Sports

USC AD Haden Infuriated by NCAA's Recently Unsealed Docs in Former Football Assistant's Lawsuit

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The NCAA finally unsealed 500 pages of documents in former USC football assistant Todd McNair's defamation lawsuit, which was directly related to the sanctions against the team in the Reggie Bush case.

According to the Los Angeles Times, McNair, the former running backs coach on the University of Southern California's (USC) football team, sued the NCAA in 2011 for forcing his termination. His lawyers accused the organization's Infractions Committee of treating him unfairly in their probe and making up various details to "suit its needs."

"We are extremely disappointed and dismayed at the way the NCAA investigated, judged and penalized our university throughout this process," USC Athletic Director Pat Haden said in a statement.

Though McNair has not commented on the matter, Haden said the documents show the NCAA clearly harbored a "bias against McNair and USC by and on behalf of the NCAA and its Committee on Infractions."

When the NCAA investigated USC's football program to determine if Bush, their star running back, was receiving impermissible benefits, McNair became a main subject. The NCAA determined McNair could reasonably have known about Bush's relationship with Lloyd Lake, the agent who provided the running back's family with large sums of money over a two-year period.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Frederick Shaller ruled in McNair's favor in Nov. 2012, calling the NCAA's treatment of McNair in their investigation "malicious." The judge singled out one investigator who called McNair in an internal memo "a lying morally bankrupt criminal, in my view, and a hypocrite of the highest order."

The documents the NCAA released further support McNair's claim, as another NCAA Infractions Committee member admittedly said the investigators "botched" an interview with the former USC assistant. The Times noted there are still about 200 pages the NCAA did not unseal and they are likely to be the ones that brought Shaller to his ruling.

One law expert told the newspaper those documents are "probably not going to become public."

USC cannot have its sanctions reduced in the way Penn State's were, as the clock has already run out on them. It is unclear what USC plans to do next, but Pete Carroll, the team's head football coach at the time of the investigation, is sure watching intently.

"I listened to the venom that they had for our program. They didn't understand a thing about what we were all about," he told the Times. "They never were here. And they didn't want to hear it.

"I'm interested and anxious to see what happens next."

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