CLU Regents’ Committee Upholds Firing of Shoup : Appeal: Embattled faculty member continues to insist that he holds tenure as a football coach. There is a possibility he might take his fight to the courts.

Bob Shoup’s appeal of his dismissal as Cal Lutheran football coach was denied Tuesday by the Executive Committee of the Board of Regents, which affirmed the earlier findings of the faculty review committee and thus completed the university’s faculty grievance process. However, Shoup said he might continue the fight.

“I’m disappointed but not surprised,” Shoup said of the decision. “Now that my administrative remedies are exhausted, I am evaluating my response. That’s going to take a couple of days.”

One of Shoup’s recourses would be litigation. Shoup and a cadre of lawyers have been researching possible legal approaches to the situation.

According to a press release, the executive committee unanimously endorsed the Dec. 19 findings of the faculty review committee, which decided that the university was within the bounds of the faculty handbook and the tenure system in reassigning Shoup from football coach to other duties in the physical education department.

Shoup, the only coach in 28 years of Cal Lutheran football and a tenured associate professor of physical education, contended that he had been promised tenure as football coach by former Cal Lutheran President Maurice Knutson after the school won the NAIA football championship in 1971.

“I simply have an oral agreement . . . that I could stay at Cal Lutheran and coach as long as I wanted to,” said Shoup, who began a year-long sabbatical Jan. 1.

Shoup’s dismissal first became public Aug. 8, and Shoup said he originally filed the grievance in August but held it in abeyance while negotiating with the university throughout the fall.

He formally filed the grievance Dec. 7, the day the university again notified him of his dismissal as coach.

Shoup said the grievance consisted of 12 points. “The essence of it was breach of contract,” he said. However, Shoup said, the faculty review committee reviewed only two points. On Dec. 19, it decided that his reassignment was permissible under the faculty handbook and neither his academic freedom nor his tenure had been violated by the reassignment.

Of the remainder of his grievances, Shoup said: “They felt it was out of their purview.”

After the executive committee meeting, Jack Wise, chairman of the committee, refused comment, citing the confidential nature of personnel issues.

Cal Lutheran has named a five-person selection committee for the vacant football coaching position.