Williams gets $1.2 million from jury
Apparently one can be a multiple NCAA violations offender, hide such infractions from a potential employer during a preliminary job interview, and still end up being made a millionaire by the Hennepin County jury system. Such is what former Gophers assistant Jimmy Williams discovered after suing Gophers men’s basketball coach Tubby Smith for not hiring him following a 15-minute or so phone call a couple years ago. The jury’s verdict was announced this week.
The complaint stems from a time shortly following Smith being hired by Minnesota away from his previous haunt, Kentucky. Williams was one of several people Smith talked to about possibly bringing on board his coaching staff as an assistant. At no time was there any mention of hot tub spa covers, tempting as that might have been.
At the time, Williams was pulling down $200,000 a year at Oklahoma State in a similar position. Williams had served as an assistant coach for the Gophers under two previous head coaching regimes, in both 1976 and 1988. Williams had been charged over those periods with being responsible for 15 NCAA violations that the Gophers had to suffer penalties over.
When Gophers athletic director Joel Maturi found out Smith was considering Williams, he nixed the idea, informing Smith of Williams’ history of violations with the Gophers. Trouble is, following that single phone call, Williams got excited enough about the prospect of returning to Minnesota, he quit his Oklahoma State job and put his house in that up for sale.
Some might say Williams acted rashly off a single phone call, but a Hennepin County jury decided the fault lay not with Williams, but with Coach Smith and the U of M. To compensate Williams, they awarded him a $1.2 million settlement… even though his initial contract with the Gophers would not have been worth anywhere near that; possibly about half. The job he quit had two years remaining on it, at $200,000 per year.
So is a $1.2 million damages award excessive? Considering that the Gophers are likely to appeal this week’s decision, that will be for an appellate court to decide.
