JEFF JACOBS

Arbitrator’s Ollie-UConn decision won’t be easy

The most jarring testimony former UConn associate coach Glen Miller gave to the NCAA last November was not used by the school in initiating the March firing of Kevin Ollie for just cause.

Make no mistake. The parts of Miller’s 179-page testimony involving a former player’s mother and the agent Ollie fired — disputed Thursday by Ollie’s legal representation — only promise to make an ugly narrative uglier.

After it became clear on Wednesday that UConn president Susan Herbst had upheld Ollie’s dismissal, an arbitrator will now decide if the school’s former basketball coach is going to get the more than $10 million remaining on his contract through 2021.

Or if Ollie is going to get $0.

That is the only cut-anddried part.

The rest is a steaming pile of stink that for three months has begged for the two sides to find a financial settlement. For the love of what is good and right for the state and the state university, swallow your legal egos, bury your self-righteousness, get in a room and find a number both sides can live with. Less Machiavelli in a Nike warmup suit. Please.

Among the 1,355 pages of documents UConn released to Hearst Connecticut Media on Wednesday, under the Freedom of Information Act, was an April 24 letter from athletic director David Benedict to Ollie outlining what he called the most significant violations of NCAA rules. Yes, we finally have the substance to the three-month argument whether Ollie is getting fired for parking tickets or a severe breach of conduct.

The arbitrator will consider Ollie shooting baskets with recruit James Akinjo at Werth Family Champions Center last September during the recruit’s official visit. The arbitrator will consider the call made to former UConn great Ray Allen, considered a booster, in an attempt to land highly sought Hamidou Diallo.

The arbitrator will consider how Ollie’s good friend Derrek Hamilton trained some UConn players in 2015-2016, and how Jalen Adams and Terry Larrier among them went to work out in Atlanta with Hamilton in violation of NCAA rules. The arbitrator will consider if other Ollie friends, Danny Griffin and David Sevush, part of the non-coaching staff, edged too far into the coaching realm and if Griffin had impermissible phone contact with two recruits. The arbitrator will consider that Ollie failed to report possible NCAA violations, leaving the athletic director to find them out from sources other than Ollie

Ollie