In one of the biggest hiring disasters in recent memory, Kansas University (KU) parted ways with its head football coach Les Miles. Miles’ departure came three days after he was put on administrative leave after allegations of sexual harassment surfaced from his prior employer, Louisiana State University (LSU). These allegations were reported in an internal investigation report completed by the law firm of Taylor, Porter, Brooks & Phillips LLP, Taylor Porter, during his tenure at LSU. The allegations in the report were quite damning but even more so was the fact that LSU continued to employ Miles. He was fired in 2016 but not for his sexual shenanigans but for have a 2-2 record with the alumni howling for his scalp for poor performance on the football field. Over several blog posts this week, I will be looking at the entire imbroglio and mining it for lessons that the compliance practitioner can put into place. Today, I begin with the KU decision to hire Miles.
Miles was hired directly by former KU Athletic Director (AD) Jeff Long. Chris Low reported in an ESPN.comarticle that Long hired Miles based upon a long-time friendship that began at the University of Michigan in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Adam Rittenburg, also writing in ESPN.com, said, “The Kansas coaching search in 2018 really wasn’t much of one. Long didn’t use an external firm to assist in the search, zeroed in on Miles and made the hire in mid-November, two to three weeks before the coaching cycle usually gets rolling…Long and Miles went back to their time together at Michigan, when Miles coached under Bo Schembechler and Gary Moeller, and Long served as an assistant athletic director. The two men were friends. Long desperately wanted to get rid of David Beaty and hire his own guy.”
Problems arose in January when USA Today tried to get the aforementioned Taylor Porter report. Both LSU and Miles resisted the effort, with Miles saying that the release of the report would harm his reputation. It certainly did. Heather Dinich, reporting in ESPN.com, said there were multiple, albeit unverified reports that Miles had engaged in unwanted touching and inappropriate behavior around female students. While she noted that “The Taylor Porter investigation determined “we are unable to determine what occurred” in Miles’ car, where the first woman said Miles had kissed her twice.” Yet in spite of this unverified allegation, “the report stated “there can be little doubt that the conduct, if true, is inappropriate and unacceptable,” and that even with accepting Miles’ version of what happened, “it appears that he has shown poor judgement in placing himself (and the student employee) in a situation in which the student employee might be uncomfortable and/or he can be subject to such complaint.”
Madeline Coleman, writing in SI.com, went even further, reporting Miles “was accused of texting female student workers on a burner phone, driving them alone to his condo and kissing a student on at least one occasion. The student told investigators that Miles reportedly suggested prior to kissing her, “that they go to a hotel together and mentioned his condo as another meeting place. He also complimented her on her appearance and said he was attracted to her.” Moreover, “The report also showed that athletic department staff said Miles, who was directly involved with hiring student employees, “made it clear that he wanted these employees to have a certain ‘look’ (attractive, blond, fit).” Employees at the time that did not fit the description were to be given fewer hours or fired, according to the report.”
Miles for his part denied at the time that he had engaged in anything wrong. He continued to do so when he was interviewed by Long for the head coaching position at KU. He even did so after the story broke which led to his termination. Apparently even after being fired by KU, he still maintains he has done nothing wrong.
For discipline after the Taylor Porter report, Miles was issued a Letter of Reprimand and required to go to 8 hours of sexual harassment training. But there was one other condition that I have never seen in any disciplinary action ever MILES WAS NOT ALLOWED TO BE ALONE WITH A FEMALE STUDENT. Let that sink in for a moment… How bad does someone’s conduct have to be so that they are fully banned from being alone with a woman?
Yet apparently this conduct by Miles was well-known with the LSU community. Dinich noted that one email included in the Taylor Porter report noted that the AD of LSU said, “I specifically told him not to text, call or be alone with any student workers and he obviously didn’t listen.” As I have long maintained, bad behavior does not appear out of nowhere. When it comes to sexual harassment, everyone knows who the bad guys are (and they are always guys). Yet, LSU did not fire Miles for this abhorrent conduct, which we will explore in a more in-depth manner in a later blog.
As noted above, Long did not engage a search firm in the hiring decision around Miles, because he wanted ‘his guy’. Such an approach can be catastrophic for an organization. Candice Tal, founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Infortal Worldwide, has noted that bad senior executive hires can cost a company much more than simply dollars. She related, the “financial costs in day-to-day operations easily can quadruple that of a regular employee, but it can also impact the company’s corporate governance and board of directors if that executive hire was found to be involved with unethical and illegal activities. Not even a signed contract can protect a company if an executive hire’s unethical actions come to the attention of the national media. Fiduciary risk and exposure for the board of directors cannot be overlooked.” In the case of KU that is certainly true.
Join me tomorrow where I ask, “What is Due Diligence?”
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