Former SID takes NDSU to court
Although NDSU fired Sports Information Director George Ellis two years ago, the school is still very involved with the affair.
On Tuesday, a lawsuit trial began in which Ellis is arguing that NDSU fired him because of his age.
In court documents obtained by The Spectrum, Ellis filed the complaint in August of 2005.
When the school fired him in 2004, Ellis was 59 years old and had been at NDSU for 30 years.
A Sports Information Director is responsible for creating media guides, compiling statistics, provides information for media before and after games and acts as a middle-man between athletes and coaches and the media.
In a news release issued by the school in 2004, NDSU mentioned that performance and philosophical issues with Ellis prompted the firing.
“ Philosophically, George and I didn’t share the same vision for the direction of the sports information department,” athletic director Gene Taylor said in the release. “I didn’t feel George was meeting our performance expectations we’ve set for our entire athletic department.”
In an article published Wednesday in The Forum, it was reported that on Tuesday, Ellis’ attorney, Patricia Monson said that the reason Ellis lost his job was because NDSU “didn’t want somebody as the sports information director who was near retirement” when the school went Division I.
Monson thinks that Ellis is entitled to his salary that he would have earned until he reached the age of retirement.
It was also reported that NDSU’s attorney, Tag Anderson, said that the university began considering firing Ellis in January of 2004, but decided to actually do so when Ellis walked out of his evaluation meeting.
In 1988, Ellis was inducted into the College Sports Information Directors of America Hall of Fame.
He was also a part of 134 national awards given to the NDSU Sports Information Directors during his tenure.
NDSU hired Jeff Schwartz in September of 2004 to take over the position.