What Are the Legal and Managerial Considerations of Succession Planning?

By Daniel A. Etna, Esq.   The University of Kentucky recently designated offensive coordinator Joker Phillips as its next head football coach, effective when Rich Brooks retires. At Texas Tech, when Bob Knight decided mid-season that enough was enough, the handoff to his son Pat was relatively seamless because the school had publicly pronounced that the younger Knight was the eventual successor. In Happy Valley, however, the octogenarian Joe Paterno is working with neither a contract nor an