Baylor to appear before NCAA over scandal

More than two years after receiving an NCAA notice of allegations, and more than four years after firing football coach Art Briles and disciplining other administrators for their roles in a sexual assault scandal, Baylor officials are scheduled to appear before the NCAA Committee on Infractions on Monday.

The hearing is scheduled to take place virtually over two days.

Sources previously told ESPN that among other allegations, Baylor is charged with lack of institutional control and Briles faces charges of failing to promote an atmosphere of compliance, both Level I violations, the most serious under NCAA rules.

The allegations are mostly tied to NCAA enforcement staff’s assertion that Baylor football players received impermissible benefits when coaching staff members and other administrators failed to report allegations of sexual assault made by female students against football players, which is required under Title IX.

In February 2017, ESPN reported that Briles and his assistant coaches actively intervened in the discipline of football players, worked to keep their cases under wraps and tried to arrange legal representation for their players, according to a series of emails and text messages released by three university regents in a legal filing.

The regents’ response alleged Briles and his coaching staff created a disciplinary “black hole” into “which reports of misconduct such as drug use, physical assault, domestic violence, brandishing of guns, indecent exposure and academic fraud disappeared.”

In 2016, Baylor fired Briles and suspended athletic director Ian McCaw, who soon resigned, after an investigation by a third-party law firm found problems in how complaints of sexual violence against football players had been addressed. The problems were universitywide and also led to the demotion, and eventual departure, of former university president Ken Starr.

Briles, who is now coaching at a Texas high school, and McCaw, who is now Liberty’s athletics director, have been asked to participate in the hearing, along with Starr and other former Baylor administrators.

Briles is expected to argue that Baylor’s sexual assault scandal was a campuswide problem, and thus football players didn’t receive improper benefits under NCAA rules because the university also mishandled allegations of sexual assault against non-athletes.

Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton — which was hired in 2015 by Baylor’s board of regents to investigate whether the school properly handled allegations of sexual assault by students, including football players — was critical of the culture within the football program and of Briles’ discipline of players. According to Pepper Hamilton, its findings “reflect significant concerns about the tone and culture within Baylor’s football program as it relates to accountability for all forms of athlete misconduct.”

Campuswide, investigators found examples of actions by “university administrators that directly discouraged complainants from reporting or participating in student conduct processes, or that contributed to or accommodated a hostile environment.”

In October, the U.S. Department of Education fined Baylor about $462,000 for violations of campus crime and safety rules after the school announced in 2017 that it was being investigated in light of public reports of sexual assaults on campus being higher than the numbers Baylor had officially reported.

The violations of the Jeanne Clery Act occurred between 2011 and 2016 and included “lack of administrative capability, failure to report accurate crime statistics in the annual security report, failure to comply with timely warning issuance and policy provisions, and failure to maintain an accurate, complete daily crime log,” according to a news release issued in October by the school.

The university is still waiting on the results of a separate investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which was the result of a complaint filed in October 2016 against the school by its outgoing Title IX director, Patty Crawford. Crawford said university leaders were not taking appropriate steps to resolve the school’s poor handling of sexual violence complaints.

Baylor also is still under criminal investigation by the Texas Rangers state law enforcement agency and McLennan County District Attorney Barry Johnson.

Baylor had faced nine federal lawsuits and one state lawsuit pertaining to the sexual violence complaints, and four of those are still ongoing, including one federal lawsuit involving 15 women, two of whom reported being assaulted by football players.

Two criminal cases involving players from Briles’ time also remain in limbo. Former players Tre’Von Armstead and Myke Chatman, who were indicted in 2017 on charges of sexual assault, have cases still pending in district court in McLennan County, Texas. In November, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed a lower court’s decision and reinstated former Baylor football player Sam Ukwuachu’s 2015 sexual assault conviction for a second time