Dalis Says Harrick Has Agreed on Settlement and Will Not Sue

Former UCLA coach Jim Harrick has accepted the school’s offer to settle the remaining four years of his long-term contract and will not sue, Athletic Director Peter T. Dalis said Sunday.

According to Dalis, Harrick requested a meeting last week with Dalis and other UCLA officials, and--without speaking to Dalis directly--basically accepted the offer made by the school a few weeks after his Nov. 6 firing. “In principle, it’s done,” Dalis said, adding that the agreement still must be cleared by lawyers. “It’s what we put on the table originally--what we offered in December, with small little [changes].”

Harrick will apparently receive his $140,000 base salary for the 1996-97 season (as stipulated in his contract in event of a firing), but not the rest of his compensation package, which totaled close to $440,000 per year.

Dalis reiterated Sunday that firing Harrick two weeks before the season started for filing a false expense report and then lying about it “was the only choice I had.”

But, he acknowledged that he felt a sense of personal satisfaction in the team’s success under Coach Steve Lavin, whom Dalis made the interim coach the day Harrick was fired, then hired permanently in February.

“Every night there was a game, people were yelling at me in Pauley Pavilion,” Dalis said. “Before I hired Steve permanently, it was pretty ugly, every night, someone’s screaming in your face. You try to ignore it, but you can’t--I especially didn’t like it when they did it when my wife was there.”