Denny Medley / USA TODAY Sports
Kansas athletic director Jeff Long announced on Friday that he has placed Les Miles on administrative leave after consecutive days of reports of his behavior towards female students during LSU.
The University of Kansas will also conduct its own investigation into the allegations against Miles, according to Long. As of Friday night, Long said they have not seen Husch Blackwell and Taylor Porter’s reports describing the alleged inappropriate misconduct.
“Today I placed head football coach Les Miles on administrative leave while we conduct a full evaluation to determine the appropriate next steps,” Long said in his statement. “Although the allegations against him took place at LSU, we take these matters very seriously at KU.
“Now that we have access to this information, we will take the next few days to fully review the material and see if additional information is available. I don’t want to speculate on a timeline for our review as it is imperative that we do our due diligence. We can respond further once our review is complete. ”
LSU released a comprehensive report from law firm Husch Blackwell on Friday, detailing how the university dealt with past reports of sexual misconduct and domestic violence, including allegations of sexual misconduct against former head football coach Miles.
According to the original internal report released by LSU on Thursday, after the 2013 sexual harassment investigation, Miles was not allowed to be alone with female college students. The first report from eight years ago claimed that Miles texted female college workers on a burner phone, took them to his flat alone, and kissed a college student on at least one occasion. Miles, who was directly involved in hiring student employees, “reportedly made it clear that he wanted these employees to have a certain ‘look’ (attractive, blonde, fit).” Employees who did not match the description at the time would be given fewer hours or would be fired, according to the report.
In the new report released Friday, Husch Blackwell found that LSU’s athletic department was not responding correctly to the allegations against Miles.
“We are not in a position to express an opinion as to whether the allegations are true or not,” said Husch Blackwell’s report. Instead, the question is whether the university has responded to this report [Miles] … in a manner consistent with then-existing legal guidelines, widely recognized best practices and institutional policies. The answer is no. ‘”
LSU hired the law firm to monitor how it handled dozens of cases across all departments dating back to 2016 after a USA Today report last fall on how the LSU athletics department and the wider administration failed to adequately address allegations of sexual misconduct against elite athletes and other students.
Husch Blackwell’s report revealed that in 2013 former athletics director Joe Alleva recommended that Miles be fired for good reason, citing “insubordination, inappropriate behavior, putting the university, the athletics department and the football program at great risk.”
“But it just baffles me that this went on for so long and it got a little bit normal, right?” Said a former football employee in the report. “And you just don’t talk about it and you don’t say anything, you just go a little bit because we protect LSU, we protect our brand, we protect our head coach, we protect this, we love LSU so we will be loyal to LSU so we’ll do what we can to help it and try to fix it.
“But you know, nobody wants a big blowout where oh there’s a big scandal, you know? I’ve always felt like we always had to be protective, you know? You want to protect LSU. You don’t want there to be.” a big outburst or scandal or, you know, let alone something like that, right? “