Locksley, Gerald tell contradicting versions of fight

Posted at: 10/30/2009 4:53 PM | Updated at: 10/30/2009 6:30 PM
By: Stuart Dyson, Eyewitness News 4; Matthew Kappus, KOB.com

UNM football coach Mike Locksley and his former assistant, J.B. Gerald, told ESPN two very different versions of a violent confrontation between them.

On an episode of the network's Outside the Lines, Gerald told ESPN he argued with Locksley in a coaches meeting Sept. 30 and the head coach didn't seem to appreciate it.

"He gets up and he's walking over towards me and I'm looking at him, like what's this guy about to do? He literally jumped in my lap and tried to choke me--has his hands around my neck and around my collar and tried to choke me."

Locksley says he took Gerald by the shirt and never choked him.

"It was on his shirt, kind of outside his collar. You grab a guy around his collar, per se," Locksley said.

Gerald said the other coaches tried to separate them.

"Two other coaches grab me and they got my arms down to the side and one coach grabs him. Now as this was going on, he's swinging punches," Gerald said.

After the altercation, Locksley told reporters he had scuffled with the receivers coach, but never punched him. Gerald contradicted that claim.

"He's swinging punches continually, trying to get at me and I can't block any of them or anything like that. And one hits me in the lip," Gerald said.

The sports network got access to documents from UNM's investigation. An assistant confirms Gerald's accounting of Locksley choking and throwing punches.

UNM vice president for athletics Paul Krebs said the investigation cleared Locksley of punching and choking and that he was just grabbing.

Locksley has repeatedly apologized for his part in the altercation.

"I grabbed J.B. Gerald which was wrong--shouldn't have done. The fight was broken up in a matter of seconds and I never threw punches," Locksley said.

Gerald left the Lobo football program following the altercation. He told ESPN he refuses to work for someone who puts their hands on him.

Gerald told ESPN about an earlier incident at practice Aug. 13, where Locksley chewed him out in front of the players and later threatened to slap him. Locksley denies the threat.

ESPN reports Locksley threw a chair at an assistant coach while he was an assistant at the University of Illinois and got into a barroom confrontation with another Illinois assistant at a coaches convention in Nashville.

Locksley denies throwing a chair and says the barroom incident was an argument, not a fight.

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