Shoup, CLU May End Up in Court : Lawyer Warns School Legal Action Probable If Coach Is Denied Football Post

His job as football coach at Cal Lutheran University is under siege. So what will Bob Shoup, master tactician and winner of 182 games and 13 league championships, do?

Nothing out of the ordinary.

He will show up for work, watch films, plot strategy, converse with his staff and players, supervise practice and try to ignore the fact that he has been cast as an unwanted man by the school that has called him coach for 27 years.

In a news conference Friday afternoon at CLU, Shoup and his Westlake Village-based attorney, Jim Armstrong, outlined plans to “dot the I’s and cross the Ts” in terms of fulfilling the coach’s written contract with Cal Lutheran and threatened a lawsuit if the school does not abide by the same document.

That contract, which was negotiated in April, calls for Shoup to coach CLU’s football team during the upcoming season before taking a one-year sabbatical leave beginning in January and expiring in December, 1990, Armstrong said.

The school announced earlier this week that Shoup would be welcomed back from his sabbatical, as a teacher, but that his coaching career at Cal Lutheran would conclude at the end of the upcoming season. However, Shoup claims that as a tenured professor he is entitled, by the terms of CLU’s faculty handbook, to reclaim the same job he left--including that of the head football coach.

Jerry Miller, Cal Lutheran’s president, disagrees. He said Wednesday afternoon that Shoup is tenured as a teacher but not as a coach.

“The university always retains its prerogatives and initiatives for the appointment of coaches on an annual basis,” Miller said. “I am not aware of any university in the country that has a coaching position that is controlled by tenure considerations.”

Cal Lutheran plans to begin a national search for Shoup’s successor this fall and to have a new head coach by January. All of which could lead to a bizarre scenario should two coaches claim the Kingsmen football program as their domain before the start of the 1991 season.

Miller said the school’s announcement that Shoup would be dropped as CLU’s football coach at the end of the 1989 season was “built upon earlier agreements and conversations with Coach Shoup” dating to February.

“The proposals were initiated by Coach Shoup himself,” Miller said. “We discussed them fully in the conference which he had with me for more than an hour on Tuesday afternoon, which preceded the university’s issuance of any statement on this matter.”

Shoup says that he approached James Halseth, CLU’s dean of students, with an “early retirement plan” which was tentatively agreed to but later was altered by the school. Shoup declined the school’s offer and was later asked to resign.

The subject of retirement came up again when Shoup met with school officials Tuesday morning. “They suggested it as a possibility,” Shoup said earlier this week, “and I said no.”

At the press conference, Armstrong warned CLU officials that should they “attempt to interfere with (Shoup’s) existing written contract any further, we’ll probably see them in a court of law.”

Shoup, speaking with his wife Helen at his side, said he has not been told why the university wishes to replace him, but he surmised that his age, the “misfortunes of the football program” in recent years (the Kingsmen are 16-27 since 1985) and “controversy” may have been factors.

“The timing has to be in some way linked to the move to the Division III and the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference,” Shoup said.

Shoup, 57, who is 182-81-6 at CLU, had argued against the school moving out of the NAIA Golden State Athletic Conference and NCAA Division II Western Football Conference to join the non-scholarship SCIAC.

Since the school’s decision to make the switch last fall, Shoup said he has tried to maintain a positive outlook.

“The NCAA Division III and the SCIAC are obviously a part of where we’re going and I will support to the best of my ability all the rules and regulations and policies of those governing bodies.”

“I just want to coach football this year,” he added.

Miller declined to state a reason for the coaching change, citing a school policy against public discussion about personnel matters.

Armstrong, himself a former college football coach, charged that Shoup should be “praised and acclaimed” for his contributions to Cal Lutheran’s development as a university, rather than be the subject of “a slinky, what I consider cheap, effort to pressure him out of a job.”

He also claimed that Shoup had been threatened in writing with “consequences,” including possible termination, if he spoke to the media. Shoup declined to divulge who authored the warning and no evidence of such a letter was made available.

Miller, who was interviewed from his office after the news conference, declined knowledge of such a threat. “I have no knowledge of any kind of threat or suggestion,” he said. “It certainly didn’t emanate from me or my office or anybody who works close to me or reports to me.”

Meanwhile, the start of this season draws ever closer. Cal Lutheran will play its annual alumni game Sept. 2 before opening its regular season against Sonoma State the following Saturday.

“I feel my first responsibility right now lies with the players here at Cal Lutheran who have elected to stay in a very difficult situation, knowing they’re going to be competing at a Division II schedule under Division III guidelines,” Shoup said. “I feel a real responsibility to those players.”