Quote Originally Posted by Really Clark? View Post
Guys the point is OM, the university itself, announced they are giving Lane a 6-8 year deal and have a way to write that contract to get around the state law because of the funds and terms will go through the private foundation. But again, as they have tried this before, they cannot give him a contract longer than 4 years per state law and what they had ultimately file was his complete compensation, even the private funds, and the 4 year term. Because the state and the IHL will not allow that contract to be written to COACH for a public university. To allow that is to disband the IHL and state governance for all employee contracts at the university's. They cannot allow a precedent for a coach, to do so would allow a private foundation to hire a university president and AD for 20 years if we so choose...but you cannot. The state constitution will not allow it.
You are missing (at least) two things. First, the constitution does not say what you think it says. It just says there can't be a contract with the university to be an employee of the university that is longer than 4 years. It doesn't say that university employees can't do endorsement deals or moonlight or otherwise seek additional income outside of their employment contract.

Second, you are missing that there is (currently) no mechanism for the IHL interfere with Lane's contracts with private parties (they may not even have the ability to require it to be produced). The IHL may have the authority to issue regulations or rules that require university employees at a certain level to have anti-moonlighting provisions in their contract and/or require that all compensation be reported and that prohibits employees from accepting third party payments or promises of payment related to continued employment. But they don't have those rules in place now and aren't going to be able to void contracts retroactively. So if Lane has a contract with some third party that is not under the control of the university, and the third party agrees to compensate Kiffin a certain amount if he is not the coach of UM in any or all of the years 5 through 8 and it wasn't because he voluntarily quit or was fired for cause, then the IHL can't raelly do anything about it. IF things go south, the third party might could try to prevent enforcement claiming that it was a way for the university to get around the constitutional limit and shouldn't be enforced, but I'm not sure how viable that claim would be when it's a private party asking the court to relieve him/her/it of the consequences of its own scheme. The worst case scenario would be for them to enforce the payments but then claim that was money de facto donated/pledged to the university and the university officials that signed off on the deal are responsible for restitution to the university.