The University of Kansas announced the departure of athletics director Jeff Long on Wednesday, saying it was necessary for the school to move in "a different direction."
The move comes less than 48 hours after the school parted ways with football coach Les Miles in the wake of damaging investigative reports detailing sexual misconduct allegations against him while he was at Louisiana State University.
"It is clear that my continued service as the Director of Athletics would only serve as a distraction to the nearly 500 incredible young men and women in our athletics department, as well as to the outstanding coaches and staff who support them," Long said in a statement released by Kansas.
"Though this is extremely difficult for me, this is what is best for KU, for me and for my family, and I am at peace with this decision."
Long had a five-year contract that paid him $1.5 million annually and was set to run through July 31, 2023. If fired without cause, he would have gotten nearly $3.6 million, subject to offset from future income.
However, according to a settlement agreement obtained by USA TODAY Sports Wednesday night in response to an open-records request, the parties agreed that Long will be paid nearly $1.5 million. He will get paid for the remainder of this month, then receive monthly payments of $125,000 through February 2022.
"I respect his selfless decision to step down so that we can move Kansas Athletics in a different direction," Kansas chancellor Douglas A. Girod said in a statement.
Long had hired Miles shortly after arriving at Kansas in 2018, leaning on a long personal relationship they had going back to the 1980s when they both worked at Michigan.
But after LSU released two reports last week detailing the 2013 investigation of Miles, the amount of due diligence Long had done on Miles was called into question.
LSU “chronicled significant alleged misconduct” by Miles from 2009 on, according to a report released Friday by Husch Blackwell, an outside law firm the school hired to review its handling of sexual misconduct cases. That included Miles’ attempts to sexualize the staff of students working for the LSU football team in 2012, allegedly demanding he wanted “blondes with big boobs” and “pretty girls.”
A report on the Taylor Porter investigation in 2013, released last Thursday, found Miles had been issued a letter of reprimand after investigators determined his behavior was inappropriate. Then-athletic director Joe Alleva already had barred Miles from being alone with student workers, and Husch Blackwell found Alleva was so concerned after the Taylor Porter investigation that he urged LSU to fire Miles in 2013.
Instead, Miles remained at LSU until 2016, when he was fired after a 2-2 start.
Long defended his hiring process in a news conference Tuesday, saying nothing turned up in the “multiple” background checks done on Miles or his conversations with people at LSU. He said he had also asked Miles if there was anything that could cause concern and that Miles assured him there was not.
“I also asked coach Miles directly during the interview process whether there was anything in the past that could potentially embarrass the university, or himself or our program, and he said no,” Long said.
It wasn’t until February that Miles’ attorneys let Kansas know of a “legal dispute in Louisiana” involving Miles, apparently referring to the lawsuit that USA TODAY filed against LSU for release of the 2013 investigative report into Miles.
The attorneys could not provide any additional details nor documentation, Long said, and when he asked Miles if there was anything Kansas needed to be concerned about, “again he assured me no.”
USA TODAY sued LSU for a copy of the Taylor Porter report after the school refused to release it, and Miles joined that effort, saying release of the findings would immediately cause “serious injury to his reputation and personal life” and “irreparable loss.”
“At that point, we requested copies of any and all reports related to Les Miles while he was at LSU,” Long said. “We were given a variety of reasons from Miles’ legal counsel why they would not be provided to us.”
Miles eventually dropped his objections, saying release of the report was necessary to defend himself.
Kansas will be searching for a new athletics director at a time not only when its football program is starting over yet again but its bellcow basketball program is in the middle of a long and wide-ranging NCAA infractions case stemming from the 2017 FBI investigation into college basketball corruption.
Kansas was charged with five Level 1 (most serious) violations and a pair of Level 2s, including a head coach responsibility charge against Bill Self and lack of institutional control. The NCAA’s case is built around evidence and testimony from a federal trial in which a former Adidas consultant said under oath that he had facilitated payments to Billy Preston and Silvio De Sousa to attend Kansas and had actively tried to recruit other players there in violation of NCAA rules.
Kansas is fighting all of those Level 1 charges.
MORE ON THE INVESTIGATION AT LSU
Contributing: Steve Berkowitz, USA TODAY.
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