Ryan Brady filed a lawsuit against Saginaw Valley State in Michigan. He claims he was fired as the college football coach for because he refused to violate the university’s policy on nepotism to hire the athletic director’s son.
It’s not like he wasn’t winning games.
The university took a very different stance on the ouster of its college football coach. John Lewandowski said that Brady did not reach the standard expected of him, which is to make the playoffs.
Ryan Brady won a lot of games at Sagninaw Valley State.
Saginaw Valley State University is located in central Michigan, approximately 100 miles north of Detroit near Lake Huron. Established in 1963, it enrolls ~6,406 students.
The Cardinals compete on the Division II level of college football in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference alongside schools like Grand Valley State, Michigan Tech and Roosevelt. Ryan Brady was hired as head coach in March of 2019 after serving as the co-defensive coordinator at fellow GLIAC member Ferris State. He was appointed by athletic director John Decker.
Decker retired in 2022. Saginaw Valley State hired John Lewandowski as his replacement in 2023.
Brady continued to win football games amid the turnover to record an overall record of 39-27 in six years. The Cardinals had five consecutive winning seasons in each of the last five years. They most recently finished second in the GLIAC in 2025, their best finish in more than a decade. It seemed like enough to keep his job. He was not considered to be on the hot seat for year seven.
And then it was announced at the beginning of December that Brady was relieved of his duties as head coach. In the University’s press release, which has since been deleted, Lewandowski said that, “Winning seasons are no longer the standard of excellence for SVSU football. While our teams finished 7-4 in 2024 and 6-5 in 2025, the Cardinals failed to meet our expectation of participating in the NCAA Division II Playoffs, and in my judgment, the program was not moving in that direction.”
Seems fair enough. Or does it?
The fired college football coach filed a lawsuit against the university.
According to Matthew Miller, Ryan Brady fired a lawsuit in the Michigan state Court of Claims. He says he was fired because he refused to violate the Saginaw Valley State University policy on nepotism. He would not hire the athletic director’s son as an assistant coach.
Brady’s complaint states that John Lewandowski used him “as a pawn in an attempt to circumvent the Nepotism Policy and actively pressured him to get his son hired notwithstanding the policy.” It lists the athletic director and Saginaw Valley State’s Board of Control as defendants.
Saginaw Valley State’s policy prohibits anyone from taking a job “within the scope of supervision or authority of a member of the same family.” If Lewandowski’s son held any position on the coaching staff, he would’ve been in violation of this policy.
However, the university’s department of resources told Brady that the nepotism policy would not prevent the athletic director’s son from volunteering with the team. The volunteer position could provide a maximum stipend of $500.
It only escalated from there. Per the lawsuit, Lewandowski became “extremely involved in attempting to have his son obtain [a] paid, full-time position as an assistant coach,” became “angry and irate” when Brady deferred to human resources, and at one point “threw Plaintiff’s phone in a fit of anger” when Brady offered to pay his son the $500 stipend for his volunteer role.
The university filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that it is protected by governmental immunity. Because Brady only claimed he was asked to violate a university rule and not a state or federal law, he does not have a legal claim. Especially because neither he nor Lewandowski count as “public officers” under the law.
To add another wrinkle to the mix, Lewandowski has something of a history. He resigned from Michigan State in 2016 when “serious allegations” were made against him. That was during his 20th year as the associate athletics director for communications. The university never specified what the allegations entailed. Lewandowski went on to spend six years as the senior associate athletic director for communications and marketing at Louisiana-Monroe. He was then hired at Saginaw Valley State.
It is also worth noting that Lewandowski’s son worked on the coaching staff at Louisiana-Monroe while his dad was there. The university ultimately flipped its entire coaching staff with the ouster of head coach Terry Bowden in 2023.
Brady claims he was only fired for the refusal to hire Lewandowski. The lawsuit says that any other reasons for his termination are “either not based in fact, did not actually motivate the decision, and/or were too insignificant to warrant the action taken.” He is seeking financial restitution.