James Gill: Les Miles had to do something reprehensible to get fired. He lost to Auburn. - NOLA.com
LSU wouldn't fire football coach Les Miles for hitting on female students, but let nobody say its standards have been lax.
When Miles did something really reprehensible, he was soon out the door. That was in 2016, when his team, which had been expected to win national honors, lost to Auburn, the worst disaster imaginable in the field of Louisiana higher education.
With LSU falling to 2-2, then-Athletic Director Joe Alleva told Miles he was toast. In a statement released at the time, Alleva averred, “Coach Miles has done a tremendous job here and he's been a great ambassador for our university.”
In truth, if Miles did indeed possess diplomatic skills, he deployed them to put the make on coeds.
After officials discovered his habit of doing so, Alleva had taken a less favorable view of his coach in a 2013 email to F. King Alexander, who had recently been named LSU President. “I believe he is guilty of insubordination, inappropriate behavior, putting the athletic (department) at great risk. I think we have cause (for dismissal),” Alleva wrote. “I specifically told him not to text, call or be alone with any student workers and he obviously didn't listen.”
The LSU Board of Supervisors had hired Alexander despite a unanimous vote of no confidence by the faculty senate on grounds that he had never held a tenured position at a major university and his former employer, California State University Long Beach, was no great shakes academically.
But the Board of Supervisors' faith in Alexander could not be shaken, so Alleva's recommendation that Miles be canned fell on dear ears.
When Miles did finally get the heave-ho, contemporary newspaper reports did not suggest he was a casualty of the #MeToo era. His alleged sin, rather, was relying on a smash-mouth running game when the fashion was for quarterbacks to air the ball out, but recent events suggest his departure may have been welcomed in circles with no interest in football tactics.
Those events have left LSU looking absolutely clueless after rampant sexual harassment, and worse, on its campus went unaddressed for years. Allegations of rape against star football players were hushed up, according to media reports. Now, an investigation by the law firm Husch Blackwell commissioned by LSU has also reached damning conclusions, blaming “lackluster” campus leadership.
When Miles was fired, behind the scenes some officials must have figured he deserved it regardless of his W-L record. His antics at LSU have now cost him his job at the University of Kansas, where Athletic Director Jeff Long hired him as football coach in 2018.
Now Long has been fired too.
At LSU, with Miles gone, Alexander evidently continued to be held in high esteem. He has said he was not looking to move on, but was tempted away when offered the presidency at Oregon State University.
He started there last summer, but now he is out of work too in light of the Husch Blackwell findings.
LSU meanwhile, though it commissioned the Husch Blackwell report, still can't see what all the fuss is about. Brief suspensions for athletic department executives Verge Ausberry and Miriam Segar were its only response after a yearslong coverup that must have required the complicity of many.
Given the LSU Board of Supervisors' role in this sordid business, it should be hiding its head in embarrassment. Instead, its chairman Robert Dampf sent a whiny letter to the Oregon State Board of Trustees in response to some whiny and obsequious comments Alexander made in an attempt to keep his job.
The LSU Board was “conservative” and prone to interfere in athletic matters, King had complained, whereas Oregon “is much more advanced in how we see what our values are.” That left Dampf “beyond offended” on behalf of “Louisiana's culture, our state and our university.”
It is no doubt a great shame that Dampf's feelings are hurt. Women whose complaints of abuse at LSU have gone unheeded won't be shedding any tears, however.
Email James Gill at gill504nola@gmail.com.
2021-03-28 09:00:00Z
https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_586f3804-8d95-11eb-9250-e706b499d490.html
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