USA TODAY
Three years before Louisiana State University fired him, head football coach Les Miles endured an internal investigation into allegations he sexually harassed and made sexist comments about student workers, USA TODAY has learned.
At the time of the 2013 survey, quietly conducted by an outside law firm, Miles was one of the most successful and well-loved coaches in college football, one of an exclusive club winning a national championship. While his actions were considered inappropriate, Miles does not appear to have had any public repercussions from LSU.
It wasn’t until 2016, after LSU made a 2-2 start, that the school fired him. He is now the head football coach at the University of Kansas.
USA TODAY sued LSU in January for a copy of the investigation report after LSU refused to release it. Judge Chip Moore of the East Baton Rouge District Court has indicated that most of it should be made public and has shown the document to the attorneys in the case. But Moore also ordered it on Tuesday to keep it sealed until a March 30 trial to hear Miles and LSU’s objections to the release.
USA TODAY learned of the investigation through interviews with three people who knew about it and spoke on condition of anonymity, for fear of retaliation. The people described the nature of the allegations and the conclusions of the investigation.
The Miles investigation is the latest discovery from USA TODAY, which has revealed widespread assault on allegations of sexual misconduct by LSU’s athletics division and the wider administration. The news organization’s coverage has prompted LSU to hire another outside law firm, Husch Blackwell, to monitor the handling of approximately 60 sexual misconduct cases between 2016 and 2018.
Read the USA TODAY survey: LSU dealt with complaints of sexual misconduct against students, including elite athletes
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Education also launched a comprehensive investigation into the school’s compliance with campus security laws, citing media reports and numerous complaints.
The allegations of sexual misconduct against Miles have never been made public and raise questions about whether the school condoned sexual misconduct by a coach who was Louisiana’s highest paid and arguably the most influential associate. Miles made nearly $ 4.4 million in 2015, according to USA TODAY Sports coaches database.
USA TODAY tried to contact the women alleging wrongdoing. Whoever responded declined to comment.
Miles did not call back on Wednesday to ask for comment. His attorney, Peter Ginsberg, did not answer immediately when asked about the 2013 USA TODAY investigation. He also said, “Given the Louisiana Court order yesterday, I am not free to respond substantively to your question.”
LSU spokesperson Jim Sabourin said in a statement, “We are in no position to comment on these allegations as there is currently a court order prohibiting the disclosure of related information.”
Kansas spokesman Dan Beckler said the school was unaware of the allegations when Miles was hired. It has spoken to Miles and is gathering more information.
“Because this is Coach Miles’ former employer and predates his time at KU, and we have no factual knowledge of the details of these allegations, it is inappropriate for us to comment further,” said Beckler.
On Wednesday, The Advocate reported in Baton Rouge that Miles had reached a settlement with an LSU student who accused Miles of “beating her.” The attorney, citing multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation, did not provide any other details of the settlement or what led to it, other than to say it took place about a decade ago.
Reporters requested data related to the internal investigation in December. LSU had refused to release them, citing Miles’s right to privacy and, later, the privilege of attorney and client.
USA TODAY has argued that, as a public figure and the highest-earning state employee at the time, the public’s right to know more about the investigation outweighs Miles’ privacy interests. It also argued that hiring an outside law firm does not make an internal investigation confidential.
In court documents, Miles’s lawyers claimed that the data should be kept completely private because the allegations “turned out to be without supporting evidence.” The investigation, they said, “resulted in no discipline or finding of wrongdoing” and it “acquitted” Miles.
At the same time, his lawyers said the records contained information of a “highly personal nature,” the disclosure of which would result in Miles “immediately suffering serious damage to his reputation and personal life” and “irretrievable loss.”
In fact, the investigation has not cleared Miles of misconduct, USA TODAY has learned from independent sources. Nor did it conclude that the charges were unfounded. The researchers previously determined that Miles’s behavior did not reach the level of breaking the law.
‘The Mad Hatter’
LSU hired Miles as the head coach in 2005. Nicknamed the “Mad Hatter,” he was known for his courageous phone calls, eccentric press conferences and crazy antics, including eating patches of grass during games.
His tenure at LSU was full of success on the field. He led the Tigers to the national championship game twice and won it in 2007. In 2011, several organizations, including The Associated Press, named him National Coach of the Year.
Miles, who led the Tigers to 114 wins and lost just 34 games, was fired a month after the start of the 2016 season, after LSU lost two of the first four games. Current coach Ed Orgeron replaced him. Miles’s lawyers say his resignation is “completely unrelated” to the allegations in the report.
The University of Kansas, the state’s premier public university, hired Miles in November 2018. He received $ 3.3 million in 2020, making him the highest-paid official in the state, according to 24/7 Wall Street.
Miles’ career isn’t without off-pitch controversy, however. He has been repeatedly criticized for taking soft stances against players accused of violence against women, including allowing players to return to the competition while criminal charges are pending against them.
In 2013, he was involved in a scandal at his previous school, Oklahoma State University, where female “hostesses” reportedly lured football recruits into the school by having sex with them on campus visits.
Thirty former OSU players and 14 former female students expanded OSU’s hostess program – known as “Orange Pride” – to Sports Illustrated in 2013, as part of the magazine’s multi-part investigation into the school. While the athletes and students said they were not specifically aware of coaches instructing hostesses to have sex with recruits, they said some staff members were aware of this and that coaches sometimes personally selected which Pride members to share with particular recruits would pair.
Other schools, including LSU, had hostess programs at the time. But Miles, who coached at OSU from 2001 to 2004, played an unusually central role at Orange Pride, Sports Illustrated reported, personally checking student applicants. In addition, OSU expanded Orange Pride in 2004, the same year that the NCAA took measures to discourage such programs, the article said. Membership in the group has more than tripled, and there has been “more emphasis on attracting prettier and more outgoing girls”.
Miles said in a statement to Sports Illustrated that he “didn’t know this was ever going to happen and I’m pretty sure no staff member was aware of any recruits sleeping with this group of students or other students.”
When asked about his own involvement in the hostess program, Miles said:
“The role of the volunteers in our program was important and I wanted to emphasize how seriously we took their duties and responsibilities and the way we expected those students to behave when selected for Orange Pride.”
Miles intervened
Days before the first scheduled hearing in USA TODAY’s lawsuit, Miles’s attorneys filed paperwork to intervene as an interested party in the case. Moore has granted Miles’s request for a temporary restraining order, which prevents the documents from being released until a decision is made.
Reporters were not admitted to the private conference held Tuesday between Moore and the news organization’s chief advisor, LSU and Miles.
At that status conference Tuesday, the parties were informed of the judge’s verdict on redaction and copies of the documents were shown. USA TODAY, Miles and LSU will now inform the case and the judge will make a final decision after a hearing on March 30.
Moore also prohibited the attorney representing USA TODAY, Scott Sternberg, from disclosing any information in the document to any third party, including the authors of this story or anyone else in USA TODAY, under penalty of contempt of court, which could are punishable by fines or imprisonment.