Kansas has placed head football coach Les Miles on administrative leave and the university will conduct a full evaluation to determine appropriate next steps for his future, Jayhawk’s athletic director Jeff Long said in a statement Friday night.
The decision came after reports of Miles’s behavior while coaching at LSU in 2013 were made public this week.
“Although the charges against him were made at LSU, we take these matters very seriously at KU,” Long said in the statement. “Now that we have access to this information, we will take the next few days to fully review the material and see if any additional information is available. we our through diligence. “
On Thursday, a report released on behalf of LSU showed that an internal investigation at the school in 2013 accused Miles of inappropriate behavior towards female students, including allegations that he contacted some via Facebook and text, only met them off campus and at kissed least one of them. them. The report did not find that he had sexual relations with any of the women, and Miles firmly denied kissing the student, saying he had done nothing wrong, and that he mentored young women in college.
The law firm Taylor Porter conducted the investigation on behalf of LSU. Miles’s attorney, Peter Ginsberg, told ESPN on Thursday that the results “should put an end to unfounded, inaccurate media reports that Coach Les Miles engaged in improper contact with a student volunteer from the Athletic Department. “
Friday, a second report, conducted by the law firm Husch Blackwell, detailed systemic failures by LSU to properly report incidents of athletic-related sexual misconduct and abuse. Part of that report showed that in 2013, former LSU athletics director Joe Alleva recommended that Miles be fired as a coach for the aforementioned allegations of inappropriate behavior among female students.
Miles was not at the KU football offices on Friday. The Jayhawks hired him in November 2018 and signed him to a five-year deal at the time.
67-year-old Miles is 3-18 in his first two seasons in Kansas, including 0-9 in 2020. The Jayhawks’ only Big 12 win in those two seasons was Texas Tech in 2019. Kansas last won over three games in a season in 2009.
Long and Miles worked together in Michigan in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Before hiring him at KU, Miles had been without coaching for three seasons after being fired by LSU in 2016.
Mike DeBord, who was hired as attack coordinator in Kansas last month, will oversee the program with Miles on leave, sources told ESPN.