U OF M INVESTIGATION:
U of M athletic director’s role in contract under investigation
State is examining athletic director’s possible role in negotiating Josh Pastner’s lucrative contract.
Josh Pastner is long gone yet a state investigation grinds on, exploring the role University of Memphis Athletic Director Tom Bowen played in negotiating the former head basketball coach’s lucrative 2013 contract.
A Tennessee Board of Regents spokeswoman offered little insight last week into the investigation, which, now in its 12th week, was launched March 22 to determine if Bowen had a conflict of interest. At one point, Bowen and Pastner had the same sports agent. It’s unclear, however, if the agent was representing both men at the time of the 2013 signing or whether Bowen had disclosed his representation to the university and, if so, whether then-U of M President Shirley Raines had taken action.
“The investigation is still in progress. At this time, we do not have a projected date for completion,” Virginia Moreland, TBR associate director of communications, said in an email.
Bowen said earlier this year his relationship to NextLevel Sports, which has represented both him and Pastner, didn’t influence his handling of the coach’s contract. He did not return a reporter’s calls last week seeking comment.
Yet, as the investigation continues, emails released by the U of M shed light on one controversial aspect of that contract: how it essentially grew from a five-year to a seven-year deal. The extra two years, coupled with a pledge to continue paying Pastner’s $2.65 million annual salary if he was fired, intensified the drama that colored his final months at the U of M. As fans howled
for a change amid a winning drought, the school faced paying Pastner, if dismissed, $10.6 million through 2020 — whether he found a new job or not.
As it turned out, Pastner left on his own April 8 to become head coach at Georgia Tech, with the U of M paying him a $1.255 million contract settlement.
Records indicate the controversial contract extension at the core of all that heartburn was first reached in talks between Bowen’s staff and NextLevel principal Joey McCutchen.
But it came under stiff challenge — with the deal seeming to nearly fall apart — when then-University Counsel Sheryl Lipman raised concerns in a series of testy email exchanges with McCutchen.
“I’m less concerned about what you think about my integrity since I know I have no issues,” Lipman wrote McCutchen on April 1, 2013, after he challenged her position that state regulations limited the contract to five years, “but it is annoying that we have to take the time to dig out the (legal) citations for you. By the way, Josh asked me this Athletic Director Tom Bowen and former coach Josh Pastner speak in 2013, the year Pastner’s contract was negotiated. question many weeks ago, and I have no doubt that Josh took my word for it.”
But McCutchen argued the U of M was reneging on a promise.
“He was promised a guaranteed seven year deal,” McCutchen wrote back, criticizing an offer by the school for a five-year contract with two one-year extensions built in.
“... Coach Pastner has to have a seven year contract. What we have is a five-year contract. If there is no other language that you can include that would guarantee a 7-year deal, then we propose increasing Coach Pastner’s compensation over the remaining contract term by $5,300,000 if the two extensions are not given or approved.
“Coach Pastner needs an answer regarding this today.”
Final language in the contract signed seven weeks later fixed Pastner’s employment period from April 2013 to April 2018, but noted that in April 2014 the ending date “shall automatically change” to April 2019 and similarly would change in 2015 to 2020. Though contract language said at no point “shall the remaining term of this agreement ... ever be longer than five (5) years,” the arrangement essentially stretched a five-year deal into a seven-year deal.
Bowen has said the seven-year offer was made because a Power Five school was offering Pastner more money. “We couldn’t match the dollars. So that’s why we came up with the years,” he said earlier this year, emphasizing the deal had support from administration and top boosters.
The arrangement wasn’t without precedent: former head basketball coach John Calipari’s fiveyear contract contained similar language, stating the U of M could option to extend the term “for one year following the expiration of each of the first two years” of the agreement.
Asked about the emails, Lipman and McCutchen declined comment. Now a U.S. District judge, Lipman said attorney-client privilege and her role in the judiciary precluded her from discussing the matter.
Though he said he couldn’t speak about Bowen, McCutchen, a Fort Smith, Arkansas, attorney, offered that he personally had no conflict.
“I did not have a conflict of interest or the contract would not have been negotiated. I’m not speaking about — if you want to ask Tom Bowen whether he thinks he had a conflict of interest then you ask Tom Bowen. I’m not speaking for Tom Bowen.”
One person is dead and another is in noncritical condition after a Jeep struck a sign, collided with another car and rolled over on Walnut Grove Friday night.
Memphis police officers responded to the crash call near Farm Road at 9:37 p.m. According to an investigation, a 2009 Jeep Wrangler was headed west on Walnut Grove when it went into the median and struck a traffic sign. The Jeep continued into oncoming traffic, rotated and traveled backward
CRYSTAL SPRINGS, Miss. — Rescuers Saturday recovered the body of a second man who disappeared in a landslide at a gravel pit in southern Mississippi earlier this month.
The second body was found about 9:50 p.m. Friday and removed Saturday morning, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman Ray Coleman said. The man’s body was taken to the Copiah County coroner’s office for an autopsy.
The worker was found trapped in the slurry near equipment he had been operating when he and the other man were buried in 10 feet to 12 feet of mud, slush and sluice June 3.
The body of the first through the median. It then collided with an eastbound car, which caused it to spin and then roll over, said MPD spokesman Louis Brownlee in an emailed statement.
Both people in the Jeep were ejected. One person was not injured. The second occupant, 28-year-old William Hays, was pinned under the passenger door. He was pronounced dead at the scene, Brownlee said.
The driver of the second vehicle was transported to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis in noncritical condition.
The cause of the crash is still under investigation. worker was recovered Thursday morning inside a piece of equipment.
MEMA director Lee Smithson has identified the two missing men in a Facebook message as Emmitt Shorter and James “Dee” Hemphill and offered condolences to their families.
The federal agency will begin investigating the possible causes of the incident now that recovery efforts are over.
“The first priority was to get the two men out,” MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere said Saturday. “It’s too early to speculate about what the cause might have been.”
MSHA has cited this particular mine for 26 “significant & substantial” violations since 1993, according to online records.