University of Cincinnati men's basketball coach John Brannen's attorney, Tom Mars, on Monday called the ongoing saga with UC Director of Athletics John Cunningham and the school's athletics department an "avoidable embarrassment to UC Athletics."
"I’m no stranger to disputes between universities and head coaches and complaints of mistreatment by college athletes," Mars told The Enquirer. "In fact, I’ve probably helped more college athletes transfer for those reasons than any lawyer in the country. But I’ve never encountered anything like what’s been going on inside the UC Athletics Department."
Mars said Cunningham's decision Saturday to place Brannen on paid administrative leave indefinitely while Cunningham enlists a team of "independent fact-finders" to help conduct a university review of unspecified allegations made against Brannen and the Bearcats program both "baseless and premature.