Texas fires former QB Young

Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas

Former Texas quarterback Vince Young, whose last-minute touchdown against Southern California in the 2006 Rose Bowl delivered the Longhorns’ only undisputed national championship in the last 50 years, has been fired by the school from his part-time job as a development officer for poor performance and often being absent from work or not in touch with his supervisors.

The move comes after job warnings dating to 2017 and a second drunken driving arrest within three years on Feb. 4. After initially accepting responsibility for the drunken driving incident, Young has said he will fight the charge.

Young was notified March 1 he’d been fired from the $50,000 job “for not demonstrating significant and sustained improvement in the performance of your job responsibilities and failing to maintain standards of conduct suitable and acceptable to the university,” the letter said.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter and Young’s personnel file through an open records request. Young declined to comment Saturday. A Texas spokesman said the school would not comment on a personnel matter.

After turning pro and signing a $25 million NFL contract, Young was out of the league by 2014 and filed for bankruptcy. Texas gave him a lifeline with a full-time, $100,000 job as a development officer in the school’s Division of Diversity and Community engagement. The job later became part-time.

Young’s personnel file includes several good annual performance reviews. In March 2018, his supervisor wrote Young was “incredible in front of a crowd” and said, “We are so glad you are part of the NLP team.”

But Young already had been put on a work improvement plan in July 2017 in which he agreed to show up for work during normal hours and do a better job of accounting for his time out of the office. He requested his hours be cut or be moved to part-time “because I work better out in the streets.”

In September 2017, Young was given a strongly-worded “Unacceptable Performance and Conduct” reprimand and put on notice he could be terminated. He was cited for often being missing from work, skipping meetings with supervisors with no explanation and missing several weeks or months’ worth of timesheets and employee calendar updates to account for his whereabouts.