Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect Mike Awad is the former owned of Laziza. Ryan Metcalf purchased the restaurant in September 2024, before any allegation of impropriety between Awad and Kenni Burns.
A six-figure loan from a university vendor led to the termination of former head football coach Kenni Burns.
According to the termination letter, Burns was fired for multiple violations of his contract, including violations of the university’s conflict of interest and code of conduct policies and a repetitive, significant misuse of the university’s purchasing card.
The university requested an investigation into the football coach in February 2025, with a focus on whether Burns violated Ohio’s ethics rules.
The attorney general’s office appointed Vorys law firm to conduct the investigation.
The investigation confirmed Burns had borrowed at least $109,000 from Mike Awad, former owner of Laziza and a vendor of the university. The loan was issued to help pay for repairs in the coach’s home after he said a flood had left it “uninhabitable.”
Burns had made the first of nine interest-free repayments to Awad on Oct. 31, 2023, and the last one on Dec. 1, 2024.
The report found no evidence of a quid pro quo arrangement between Burns and Awad; however, the loan was deemed “inherently suspect,” according to investigators. The report reads that large “gifts” like the interest-free $109,000 loan from Awad are impermissible because he is a university vendor, specifically for the athletic department.
Both Awad and Burns described the loans as a form of “friendship,” but denied that they were linked to Burns’ performance as a coach. Burns also noted that he had only met Awad through his position as head football coach at Kent State.
“Nevertheless — and despite its sometimes-stricter reading of the statutory language — the Ethics Commission has repeatedly found that gifts to public employees from vendors are particularly problematic,” the memo said.
The loans Burns received from the vendor violate Kent State’s conflict of interest policy.
The report also logged at least $16,000 in unnecessary expenses made by Coach Burns on his university purchasing card. The purchases included local hotel stays, meals and other expenses dating as far back as March 2023.
This information comes after an audit in January 2025, after the Kent State finance department suspended and later canceled the coach’s purchasing card privileges.
The report stated Burns had failed to properly substantiate the charges incurred on the card, despite multiple requests for him to do so throughout 2023 and 2024.
Burns had signed his P-card agreement in February 2023, which includes statements that affirm the signer read the P-card policy and completed the training necessary.
By his own admission, Burns did not read the policy or the manual he received, and he also did not attend any P-card training. The finance department described the former coach’s case as “the worst example they had ever seen of repeated failure to either document or reimburse the university for multiple unsubstantiated charges.”
A footnote of the report stated Burns had blamed the lack of P-card documentation on poor performance by the athletics department’s operations manager. However, they found that no employee of the athletics department had anything close to Burns’ level of absent documentation or questionable charges.
Despite the repeated misuse of the P-card, a senior member of the finance department said he did not view the coach’s use as “intentional fraud.”
In late January 2025, Director of Athletics Randale Richmond and Senior Vice President of Finance and Administration Mark Polatajko met Burns with a copy of the audit. They informed the coach that he had 30 days to produce receipts and an appropriate business purpose for each of the unsubstantiated charges. He was told to repay the university for any of the expenses he could not substantiate.
As a result, on Feb. 28, 2025, Burns submitted many previously missing receipts and a personal check to the university for $7,067.
Among the ethics issues, a footnote in the report noted a review of the allegations made against Burns, which included on-the-job drinking, abusive treatment of staff and gambling. However, these allegations were deemed beyond the scope of the investigation.
Burns’ attorney, Lee Hutton III, did not respond to a request for comment.
Anthony Leonardi is the sports content manager. Contact him at [email protected].