Whipped Cream Difficulties

Rich Rodriguez fired last night as head coach of the University of Arizona.

Why? Would you believe…sexual harassment?

The former employee on Thursday filed a $7.5 million notice of claim with the state’s attorney general’s office alleging Rodriguez ran a hostile workplace, according to the Arizona Daily Star. A notice of claim is a legal document that signals a lawsuit will be filed.

Arizona Daily Star (really obnoxious about ad blockers). NYT. ESPN.

Part of what makes this interesting is that RichRod was fired, but the university admits it wasn’t “for cause”: this means that they have to pay his contract buyout ($6 million) plus whatever the plaintiff wins (or settles for) in their pending claim against the university. So this could add up quick. And, as the Daily Star notes, this isn’t the only sports related problem the university has.

(Also: why does a university football coach need representation from CAA?)

Rodriguez’s contract was set to run through May 31, 2020. His buyout as of Dec. 1 was $6.45 million, according to USA Today’s annual survey of NCAA football coaches’ salaries. Because he was let go before March 15, Rodriguez will miss out on approximately $3.2 million from a master-limited-partnership provision in his contract. That pay came via publicly traded units on the so-called “Longevity Fund.” Rodriguez was set to receive 25 percent of the value on March 15. If he had been fired any time after that, he would have been entitled to the full value of the fund.

“publicly traded units on the so-called ‘Longevity Fund'”? Have I just not had enough coffee this morning? Or did RichRod have some sort of weirdly structured deal?