Mike Anderson Lawsuit Seeks $46 Million, Reveals Strong Supporting Evidence

St. John's general counsel accused former Razorback coach of losing metal abilities

FAYETTEVILLE, Texas – Details from a notice of arbitration filed last month on behalf of former Arkansas Razorback head coach accuse St. John's of wrongful "for cause" termination for the purpose of being able to pull together enough money to hire away controversial head coach Rick Pitino from Iona.

The lawsuit not only seeks the $11.4 million he would have been owed had his firing not been "for cause," but an additional $34.2 million for punitive damages. When news first came out that St. John's wanted to avoid the payments by citing issues with promoting a proper academic environment and making the school look bad through failure to monitor assistants, swaths of former Razorbacks immediately came to his defense on social media.

Per a report by ESPN.com, the termination letter reads that Anderson was fired specifically for "failure to create and support an environment that strongly encourages student-athletes who are in the men's basketball program to meet all university academic requirements," "failure to perform your duties and responsibilities in a manner that reflected positively on St. John's University ... in actions [which] brought serious discredit" to St. John's and "failure to appropriately supervise and communicate with your assistant coaches."

It was a claim that didn't pass muster with Anderson's former players. Almost as soon as the firing went down, former Razorbacks Daryl Macon and Davor Rimac joined numerous other former Hogs to declare that St. John's accusations didn't fit the smell test.

Yup, never a shortage of tutors during my college years. More importantly, every time I came to visit, Coach Anderson @Iron_MikeMA invited me to speak to the players after the practice, and talk about how important my education was after I was done playing pro basketball. https://t.co/23X9VSkNrW

— Davor (@davorimac) March 22, 2023

And while it was nice for former players to speak out on his behalf, Anderson's court filing provided a much stronger rebuttal to the accusation of academic failure. In 2020, the Red Storm received the Big East Academic Excellence Award for the conference's highest cumulative GPA. It was the first time in school history St. John's earned the honor. 

Also not helping the Red Storm administration's case is the revelation that at the time of Anderson's firing, representatives for the university were reportedly already talking with Pitino, whose coaching background includes a sex scandal involving recruits and an FBI investigation into bribery that got him ultimately fired at Louisville. According to Anderson, St. John's offered him a buyout that was less than what he was owed. Upon rejecting the offer, school officials issued the "for cause" decision, preventing him from receiving any of the money he was owed.

In court filings, Anderson's lawyer alleged St. John's made up the accusations because it was in desperate need of available funds to scrape together the money needed to officially lure Pitino from Iona.

"St. John's manufactured out of whole cloth its preposterous 'for cause' termination of Mr. Anderson's employment with the sole purpose of attempting to extricate the University from its $11.4 million ironclad contractual obligation to Mr. Anderson, specifically so that it could otherwise divert those funds to Pitino,"

Perhaps the most interesting item included in the filing is that a lawyer for the university accused Anderson if losing his mind, essentially going mad under the pressure of the job. The filing appears to imply the university was laying the groundwork in February for possible ways to remove Anderson, one of only six coaches to get a win over national champion UConn, from his post.

No date for a hearing has been reported.

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