Wrongly fired Mankato coach Todd Hoffner returning to job

Mankato head coach Todd Hoffner will return to his old job this week. (AP Photo/The Mankato Free Press, Jim Cross)

NCAA Division II school Minnesota State-Mankato reinstated head football coach Todd Hoffner after an arbitrator ruled he was wrongly fired, the Associated Press reports.

The reinstatement is effective immediately.

The school suspended Hoffner for 20 days for unknown reasons, then moved him into an administrative role in December 2012.

Hoffner, 47, was then was fired last May for after he had been accused of having pornographic images of his children on a work-issued cellphone.  A judge dismissed those charges three months later.

"They wanted to cast me as the next Jerry Sandusky. You hear my name, you see my picture and you think, Sick f--- . That's what I would think too. There's no coming back from that. I would have been better off if I'd shot somebody," Hoffner said at the time, via ESPN the Magazine.

According to the The Free Press of Mankato, the arbitrator's ruling April 9 said Hoffner would have to be rehired or Minnesota State would have to pay the difference of his $90,000 contract with Minot State University and other expenses. His contract at Minnesota State was for $101,109 per year.

"I believe that resuming my duties as head football coach will help heal that injury," he said Tuesday. "I'm not interested in revenge. ... I'm not a spiteful person."

More from the AP:

Hoffner was hired in January as head coach at Minot State, and he said he would be "forever grateful" to the school. When asked why he decided to go back to Mankato, he said his answer was simple: "My family lives there, we have roots there, I helped grow the program to a national power."

He plans to resume his duties at Mankato on Wednesday.

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