Attorneys sum up NCAA defamation trial

LOS ANGELES -- One side says the NCAA was led by the evidence. The other side said it was wrongly led by a theory.

After three weeks of hearing testimony over whether the NCAA wrongly implicated former USC assistant football coach Todd McNair in the Reggie Bush benefits scandal, counsel in the former coach's defamation trial gave their closings arguments Friday in a packed fifth-level courtroom of the Stanley Mosk Courthouse.

"Football is a game. But a man's occupation, a man's career, is not," said McNair's lead attorney Bruce Broillet, a partner at Greene, Broillet & Wheeler LLP.

Broillet asked for a minimum of $27 million in damages on a single defamation cause of action, not factoring in punitive damages.

Time and time again, the longtime plaintiffs' attorney emphasized to the jury that McNair was a pawn to the NCAA, which he said was under pressure to penalize an elite athletics program such as USC.

Kosta Stojilkovic, lead defense attorney for the NCAA, told the jury the case comes down to the committee's report that McNair misled investigators.

"They want to think the case was decided outside of the record but every single witness said it was decided based on the record," said the Wilkinson, Walsh & Eskovitz partner.

Broillet argued that the enforcement staff tasked with investigating the matter produced a flawed report which the Committee on Infractions relied on in making its decision.

A late night phone call from aspiring sports agent Lloyd Lake to McNair, in which the defense believes Lake threatened to go public with the payments, was the linchpin of the committee's 2010 finding against McNair.

The contents of that call are unknown. As a result of not being rehired by USC, McNair filed a lawsuit. McNair v. the National Collegiate Athletic Association, BC462891 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed June 3, 2011).

Broillet argued that the process was also botched at the deliberations level when a coalition of nonvoting members exchanged emails indicating that they believed McNair knew about the payments and misled investigators. In one email, nonvoting member Roscoe Howard, who was supposed to be an observer, wrote, "This staff fell woefully short with this investigation."

Committee members testified that they reached their conclusion in penalizing McNair independent of those emails.

Broillet pointed to testimony by nonvoting member Rodney Uphoff, who said he wanted to influence the committee "to make the right decision."

"To make the right decision according to Rodney Uphoff?" Broillet asked the jury.

He also said a 2005 group photo of Lake and McNair put into evidence by the defense to show a relationship between the two had been "cropped." Defense attorneys smiled and shook their heads.

Stojilkovic disputed McNair's testimony that he didn't know Lake, citing three phone calls made to Lake on the night that he took the photo with him.

He played audio of NCAA investigators interviewing Lake, who said McNair knew about the payments "because he was around a lot."

Lake was not called as a witness by either side.

Admitting the process was not perfect, Stojilkovic said, "You know some people wrote some side emails among each other that they shouldn't have."

Stojilkovic questioned why volunteer committee members would come together to railroad McNair without a motive. "And the only thing they came up with was this was a way to ratchet up the penalties against USC," said Stojilkovic.

Referring to his opponent, Broillet, Stojilkovic told the jury, "Their star witness isn't Todd McNair. Their star witness is counsel." The jury begins deliberating Monday.