Sean Miller’s goose is close to fully cooked as head coach of Arizona. The 49-year old has gone from hip deep in the FBI college basketball corruption investigation to neck deep after, as ESPN’s Mark Schlabach and Jeff Borzello report, federal prosecutors played an audio recording that showed former Wildcat assistant Emmanuel “Book” Richardson admitting that Miller paid $10,000 a month to star center Deandre Ayton during the 2017-18 season.
Prosecutors played the audio of a phone call intercepted by wiretap on June 20, 2017, which showed Richardson indicating to agent Christian Dawkins that Miller was making said payments to Ayton, now a center for the Phoenix Suns.
Per the ESPN article:
While talking about Ayton, Richardson told Dawkins, “Sean’s got to get the [expletive] out of the way and let us work.”
“We’ll see how Sean plays it out,” Dawkins said.
“You know what he bought per month?” Richardson asked.
“What he do?” Dawkins asked.
“I told you — 10,” Richardson replied.
“He’s putting up some real money for them [expletive],” Dawkins responded. “He told me he’s getting killed.”
“But that’s his fault,” Richardson said.
This is the latest blow to Miller’s job security in Tucson, as questions about the FBI investigation have dogged him since the 2018 season. There are complications to Arizona firing him, so let’s take a look at the actual chances his contract is terminated.
Sean Miller Job Security Rumors & Chances He Gets Fired
The evidence presented Wednesday points to Miller violating NCAA rules with corroborating witnesses. In addition, he has repeatedly denied his involvement with any payments to any player. In most contracts, dishonesty and NCAA offenses constitute grounds for a “for cause” firing.
As Michael McCann of SI.com pointed out in February 2018, Miller’s contract with Arizona isn’t clear about what the school would owe him if fired with or without cause. In short, the question stems from if the school owes him his base salary up until 2022 whether or not the contract is terminated justly.
The contract does not indicate whether the section’s use of the phrase “base salary” refers to the base salary up until Miller’s effective date of firing—which would be a normal arrangement—or whether it means the remainder of base salary for each season left on Miller’s deal. If the latter is the correct interpretation, Arizona would have to pay Miller 100% of the remainder of his base salary through 2021.
Basically, this means that Arizona isn’t actually incentivized to get rid of Miller until the NCAA comes forward with official sanctions, since his buyout is over $10 million. Miller somehow also survived the academic scandal between suspended assistant coach Mark Phelps and former commit Shareef O’Neal, as the NCAA didn’t levy any potential punishment for it.
The financial question is also the reason that Arizona Central’s Greg Hansen is taking a wait-and-see attitude regarding Miller’s job security. From a March 18 article, which came after reports that Miller would be subpeonaed by the FBI:
“If the UA chooses to separate from Miller — or he from the UA — it would likely include a settlement of such financial significance that it could limit Arizona’s search for a successor.”
Stadium’s Jeff Goodman is pretty clear that he expects Miller to be ousted sooner rather than later.
“We never thought (Miller) would survive a year ago when ESPN wrote its story. Everybody thought Sean Miller was a dead man walking at that point. I talked to people close to Sean Miller and they said he thought he was done. He survived that, so I’m not going to say never say never, but I think the odds are stacked against him.”
The guess here is that Arizona is lining all of its legal ducks in a row to fire Miller and prepare for an airtight defense in case of a lawsuit. After the FBI corruption trial concludes, the answer on Miller’s future will become clearer.
Today looked like a concrete block to his chances of remaining in Tucson.
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Sean Miller FBI Investigation: Chances Arizona Coach Gets Fired