As Todd McNair prepares to coach in Super Bowl 55, his decade-long fight with NCAA goes on
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Todd McNair says he barely thinks about his decade-long battle with the NCAA, which is hard to believe given what it cost him professionally and the fact that its legal machinations are still going on today.
Trying to change the subject is understandable. Itâs the kind of thing you do when youâre coaching in the Super Bowl as McNair is this weekend with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and you want to live in the moment, not regurgitate the past.
âIn all honesty, I donât really talk about that too much,â McNair said of the saga that began when the NCAA charged him with unethical conduct for his alleged role in the Reggie Bush scandal at USC and effectively ended his college coaching career. âItâs its own situation. I donât dwell on it too much. But at the same time, Iâm going to stand up when I know Iâm right.â
Heâs still doing it today.
Even as he prepares for the Super Bowl â which in itself is something of a minor miracle given the professional hell heâs been through â there were in fact a new round of oral arguments in McNairâs defamation lawsuit against the NCAA fewer than three weeks ago.
Sometime this spring, the 2nd District Court Appeal in California will determine whether a new trial will go forward after the judge who oversaw the first trial ruled that the jury did not have sufficient evidence for its ruling in favor of the NCAA and that the jury foreman, who is an attorney, should have been disqualified because their firm had previously done work on the case for the NCAA. If the NCAAâs appeal is denied and a second trial is granted, McNairâs case will stretch well past the 10-year mark.
âToddâs achievement of coaching in the Super Bowl is a testament to his perseverance and hard work in the face of adversity he suffered at the hands of the NCAA,â his attorney, Bruce Broillet, wrote in a statement to USA TODAY Sports. âThe harm that was caused to Todd has not gone away, and I am confident that he will ultimately prevail.â
As the Bucsâ running backs coach, McNair isnât one of the biggest subplots at this yearâs Super Bowl, though he maybe should be.
After the NCAA hit him with a one-year show cause penalty, claiming that he had known about the improper benefits Bush had received and that he misled investigators about a phone call with agent Lloyd Lake â allegations he denied to the point of suing the NCAA â McNairâs career completely hit a wall.
Still wearing scarlet letter of being the fall guy for USCâs coaching staff, he couldnât get a college job even after his penalty expired. Bruce Arians, his former college coach at Temple, tried to hire him to the Arizona Cardinalsâ staff in 2013 but it fell apart at the last minute.
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McNair did some high school coaching and private training, but as he testified in 2018, he went on food stamps for a time and relied on loans from friends to make ends meet. Every time he got close to a coaching job, the rug got pulled out from under him. The fact he was fighting the system and involved in a high-profile legal case probably didnât help. Given how long McNair had been out of high-level coaching, itâs unlikely heâd have gotten another shot in the NFL if not for Arians coming out of retirement to coach Tampa Bay in 2019.
âI hadnât been really in the loop the past couple years prior to that, and I still wasnât sure,â McNair said. âOnce he got the job people started telling me my name was being thrown around and I hadnât heard from him so I wasnât sure how valid that was. But I got the call and here I am.â
Thatâs the small picture story, and itâs remarkable enough on its own. But on a larger scale, McNair represents a pivot point in the history of college sports. Even if the NCAA eventually beats McNair in the courtroom â and it very well might â it is fighting a war it will ultimately lose.
One person familiar with the case suggested the NCAA has perhaps spent as much as $10 million in legal fees over the years fighting McNair, and even if the real number is a fraction of that, itâs hard to see how it's been a good investment.
Ten years on from the shock and awe of the revelations that stripped Bush of a Heisman Trophy and USC of a national title, Congress is discussing legislation that would allow college athletes to make money off marketing deals and hire agents, and public sentiment on amateurism has shifted in favor of players being able to make money.
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Meanwhile, schools are as unhappy as ever about the effectiveness and efficiency of the NCAA enforcement process, and at least one basketball coach who was caught on an FBI wiretap talking about arranging a deal for a recruit remains employed at $2.5 million per year.
And what has the NCAA gotten out of fighting McNair tooth-and-nail at every turn? Not much, other than public embarrassment and further erosion of trust in its justice system.
Instead of settling with McNair at some point and ridding itself of this interminable headache, documents were unsealed in 2015 against the NCAAâs wishes that painted the picture of a case rife with prejudgements and bias from people involved with the Committee on Infractions, including an e-mail from NCAA employee and COI liaison Shep Cooper calling McNair a âmorally bankrupt criminal.â
There were also problems with the investigation itself. McNair had been implicated in the Bush scandal by Lake, who claimed that he had discussed the extra benefits with McNair in a two-minute, 23-second phone call.
But when NCAA enforcement staffer Rich Johanningmeier went to interview McNair in 2008, he asked about the wrong date for the phone call, leading McNair to deny that it took place. The NCAA also mistakenly suggested that McNair had initiated the conversation with Lake when phone records showed it was the opposite.
At the 2018 trial, NCAA enforcement staffer Angie Cretors admitted that the infractions report in which McNair received the show cause penalty contained information about the call that was not factually correct, though she also testified that it would not have changed her conclusion that McNairâs denial wasnât credible.
The larger point is that McNair â even if he was guilty of everything the NCAA claimed â was a minor, tangential figure in the Bush scandal. Aside from Lakeâs characterization of their phone call, the evidence against him was thin. Yet the NCAA used that claim to charge McNair with lying to investigators, slammed him with a show cause and pretty much ended his career in college coaching.
Whether heâs guilty or not, you can understand why McNair fought back.
âIâm not going to let anybody paint me in a picture, in a way thatâs untrue so that was my stance at the time,â he said. âYour respectability, your respect is always worth it so thatâs all I really want to say about that.â
As far as the NCAAâs decision not to back down? Other than an unflattering look behind the curtain of its kangaroo court and lots of checks written for billable hours, there hasnât been much upside to date.
If the NCAA ever wins this case, it will happen either shortly before or after some of the same rules that made it illegal for Bush to accept benefits while he was a star college running back are being dismantled and while the NCAA is outsourcing its traditional enforcement system for high-profile cases to something called the Independent Accountability Resolution Process. Instead of a Committee on Infractions made up of university officials who might get caught sending each other embarrassing e-mails about the cases, the NCAA is hiring expensive lawyers to hand out the punishments.
Before he landed at this yearâs Super Bowl, McNair paid a heavy price for taking on the NCAA. But with each passing year, trying to determine who lost this fight gets more and more difficult.