UC Berkeley Men's Basketball Coach Signs Contract For Over $1.64M A Year
BERKELEY (CBS SF) -- The University of California at Berkeley said Monday that men's basketball coach Cuonzo Martin has finally signed a contract, more than two years after he took over the basketball program.
The university announced Martin's signing in the same news release in which it said that a review by its Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination determined that athletics department employees, including Martin, "responded appropriately and promptly" in alignment with UC policy
requirements to a sexual harassment complaint against former assistant coach Yann Hufnagel.
The complaint was filed by a reporter for an undisclosed media outlet who covered the Cal basketball team.
The reporter alleged that Hufnagel sexually harassed her for months while she interacted with him as a source.
She said the harassment included repeatedly propositioning her sexually over text message and once insisting she drive him home from a bar, closing the garage door behind them, and trying to talk her into coming upstairs and having sex with him.
Martin sought Hufnagel's firing on March 14 after a university investigation concluded that he had violated the school's sexual harassment policy.
Hufnagel's lawyer, Mary McNamara, said on April 4 that Hufnagel would fight his termination because new evidence demonstrated that he was innocent.
But Hufnagel resigned three days later, on April 7, with McNamara saying, "The toxic environment at UC Berkeley has made it impossible for Mr. Hufnagel to rejoin the basketball team he loves, even if he is vindicated in full, as the facts would show."
The next day, April 8, Hufnagel was hired as an assistant coach at the University of Nevada at Reno.
Until Monday, Martin had been working under a binding term sheet that was agreed to when he was hired in April 2014.
UC Berkeley didn't disclose the length of Martin's contract but it said he will be paid $1.64 million a year, plus signing and retention bonuses as well as several potential academic-based and performance-based bonuses.
Cal Director of Athletics Mike Williams said in a statement that Martin "has demonstrated that he is an educator, first and foremost, and cares deeply about developing young people into responsible and productive adults."
Williams said, "Not only have we seen outstanding results on the court, his teams have shown a deep commitment to their work in the classroom. We couldn't be happier with the trajectory of the program."
The Cal basketball team finished third in the Pac-12 conference last season and earned a berth in the NCAA tournament.
UC said the investigation by its Office of Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination was not a probe of Martin but instead "was an examination of the process followed once the (sexual harassment) complaint was made."
The reporter's complaint against Hufnagel came in the midst of other sexual harassment complaints against top UC Berkeley officials, including against former law school dean Sujit Choudhry and astronomy professor Geoff Marcy.
