Last March, Kent State began investigating former head coach Kenni Burns’ ethics violations, placing him on administrative leave. By April, Vorys law firm – appointed by the attorney general’s office – found that “the coach violated university policies concerning purchasing card expenses, conflict of interest, and code of conduct in addition to Ohio’s ethics laws.” The school consequently fired him.

While his 1-23 record over two seasons did not make a case for him, there could be more reasons why the school wanted to get rid of Burns. Interestingly, the ploy began in 2024 and is now continuing with the former head coach suing the very people.

Kenni Burns has filed a lawsuit against Kent State and members of the top brass for unfairly firing him and defamation. Kent State fired him for cause after he was found to have misused a work credit card (P-card) and received a loan from a school vendor, Mike Awad, which violated the school’s conflict of interest policy. The former coach now presents his side of the story.

In his complaint, Burns mentioned that he was not properly trained on how to use the card and that he had receipts to back up the expenses. These expenses on the card were flagged during an audit and were pursued by the investigation launched into Burns. He spent 16,000 using this card. To settle part of the problem, he sent the university a check for more than $7,000, and the university accepted and cashed it. But he also had his reasons.

Burns was going through major financial turmoil during his tenure at Kent State when his home was damaged by flooding. It forced him to move out temporarily and spend extra money. He also repaid the $100,000 loan for home repairs he took from Awad in 2023 by December 2024 through checks totalling $109,000 with interest.

The investigation claimed that such transactions violated the conflict of interest and stood against the rules mandated by the Ohio Ethics Commission, but Burns claimed that the university did not pay him his full salary, causing these troubles. The investigation also found that there was no quid pro quo relationship with Awad, even though Burns used to take recruits and their families to dinner at his restaurant. The most interesting claim by Burns, though, is how the school planned it since 2024.

Back in 2024, while they were discussing his one-year contract extension through 2028, the university changed an important detail: his termination clause.

The original contract stated that he could have received around $2 million for firing, which was a percentage of his total contract. The new one, in contrast, turned it into a percentage of his base salary, pulling the numbers down to $371,000. Burns signed the contract, thinking nothing had changed, because his agent was not informed of it as well.

When the former coach did find out, athletic director Randale Richmond told him the contract would be changed to go back to the original version. But Burns now claims in the lawsuit that the university refused to do so later on.

“People can defend those actions to say, ‘Well, Kenni and his agents messed up. They should read the print,’ but that’s not a defense when you are talking about the grand scheme,” said Burns’ attorney Lee Hutton III. “And this is not where Kenni and his [advisers] just sat on their hands. They actually communicated with them and said, ‘Hey, this is wrong. We got to fix this. This is not what we discussed.'”

He also alleges that firing him was a “last resort” for the school to save money.

Kenni Burns makes yet another accusation against Kent State

Kenni Burns’s firing got messy when he wasn’t even given proper time to make one of the important decisions of his career. Per his lawsuit, while he was on leave and the investigation was ongoing, Kent State’s deputy general counsel, David Ochmann, contacted Burns’ attorney. The former had urged the latter to “quietly walk away” from the university, for a price.

Ochmann officially offered Burns $371,000, which was already stipulated in the new contract. But his dismissal would have likely been treated as not-for cause case, since the buyout was promised only on these grounds. Burns was given just one day to deliberate on the offer. Ochmann later reached out, saying that the university will fire him for cause.

In addition to Kent State, Burns’ lawsuit names Ochmann, university president Todd Diacon, senior vice president for finance and administration Mark Polatajko, and the school’s board of trustees as defendants. For now, the university has made no official comment on the entire situation. Let’s wait and see how things unravel in this messy case.