Denny Medley / USA TODAY Sports
Kansas sports director Jeff Long announced on Friday that he had placed Les Miles on administrative leave after consecutive days of reports about his behavior towards students while at LSU.
The University of Kansas will also conduct its own investigation into the charges against Miles, according to Long. On Friday night, Long said he had not seen the reports by Husch Blackwell and Taylor Porter, which detail the alleged misconduct.
“Today, I put football coach Les Miles on administrative leave while we conducted a thorough review to determine the next appropriate steps,” said Long in his statement. “Even though the allegations against him took place at LSU, we take these issues very seriously at KU.
“Now that we have access to this information, it will take us the next few days to fully review the material and see if additional information is available. I do not want to speculate on a timeline for our review because it is essential that we do our due diligence. We will be able to comment further when our review is complete. ”
LSU released a lengthy report from the law firm Husch Blackwell on Friday, which detailed how the university handled past accounts of sexual misconduct and domestic assault, including allegations of sexual misconduct against former football coach Miles.
According to the original internal report released by LSU on Thursday, Miles was banned from being alone with female students after the 2013 sexual harassment investigation. The initial report eight years ago claimed that Miles sent a text message for student employees on a burned phone, he took them alone to his condo and kissed a student on at least one occasion. Miles, who was directly involved with hiring student employees, allegedly “made it clear that he wanted these employees to have a certain ‘look’ (attractive, blond, fit).” Employees at the time who did not fit the description were expected to receive fewer hours or resign, according to the report.
In the new report released on Friday, Husch Blackwell found that LSU’s athletic department did not adequately respond to the charges against Miles.
“We are not in a position to offer an opinion on whether the allegations are true or not,” says Husch Blackwell’s report. “Instead, the question is whether the University responded to this report against [Miles] … in a manner consistent with the then existing legal guidance, recognized best practices and institutional policy. The answer is no.'”
LSU hired the law firm to audit how it has handled dozens of cases in all departments since 2016 after a USA today report last fall on how LSU’s athletic department and broader administration failed to adequately address allegations of sexual misconduct against top athletes and other students.
Husch Blackwell’s report revealed that former athletic director Joe Alleva recommended Miles to be fired for just cause in 2013, citing “insubordination, inappropriate behavior, putting the university, athletics department and football program at great risk.”
“It just baffles me that for so long this went on and kind of became normal, right?” Said a former member of the football team in the report. “And you just don’t talk about it and say nothing, just think, because we are protecting LSU, we are protecting our brand, we are protecting our head coach, we are protecting this, we love LSU, so we will be loyal to LSU, so we will do what we can to help and try to fix it.
“But you know, nobody wants a big explosion from where, oh, there’s a big scandal, you know? I always thought we always had to be protective, you know? You want to protect LSU. You don’t want to have any big explosion or scandal or , you know, let alone anything like that, right? “