Kansas athletic director Jeff Long said he and the university were unaware of any wrongdoing in Les Miles ’past before hiring him as the football team’s head coach in 2018.
Miles was placed on administrative leave Saturday amid allegations of misconduct toward female students during his tenure as a coach at LSU. Kansas announced Monday that it is stepping down as head coach.
“When Les Miles identified himself as the top candidate to be head coach in 2018, the University of Kansas and Kansas Athletics do, with all the hiring, we did several 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 could embarrass the university, himself or our program, and he told me no. We also did our due diligence talking to people from the LSU athletics department to see if there was anything we should consider regarding Coach Miles ’tenure at LSU and not receiving any indications of any problems.”
Long said in early February, Miles’ camp made Kansas aware of a legal dispute in Louisiana, but could not share information about it. Long said he asked Miles if there was anything they should worry about about the reports, and Miles told him no.
“At that time we requested copies of all reports related to Les Miles while he was at LSU,” Long said. “Miles’ legal counsel gave us several reasons why they were not provided to us. On February 24 we learned some details of the allegations when The Advocate published its initial article followed by the USA Today article more later that day, there had been a secret deal and a sexual harassment investigation in 2013. “
Miles had three years and about $ 8 million left for a five-year contract he signed with Kansas in November 2018. The two parties settled for $ 1.99 million, according to the school.
On March 4, a report released on behalf of LSU showed that a 2013 internal investigation at the school accused Miles of inappropriate behavior toward students, including allegations he contacted some via Facebook and texting, he met them off campus and kissed at least one of them. Long said that was when they received the full report, because it was publicly available.
Miles refused to kiss the student, saying he was not doing anything wrong and that he was advising young women in college.
Long was asked why Miles was not fired because Miles lied to him.
“That’s really a legal question about how he might or might not answer at the time. But that was his answer,” Long said.
When pressured again, Long said, “This is debatable if this is a lie, and I will leave it in the hands of our legal people to get it ready. We felt it was important to move our program forward, which we basically had. to agree to divide each other and pay them for the rest of the 21st is basically what it became. “
When asked if he was concerned about the state of his own work, Long said he was focused on Kansas student-athletes.
Although Long said there are currently no leading candidates to replace Miles, ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg reported that Willie Fritz of Tulane, Lance Leipold of Buffalo, Jay Norvell of Nevada and Skip Holtz of Louisiana Tech could be potential candidates. to the job in a search that is likely to be likely. they focus on FBS head coaches.
Mike DeBord, who was hired as Kansas offensive coordinator on Feb. 2, will serve as head coach of the program until an interim head coach is determined.