Accord for Aggies
Settlement with UNM coach is for $450,000
NMSU agrees to buyout settlement with UNM coach Paul Weir
Paul Weir’s impact on New Mexico State athletics will be felt for some time.
At least seven more years, and a $450,000 buyout, to be exact.
NMSU on Monday evening announced it has reached a pre-arbitration settlement with the former men’s head basketball coach who bolted from the Aggies program one year ago this week to coach the rival UNM Lobos.
“We’re delighted that we were able to reach an agreement with Coach Weir,” NMSU Chancellor Garrey Carruthers said in a prepared statement posted on the university’s website. “We know him to be a fine coach, a fine gentleman and we congratulate him on a successful first season as head basketball coach for UNM.”
Weir referred questions to his Albuquerque attorney, Ryan Harrigan, who told the Journal in an email on Monday night that the negotiations were “complex” and took “considerably longer
than maybe we had all hoped, but thankfully both parties were able to come to agreeable terms.”
Per NMSU’s release, starting with his first payment due on May 1, Weir owes $450,000 over seven years as a buyout penalty for breaking his contract with NMSU after one season as head coach (and nine prior to that as an assistant coach). It is not clear how much he owes per payment.
His buyout, which UNM was emphatic, at least publicly, that it would not pay, called for him to pay NMSU $125,000 per year remaining on his deal. His fouryear contract (he completed the first season) had a clause that automatically extended by one season the term of the deal when he won the Western Athletic Conference Tournament.
Harrigan last fall argued in a letter to NMSU the phrasing of that term — that the extra season “will be granted” — required Weir to actually have “an affirmative act” to accept it, thus leaving only three, not four years, remaining on his contract (or a difference of $375,000 or $400,000).
NMSU did not note when the money would be owed in the contract, a mistake it has since remedied by making clear in the contract of Chris Jans, who replaced Weir, that any buyout is owed within 90 days.
To avoid arbitration, Harrigan offered on Weir’s behalf last fall to pay NMSU $250,000 at $50,000 per year for five years. NMSU did not respond to that request and the matter was set to be heard by an arbitrator this week before Monday’s announcement.
The Journal still has a pending Inspection of Public Records Act request with NMSU, due later this week, that seeks additional documents related to the buyout matter, including correspondence from Carruthers, who was the driving force from the start behind the university’s insistence on getting as much of the expected $500,000 as possible.