Alberto lied about firing Magness - Nike document proves it was mutual

So, if the Nike corporate lawyers wrote the mutual termination agreement to avoid potential future litigation (because Nike certainly couldn't afford being taken to court by a former employee, cough) and at the behest of Alberto, so that Magness could get another coaching job (even though Alberto thinks he can't coach elites or at the collegiate level) no doubt Nike will soon be releasing the email chain documenting the reasons for their drawing up the agreement as well as documenting his coaching issues.

SB wrote:

Do you admit that this apparent "mutual agreement to terminate" could, in fact, be exactly what it appears to be? That's was all I was looking for.

An employer is not going to enter into a release (as in release claims, causes of action, etc.) with an employee if the employee simply wants to quit in the middle of a contract.

You cannot quit in the middle of a contract. That is a breach of the contract if there is nothing in the contract that allows the employee to terminate. If the employer can show damages, they can sue the employee.

Furthermore, I am sure Nike has all sorts of non-compete, non-disclosure, confidentiality agreements with employees. They would not release an employee from those agreements if the employee just wanted to quit. They would only release those agreements if they needed to terminate the employee for cause and did not want to end up in court fighting over it. That is what a mutual separation agreement always is. The only exception would be if the employer wants to cut the employee due to budget reasons and negotiates a severance package. But that is still termination. The employer just saves the employee a lawsuit by negotiating the severance amount.

SlytherinHouse wrote:

Things are getting very dicey for Alberto. This was just released. Only a month before Magness left, and it contradicts Alberto's claim of having no confidence in him as a coach:

"In one email, sent on 8 May, Salazar tells Magness: “I just spoke with Lindsay and I think that’s a great idea for you to take over her coaching. I was trying to move to that eventually but didn’t want Lindsay to think that I didn’t want to coach her. She needs to train with other top woman runners to fulfil her potential. With Tara [Erdmann] hopefully coming in you will have three women all training together. If you injure her, I will kill you. Ha ha! See you both on Friday.”

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jun/25/alberto-salazar-defence-doctor-magness-emails

Seriously?

Having Magness coach Lindsay Allen is a step above telling him to rearrange the filing cabinets in the office. Not exactly a plum assignment (No offense to Lindsay, but she was pretty low on the totem pole). If anything, this bolsters Salazar's case that Magness couldn't be trusted with anything important.

Keep trying, British press people!

mwebster wrote:

TrackCoach wrote:

This collaborates what Alberto said; what am I missing.

A question mark and an understanding of the difference between "collaborates" and "corroborates", for starters.

Haha! Nice

Did you not read the next email? Alberto also expressed his complete confidence in Steve to run the park city group (including golden boy Gaylen) for 10 days while he was back in Portland with Centro.

Keep reading wrote:

Did you not read the next email? Alberto also expressed his complete confidence in Steve to run the park city group (including golden boy Gaylen) for 10 days while he was back in Portland with Centro.

Yeah, I kept reading. At no time did Salazar say that Magness was completely useless. But he clearly wasn't trusting him to do the heavy lifting.

Again, Magness is embarrassing himself by releasing these emails and his 'mutual termination letter' from Nike. All these are doing is underscoring Salazar's points.

From the Guardian article:

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In one email, sent on 8 May, Salazar tells Magness: “I just spoke with Lindsay and I think that’s a great idea for you to take over her coaching. I was trying to move to that eventually but didn’t want Lindsay to think that I didn’t want to coach her. She needs to train with other top woman runners to fulfil her potential. With Tara [Erdmann] hopefully coming in you will have three women all training together. If you injure her, I will kill you. Ha ha! See you both on Friday.”

Salazar’s joke shows that he is a much more rounded character than his critics, who tend to focus on his intense, win-at-all-costs mentality, appreciated. At the same time, they call into question his account in his open letter in which he is deeply critical of Magness. In it he wrote: “Magness lacked the personality, inter-personal skills and drive to be able to coach elite athletes. He appeared to be intimidated by them and he retreated. He could not run a practice session by himself. He appeared to be unable to motivate the athletes as they ran or observe them. Ultimately, my top runners refused to work with him.”

But another email from Salazar in early May – which was sent to David Hendry, the strength and conditioning coach at the Nike Oregon Project, and Darren Treasure, the high performance sports consultant – told them: “I’m going to stay with Matthew [Centrowitz] in Portland and keep him motivated. Steve knows the guys good enough that I have complete confidence he’ll take care of all of them.”

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At this point I'm not sure what else folks need to see the holes in Salazar's response. Many of his "exhibits" were either irrelevant to the specific allegations or directly contradicted by other evidence.

113 wrote:At this point I'm not sure what else folks need to see the holes in Salazar's response. Many of his "exhibits" were either irrelevant to the specific allegations or directly contradicted by other evidence.

You should flip that around. The "exhibits" being trotted out by Magness via the British press over the last 24 hours are what are beside the point. None of them contradict anything Salzar wrote in his rebuttal. Salazar never said that Magness was completely useless, but he did say that as time went on he gave Magness less important responsibilities. He even gave examples that are exactly in line with Magness coaching Lindsay and Tara i.e., he got the borderline athletes not the studs. Could he be a useful fill-in on a temporary basis for a few days? Sure.

The Nike contract termination letter (written by Nike lawyers, on Nike letterhead with a blank spot for Magness to sign if he felt like it) has been adequately covered in other threads if you care to have a look.

