Kansas not paying David Beaty his buyout continues to be an ever-growing thorn in the side of the athletic department.
The latest reiteration of that came this week as the school fired back at Beaty’s lawyers in a contentious lawsuit, arguing that bringing up things that AD Jeff Long said or did in the past was “distract(ing) from facts relevant” to the case.
Per the Lawrence World-Journal:In a reply filed Wednesday, KU’s lawyers accused the plaintiffs of ignoring case law and focusing on diversions, such as the deposition of Matt Baty, former director of the Williams Education Fund.
Baty testified that Long made an inappropriate comment, “sexual in nature,” about an older female donor in a deposition unsealed earlier this week. The defense said Baty was asked by Long to resign because of a personnel issue in November 2018 and argued Baty had “motive to try to harm” KU’s athletic department and Long in particular.
Beaty’s lawyers have previously brought up KU’s treatment of allegations against other coaches, such as Bill Self, Mark Mangino and Les Miles, to contrast those situations with how Long and KU handled Beaty’s alleged NCAA violations. In its response, KU described that as another distraction strategy.
Baty’s testimony already made waves earlier this week when he detailed some of the things that went on behind the scenes as the school moved to fire Beaty and hire Miles. It seems that sure such unflattering comments making their way to the press was not thrilling to the Jayhawks as they went on the legal counteroffensive to try and get the case moved along.
It remains to be seen what, exactly, will wind up happening with the matter now, especially given how the coronavirus has brought pretty much everything to a halt. Still, it’s hard to believe that KU keeps going down this path when all that is at stake is a pretty modest buyout amount of just $3 million -- something that is still sitting in escrow according to the article cited above.
One can only guess that when things have been as bad as they have on the gridiron in Lawrence lately, what’s a little more bad PR?