Kansas athletic director Jeff Long said he and the university were unaware of any wrongdoing in Les Miles’ past before hiring him as a football coach in 2018.
Miles was placed on administrative leave on Saturday amid accusations of inappropriate behavior towards female students during his tenure as head coach at LSU. Kansas announced on Monday that he was out as a head coach.
“When Les Miles was identified as the top candidate to be the head coach in 2018, the University of Kansas and Kansas Athletics, with all the signings, did a number of background checks on Coach Miles,” Long said at a virtual news conference on Tuesday. in the afternoon.
“I also asked Coach Miles directly during the interview process if there was anything in his past that could embarrass the university or himself or our program, and he said no. We also did our due diligence by talking to individuals within the department. of LSU athletics to see if there was anything we should be aware of about Coach Miles’s tenure at LSU and we received no indications of any problems. “
Long said that in early February, Miles’s camp alerted Kansas to a legal dispute in Louisiana, but was unable to share information about it. Long said he asked Miles if there was anything they should be concerned with from the reports, and Miles said he didn’t.
“At that point, we requested copies of all reports related to Les Miles while he was at LSU,” said Long. “We received several reasons from Miles’ legal counsel that they would not be provided to us. On February 24, we learned some details of the allegations when The Advocate published its opening article followed by the USA Today article the same day, that there was a secret agreement and a sexual harassment investigation in 2013. “
Miles was three years old and about $ 8 million left in a five-year contract that he signed with Kansas in November 2018. The two sides agreed to $ 1.99 million, according to the school.
On March 4, a report released on behalf of LSU showed that an internal 2013 investigation at the school accused Miles of inappropriate behavior towards female students, including allegations that he contacted some via Facebook and text, found them outside from campus alone and kissed at least one of them. Long said that was when they received the full report, because it was publicly available.
Miles denied kissing the student, saying he did nothing wrong and was mentoring young women at the university.
Long was asked why Miles was not fired for cause if Miles lied to him.
“This is really a legal question of how he could or could not answer at that moment. But that was his answer,” said Long.
When pressed again, Long said, “It is debatable whether this is a lie, and I will leave it to our legal staff to decide. We felt it was important to move our program forward, that we basically needed to agree to separate each other and pay Les for the rest of 21 is basically what happened. “
When asked if he was concerned about his own work situation, Long said he was focused on student-athletes from Kansas.
Although Long said there are currently no major candidates to replace Miles, Adam Rittenberg of ESPN that Willie Fritz of Tulane, Lance Leipold of Buffalo, Jay Norvell of Nevada and Skip Holtz of Louisiana Tech may be potential candidates for the job, the who will likely focus his search on the FBS top coaches.
Mike DeBord, who was hired as a Kansas offensive coordinator on February 2, will serve as the program’s interim head coach until an interim head coach is determined.