Kansas athletics director Jeff Long said he and the university were unaware of any past wrongdoing by Les Miles before hiring him as head coach of the football team in 2018.
Miles was placed on administrative leave on Saturday amid allegations of inappropriate behavior towards female students during his tenure as head coach at LSU. Kansas announced on Monday that he was out as head coach.
“When Les Miles was identified as the lead candidate to be head coach in 2018, the University of Kansas and Kansas Athletics, with all hires, performed multiple background checks on Coach Miles,” Long said at a virtual press conference Tuesday afternoon. .
“I also asked Coach Miles directly during the interview process if there was anything in his past that might embarrass the university, himself or our program, and he said no. Athletics Department. to see if there was anything we needed to be aware of regarding Coach Miles’ tenure at LSU and we got no evidence of any problems. ”
Long said Miles’ camp notified Kansas of a legal dispute in Louisiana in early February, but was unable to share information about it. Long said he asked Miles if there was anything they should be concerned about from the reports, and Miles said no.
“At that point, we asked for copies of all reports related to Les Miles while he was at LSU,” Long said. “We got several reasons from Miles’ legal counsel as to why these would not be provided to us. On February 24, we heard some details of the allegations when The Advocate published the first article, followed by the USA Today article later that same day, that there were in 2013 a secret settlement and an investigation into sexual harassment had been. “
Miles had three years and about $ 8 million left on a five-year deal he signed with Kansas in November 2018. The two sides settled $ 1.99 million, according to the school.
On March 4, 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 via Facebook and text message, only met them off campus, and at least one of them kissed. them. Long said they then received the full report because it was publicly available.
Miles denied kissing the student, said he had done nothing wrong and that he tutored young women in college.
Long was asked why Miles hadn’t been fired for good reason if Miles had lied to him.
“That’s really a legal question of how he could or could not respond at the time. But that was his answer,” Long said.
When pressed again, Long said, “That is whether that is a lie, and I leave that to our legal people to figure that out. We felt it was important to move our program forward, that we basically had to agree to share and pay Les for the rest of ’21 is basically what it boiled down to. “
When asked if he was concerned about the status of his own track, Long said he was focused on the student athletes in Kansas.
While Long said there are currently no leading candidates to replace Miles, ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg reported that Tulane’s Willie Fritz, Buffalo’s Lance Leipold, Nevada’s Jay Norvell, and Louisiana Tech’s Skip Holtz could be potential candidates for the job in a quest likely to focus on FBS head coaches.
Mike DeBord, who was hired as Kansas Attack Coordinator on Feb. 2, will serve as the program’s acting head coach until an interim head coach is determined.