A former athletics compliance officer at Marshall University says he has reached a settlement in his federal defamation lawsuit against the university, in West Virginia.

B. David Ridpath had sued Marshall for defamation and unlawful termination, asserting that the university used him as a “fall guy” in the wake of an NCAA investigation into major rules violations in the university’s football and men’s basketball programs. By transferring Mr. Ridpath to another job outside the athletics department and calling the move a “corrective action,” Mr. Ridpath said, the university sullied his reputation and damaged his career.

Mr. Ridpath announced the settlement on Sunday in a written statement. He said that he would receive an undisclosed financial settlement from Marshall and that the university would make public a letter it had written to the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions stating that Mr. Ridpath’s removal from his position there had nothing to do with rules violations in the athletics program.

Charles R. Bailey, a lawyer in Charleston, W.Va., handling the case for Marshall, said that he had not yet seen the signed settlement agreement and that he could not comment on the specific terms of a settlement. “We have an agreement in principle,” he said.

Mr. Ridpath is now an assistant professor of sport administration at Ohio University.

“I was the convenient person to blame,” he told The Chronicle in 2005. “The pattern has been that unless an institution and the NCAA can find someone to be the desired fall guy, the investigation appears not to be complete. In my case, it was so egregious because I was the one who reported the violations.”

The case had been set to go to trial today in federal court in Huntington, W.Va. —Libby Sander