want to hire big name coaches the coaches are often
in the driver's seat and they you know tend to
be able to dictate their own terms
And what we've seen over the years is a lot
of coaches who are able to do very badly at
schools and still get paid the full value of their
contract when they leave or a significant significant portion of
it
So to a certain extent UNC being able to avoid
$20 million of this contract is slightly unusual or slightly
advantageous at least and you know it's something that um
actually It may be something that UNC wants to look
at if they really want to get rid of them
Yeah you're fantastic dude that was great great great stuff
Thank you so much
Hey thanks for having me
I appreciate it