Jury awards former coach $25M in defamation suit

Feb. 6—MUSKOGEE — A jury has awarded a former high school football coach $5 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages after finding he was defamed by several media outlets.

A jury of seven women and five men on Friday had found in favor of former Muskogee and Hulbert coach Scott Sapulpa, awarding him damages in a lawsuit for defamation and "intentional infliction of emotional distress." The punitive damages were awarded Monday.

Sapulpa had sued Oklahoma Sports Programming Network (OSPN); Gannett Inc., dba The Oklahoman and USA Today newspapers; two reporters who were employed by The Oklahoman; and Matthew Shawn Rowan, OSPN's owner, after the March 2021 incident.

Rowan is also a Tahlequah locksmith. His portion of the action has been dismissed with prejudice, according to On Demand Court Records.

Sapulpa had been coaching in Hulbert at the time of an on-air "hot mic" incident wherein he was falsely identified by those media as the man making racial slurs during a girls' basketball playoff game.

"I feel my name will start getting cleared," an emotional Sapulpa said after the verdict was read. "For my family, that's what I want."

Attorneys representing the defendants declined to comment. But an attorney for Sapulpa said Gannett would likely appeal the verdict.

Rowan and Sapulpa were broadcasting a girls' basketball state tournament game between Norman High School and Midwest City when the Norman girls knelt on one knee during the national anthem, and Rowan apparently took offense to the gesture.

During a break before the game started, Rowan is heard making racist comments about the Norman team.

On the video, and not realizing the microphone was still on, Rowan is heard to refer to the players with racial slurs and cursing. He said, "I hope Norman gets their a** kicked," and then, "I hope they lose. C'mon Midwest City. They're gonna kneel like that? Hell no."

Mike Barkett, one of the attorneys representing Sapulpa, said it shows that faults in The Oklahoman's story, accusing Sapulpa of uttering of the racial slurs, proved vital to the outcome.

Court documents indicate the day after the incident, Cameron Jourdan, one of the two reporters for The Oklahoman named as defendants, heard about the incident and concluded Sapulpa had made the comments. The court record also states Jourdan relied on "official sources" who told him Sapulpa was the speaker.

"The discovery that they actually had zero sources supporting naming Scott Sapulpa as the speaker of the racist remarks had a huge impact," Barkett said. "Then obviously the coverup, lies from that point forward to this jury verdict proved impactful."

The record also reports that "despite repeatedly being informed that it was not Sapulpa that spewed the racial slurs, The Oklahoman and Jourdan chose to gamble with Sapulpa's life and 'doubled down' on the erroneous story by insisting the reporting had correctly identified Sapulpa as the racist in question."

From the beginning, Sapulpa had said it was not about the money; it was about his honor.

"It's been very tough," Saplupa said. "To be honest with you, I owe a lot of it to God and football. Football teaches you how to get knocked down and get back up — that's all I can tell you."

Sapulpa said he plans to donate some of the money to Norman Public Schools.

"That's going to happen," he said. "And to a church I grew up in."