OSU says the licensing agreement with manufacturer J. America and retailer Fanatics will send the school $97 million over the next ten years. In exchange, J. America will make and Fanatics will sell all OSU apparel outside of the school’s lucrative deal with Nike.

OSU says licensing and apparel revenue is now used to fund nearly 5,000 need-based scholarships, 600 grant-in-aid scholarships, and to boost library collections.

Ohio State says Florida-based Fanatics will create 300 full-time jobs with a new distribution center opening next year in Frazeysburg, Ohio.

OSU saw pressure from student and labor activists to abandon a deal with Silver Star, a Texas company accused of using sweatshop labor. OSU has not said where the new gear will be made.

OSU says it will also partner with Verite, an internationally-recognized expert on global labor rights issues.

Trevor Kielmeyer is a spokesman for the Westerville Teachers Association. He spoke with WOSU’s Steve Brown about the closest vote in the union’s history. Click the play button above for details on the agreement, and an update on the effort by local residents to repeal a district levy.

Union officials said on Friday that they would strike even if they reached an agreement. The strike means there will be no fixed-route service today, but Will Call and non-ADA trips will not be affected.

Union members are expected to vote on the deal at a meeting tonight.

Trustees with the Central Ohio Transit Authority late Thursday voted unanimously to support a new contract offer proposed by a third-party fact finder.

The problem is unionized employees at COTA had overwhelmingly rejected the same proposal days earlier.

With a labor dispute possibly looming, WOSU’s Steve Brown spoke with Transport Union Workers Local 208 President Andrew Jordan. Click the play button above to hear Jordan’s reaction on last night’s vote, the possibility of a strike, and comments that the union did not negotiate in good faith.

Some University of Cincinnati football fans are furious over the departure of head coach Brian Kelly. Kelly coached the Bearcats to a perfect 12-and-0 season and a spot in this year’s Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. And then he took the head coaching job at the University Of Notre Dame. Kelly’s contract allowed him to take the Notre Dame job in exchange for a monetary payment to the university. The so-called out clause is one of several contractual passages that deal with a coach’s departure. Most big-time college coaching contracts specify how an employer can terminate the coach and how the coach can leave university employment. Miami University athletic director Brad Bates says coaching contracts have become less restrictive over time: “I think that a lot of people are under the misperception that contracts are agreements by both parties of a certain tenure,” Bates says. “And I think that the way these agreements have evolved, they’re almost prenuptial agreements so that both parties are agreeing what the costs would be if one of the parties decided to depart or cancel the agreement.”

Case in point: Brian Kelly will pay Cincinnati $1 million to buy his way out of his contract. Other examples of expensive buyouts include Rich Rodriguez at the University of Michigan. Rodriguez coached seven seasons at West Virginia University. He built the program into a gridiron powerhouse. When the University of Michigan offered Rodriguez a contract two years ago he took it in spite of a $4 million buyout clause in his West Virginia pact. Ohio State’s top coaches aren’t held to quite such extraordinary sums. Football coach Jim Tressel’s contract would require him to pay what the contract calls liquidated damages in the amount of $1 million. Basketball coach Thad Matta would be required to pay $500,000 dollars if he decided to depart before the end of his contract.

Both Tressel’s and Matta’s contracts infer that a certain loyalty is due the University though they also state that the coaches have a right to terminate their employment if certain conditions are met. Ohio State President Gordon Gee acknowledges the tenuous nature of collegiate coaching contracts.

“These contractual arrangements are only as good as they’re made to be broken sometimes,” Gee says. Gee says it benefits the university to recruit dedicated candidates. “I think that what you do is you find very good coaches, get them in, make sure they know how much you value and appreciate them,” Gee says. “Make sure they get more engaged in the life of the institutions so that it’s not just about football or basketball, it’s about life in general. That’s one thing that I love about our coaches both Coach Tressel and Coach Matta, Coach Foster, I could go on down the line. These are folks who are great coaches but they bleed scarlet and gray. I think that notion of institutional loyalty starts with the institution being loyal to them and creating an environment for them to be successful.”

But a coach’s voluntary departure to a more desirable position raises another question. What about a coach’s loyalty to the team; the players that he or she recruited. The coach who takes a position elsewhere can start work immediately; some players who transfer to other institutions must sit out a year. Miami University athletic director Brad Bates says college athletes are put in an unfair situation. “And so when we’re trying to model behavior such as loyalty and commitment and yet the system doesn’t allow certain students in certain sports to immediately transfer and be eligible there’s an inconsistency there relative to coaches being able to move without any residential requirement,” Bates says.

Representatives of the orchestra’s musicians describe the contract as “a lifeboat.” The orchestra’s Jim Akins says musicians were out of options.

The contract’s approval means salaries will drop from an average of $55,000 to about $34,000, for the current, abbreviated 31 week season. For clarinetist David Thomas, the cut in pay is the breaking point.

“My plans are to look elsewhere as soon as possible and to continue to try for orchestras and if not possibly switch careers,” Thomas says. “Because I’m just too creative and too talented a person to deserve this kind of salary for the kind of work that I’ve done all my life.”

Next year’s season will be 38 weeks in length with musicians’ salaries between $42,000 and $44,000.

Nick Soulas is representing the county in the lawsuit. Soulas says the commissioners were just following rules which prevent the county from hiring a company that exceeded a certain number of safety violations. Soulas says TP Mechanical fell into that group.

“They simply don’t meet our quality contractor standards that have been in place since 2002,” he said.

The commissioners cited concerns over safety violations and prevailing wage law violations as reasons why they chose to award the bid to Pennsylvania-based W.G. Tomko but lawyers for tp mechanical said today most of the violations were minor and promptly resolved. The county’s director of public facilities Richard Meyers testified he had no “prerogative to decide between minor and major violations.”

TP lawyers tried to show at least one commissioner wanted to know if the violations were deliberate. They presented records from January 8th’s board meeting where Mary Jo Kilroy said the commission should look to see if the violations were “willful”.

Both parties are still in court and a ruling is not likely until monday of next week.

The new contract gives workers a signing bonus, but two percent pay raises are delayed. Workers also agreed to share in their health care costs for the first time, picking up an estimated five percent of the total premium price.

Transport Workers Union Local 208 President, James Theotis, is discouraged the two sides so far have failed to reach agreement. “Right now you might as well say we’re at an impasse.” Theotis says.

Actually, the union and COTA management are each presenting their case to a state-appointed fact-finder. But, the head of the Transit Authority, William Lhota, declined to discuss specific sticking points in the talks.

Lhota says it might be May before the fact-finder issues his report. T-W-U President Theotis says the talks stalled when COTA insisted on concessions in any new agreeement. Theotis says the Authority wanted givebacks in several areas.

The financial stakes are high for both sides. The union wants to preserve its past contract gains while COTA seeks to improve its financial statement. President Lhota says the Authority is operating at a deficit for the third consecutive year even though county sales tax revenue has increased by about two percent per year during that time. “Unfortunately, while the sales tax has been up, our state support’s down 56%, our federal support’s down 6%,” says Lhota

Moreover, ridership has remained steady or flat. Lhota says the bus agency takes in about 15-million fares annually. Lhota says after the fact-finder makes his report each side will either accept or reject the findings.

Lhota says the outcome of the contract dispute with the T-W-U has no bearing on proposed light rail plans. He says COTA is still committed to an Environmental Impact Statement for the project along the so-called North Corridor between downtown and the Crosswoods area in Worthington.