Kevin Ollie Owed $11.2M After Winning Arbitration Case over UConn Firing
January 20, 2022
Former Connecticut men's basketball head coach Kevin Ollie has won his arbitration case against the school.
Per David Borges of The Hour, Ollie's attorney, Jacques J. Parenteau, said the school has to pay his client $11.2 million within the next 10 business days.
Mark Irvings, the arbitrator in the case, ruled Connecticut violated the collective bargaining agreement in firing Ollie with "just cause" in March 2018.
Ollie signed a five-year contract extension with the Huskies in May 2014 that tied him to the program through the 2018-19 season.
In January 2018, the NCAA notified the University of Connecticut it had opened an investigation into the men's basketball program.
The school announced on March 10, 2018, it had started the process of firing Ollie for just cause. The NCAA handed down discipline that included two years of probation and loss of a scholarship during the 2019-20 academic year for the program and gave Ollie a three-year show-cause penalty because of violations that were deemed to have "exceeded the allowable amount of activity" during the preseason.
Connecticut also vacated all of its wins from the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons.
Per Creg Stephenson of AL.com, Ollie's show-cause penalty expires on July 2, 2022. He could potentially be hired by another school before that date, but it would have to meet with an NCAA infractions committee to justify the move.
After the NCAA discipline was announced, Ollie issued a statement through his lawyer saying he was "disappointed with the NCAA Committee on Infractions decision but not surprised that the Committee acted to support its member institution in the dispute" between the two parties.
In a letter to the university shortly after his firing obtained by ESPN's Myron Medcalf, Ollie argued the school violated his "rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution" and he was seeking to receive the remaining money still left on his contract.
Ollie spent six seasons as Huskies head coach from 2012-18. The 49-year-old went 97-79 with two NCAA tournament appearances, including a national title in 2013-14.