Man Overboard wrote:

Keep reading wrote:

Did you not read the next email? Alberto also expressed his complete confidence in Steve to run the park city group (including golden boy Gaylen) for 10 days while he was back in Portland with Centro.

Yeah, I kept reading. At no time did Salazar say that Magness was completely useless. But he clearly wasn't trusting him to do the heavy lifting.

Again, Magness is embarrassing himself by releasing these emails and his 'mutual termination letter' from Nike. All these are doing is underscoring Salazar's points.

+1 on this

It's pretty obvious what happened here. Salazar kept giving him chances and Magness kept failing. He told him he wouldn't be renewing his contract for the next year and kept his duties limited. The Jackie Areson thing pushed him over the edge and he wanted him out. He went the polite route in letting him go so as not to damage his career.

This episode in Park City is probably right where Salazar figured out that Steve can't run a practice session on his own.

No "heavy lifting"... Just "hey, I'm gonna go back to Portland for ten days with Centro. Steve's in charge of the main group while I'm gone."

Nice try at spin, Alberto flunkies. But if everything you say is true then surely there's a huge email chain about the alleged decision to fire him. Alberto saved all those other emails. Why didn't he show anything to support this claim? Unless of course he doesn't have them and it was a mutual split after all just like Steves documentation demonstrates.

Not That Old wrote:

It's pretty obvious what happened here. Salazar kept giving him chances and Magness kept failing.

Which, will be the case when you are not doping your athletes. But, don't let that stop you from faithfully defending NOP at all costs.

And then there's the other problem.

Magness’ contract was terminated, he did not leave by choice......

By early May 2012, I told Magness that I would not be renewing his contract for 2013.....

Alberto falsely claims he fired Magness with both statements. It's not possible Alberto isn't telling the truth!! NOoooooooooo.

runDirtyrun wrote:

Not That Old wrote:

It's pretty obvious what happened here. Salazar kept giving him chances and Magness kept failing.

Which, will be the case when you are not doping your athletes. But, don't let that stop you from faithfully defending NOP at all costs.

And then there's the other problem.

Magness’ contract was terminated, he did not leave by choice......

By early May 2012, I told Magness that I would not be renewing his contract for 2013.....

Alberto falsely claims he fired Magness with both statements. It's not possible Alberto isn't telling the truth!! NOoooooooooo.

Wow, he totally said he fired him in those statements!

0/10

Not That Old wrote:

runDirtyrun wrote:

Which, will be the case when you are not doping your athletes. But, don't let that stop you from faithfully defending NOP at all costs.

And then there's the other problem.

Magness’ contract was terminated, he did not leave by choice......

By early May 2012, I told Magness that I would not be renewing his contract for 2013.....

Alberto falsely claims he fired Magness with both statements. It's not possible Alberto isn't telling the truth!! NOoooooooooo.

Wow, he totally said he fired him in those statements!

0/10

And that's why Magness was able to produce the Nike-generated document officially and mutually ending the agreement? That's not firing.

BTW, I agree my initial reply was very poorly worded.

I think it is better that I focus on encouraging leaders to learn how to help those who have mental illness and encouraging people to choose to come out about it publicly. We aren't moving forward unless that happens. When people don't speak up about their illness, they aren't getting the support they need and our government is now reducing the research funding. The costs: "The new report estimates the global cost of mental illness at nearly $2.5T (two-thirds in indirect costs) in 2010,

runDirtyrun wrote:

Not That Old wrote:

Wow, he totally said he fired him in those statements!

0/10

And that's why Magness was able to produce the Nike-generated document officially and mutually ending the agreement? That's not firing.

BTW, I agree my initial reply was very poorly worded.

It's effectively firing, if you read this thread you would understand that this is the way people get politely fired in America. Everything Alberto says agrees with the SOP letter. Notice how Alberto carefully avoided saying he "fired" Magness even though we all know that's what effectively happened.

Not That Old wrote:

runDirtyrun wrote:

And that's why Magness was able to produce the Nike-generated document officially and mutually ending the agreement? That's not firing.

BTW, I agree my initial reply was very poorly worded.

It's effectively firing, if you read this thread you would understand that this is the way people get politely fired in America. Everything Alberto says agrees with the SOP letter. Notice how Alberto carefully avoided saying he "fired" Magness even though we all know that's what effectively happened.

Sorry, many have suggested that such "mutual termination" agreements are often cover for actual firing, but no one has proved that this particular agreement was, in fact, a firing. Those of you who have asserted this have no factual evidence but Salazar's claim the he indeed fired Magness. But it is in Salazar's interest at this point to make this claim, just at is it is Magness' interest to insist that the letter in question means exactly what it says. So, stop using the musing of a few self-professed HR experts as anything but what they actually are: speculation. Unless you want to claim, as the nitwit above did, that mutual termination agreements are impossible (because employers will always and automatically resist employees who want to terminate an employment contract on good terms, regardless of the reason) then stop suggesting that you know for certain that this document means anything other than exactly what it says.

Salazar and Magness had the worst running form of any two runners I have ever seen. Ironic these two guys are entangled in this mess. Bad form indeed.

Whether or not Magness was fired is so irrelevant to this whole thing. What's relevant is that there are ~20 ex-NOP related people who believe Alberto was cheating and a total of 1 ex-NOP'er who supports Salazar. End of story.