On June 10, 2010, plaintiff Todd McNair, the running back coach for the University of Southern California, was found to have violated National Collegiate Athletic Association rules following a lengthy NCAA investigation. The NCAA’s Committee on Infractions issued a report concerning rule violations by several athletic programs at USC. The report stated that Reggie Bush, a running back for USC, violated NCAA rules by accepting impermissible benefits beginning in the fall of 2004 through December 2005, during his sophomore and junior seasons. The report’s findings centered around Bush’s relationship with an aspiring sports marketer, Lloyd Lake, and plans for the formation of a sports agency. Lake and his business partner, Michael Michaels, provided Bush and his family members with housing, cash and travel expenses. It also found that McNair knew or should have known that Bush engaged in violations that negatively affected Bush’s amateur status and that McNair provided false and/or misleading information to the enforcement staff concerning his knowledge of Lake and Michaels’ activity. It further found that McNair violated NCAA legislation by signing a document that certified that he had no knowledge of the NCAA violations. In 2010, at the end of the approximately three-year investigation, the NCAA issued sanctions against McNair and USC. Specifically, McNair was imposed with a one-year show-cause penalty that prohibited him from contacting recruits. When McNair’s contract expired 20 days after the report was issued, USC did not renew it. McNair has not coached at the college or pro level since. McNair sued the NCAA, and the case proceeded to trial on the claims of defamation, negligence, and breach of contract. However, before the trial reached jury deliberations, McNair voluntarily dismissed his negligence and breach-of-contract claims, leaving only the defamation claim. McNair claimed that statements made about him in the NCAA’s report were false and that the NCAA targeted him in order to increase its sanctions against USC. He also consistently denied engaging in any discussions in which he facilitated Bush to receive improper benefits. Plaintiff’s counsel contended that when a member of the NCAA’s enforcement staff interviewed McNair in 2008, the staff member made mistakes, including having his line of questioning based off of a wrong date of a phone call between McNair and Lake. Counsel also contended that Lake, during another interview with the NCAA’s enforcement staff, characterized a call in January 2006 as being from McNair to him, but phone records showed that it was Lake who had called McNair and not the other way around. Defense counsel argued that any mistakes made during the interviews were cleared up with the issuance of the NCAA report, which correctly described the date of the Lake-McNair call and who called who. Counsel also argued that McNair failed to prove any findings made about him in the NCAA’s report were false and that McNair’s trial testimony about that subject was not credible. Defense counsel further argued that none of the committee members who made the findings against McNair acted with malice, but, rather, were trying, in good faith, to figure out what happened and who to believe., McNair played with the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Oilers before becoming the running back coach for the Cleveland Browns from 2001 to 2003. He was then hired by USC coach Pete Carroll to be the running back coach at USC in 2004. McNair claimed that the NCAA’s charge was so damaging to his professional reputation that he has been unable to find work as a coach since 2010. He testified that his unemployment has caused him to suffer from depression and that he needed to depend on food stamps for basic necessities and had to take out loans to make ends meet. McNair sought recovery of $27 million in compensatory damages for the alleged injury to his reputation, both in terms of lost earning capacity and emotional harm. He also sought recovery of punitive damages. Defense counsel argued that McNair did not prove causation or damages since McNair only made minimal efforts to obtain another college or professional job since his departure from USC. Counsel also argued that other coaches with sanctions similar to the one McNair received have been able to obtain such jobs and that McNair’s failure to do so was not due to the NCAA report.