As Football Scandal Unfolds at Maryland, Professors Fear Lack of Athletics Oversight

Jordan A. Goodman was researching last week on a shoulder of Pico de Orizaba, the highest mountain in Mexico, when his phone buzzed. It was another message to the distinguished physics professor from a colleague about the unfolding athletics scandal at the University of Maryland at College Park — his alma mater and the institution where he has taught for decades.

“You can run,” he said later, “but you can’t hide from this stuff.”

In the aftermath of the death of a 19-year-old football player, Goodman is among the Maryland faculty members wrestling with their position in the sprawling operation that is the modern research university. They feel defined by a public scandal over which they have little command, and they are frustrated that the university’s communications seem reactive to media reports, not pre-emptive. They wonder how they’ll talk about the tragedy with their students.

And some, like Goodman, say they want a seat at the table as investigations into Jordan McNair’s death and Maryland’s football program continue, because of their longtime connections to the university and concern about the legitimacy of the reviews.

“We’re an ornery group — we believe in science and peer review,” Goodman said this week. “That’s what drives us. When someone says, ‘Oh, it’s fine,’ no matter who it is, we don’t believe it. You tell us it’s daytime, we look out the window.”

The fall semester begins on Monday in College Park, and much has changed since the May commencement, at which former Vice President Al Gore urged graduates to never ignore an internal voice that separates the “hard right from the easy wrong.”

Later in May, McNair collapsed during a preseason workout. He died weeks later, and Maryland announced an external inquiry into the football team’s policies and protocols shortly after that.

Then, for a time, news on McNair’s death faded. Until a Friday in August, when an ESPN report rocked the university, whose students and faculty were largely scattered from the campus in the late-summer months.

The report detailed allegations of an abusive culture in the football program and prompted Damon Evans, the university’s new athletics director, to place the head football coach on leave. The president, Wallace D. Loh, said the university took “legal and moral responsibility” for the training staff’s mistakes. A strength and conditioning coach resigned.

And now faculty members and students are making their way back to the campus, asking tough questions, and considering the path forward.

Athletics scandals are not uncommon at research universities, and they fuel deep frustration when they overwhelm a university’s reputation for crucial faculty work, said Christopher S. Walsh, a plant-science professor who is chair of Maryland’s University Senate.

“This is something that’s viewed as the university’s front porch, but it’s certainly not helping right now,” he said. “Shared governance doesn’t really govern the athletic department on this campus, and I’m not sure if it does anywhere else.”

Loh’s Tenure

Walsh on Monday afternoon sat in Loh’s office for more than an hour with other University Senate leaders. The meeting occurred days after officials announced that the University System of Maryland would manage the reviews of the football program and of McNair’s death. (The flagship, not the system, had announced both reviews.)

The group, with Loh, discussed faculty oversight of athletics, and Walsh left the meeting hoping the faculty could be more involved. He now plans, too, to address faculty governance at a Big Ten Academic Alliance meeting, in October, when university members of the athletics conference will bring their senates together.

Some critics have called for Loh’s termination amid accusations that the university’s top leaders did not do enough to prevent McNair’s death. There is no “groundswell” of faculty opinion in that direction, Walsh said, and McNair’s father expressed support for Loh’s leadership on Monday. The inquiry into McNair’s death is expected to be completed by September.

“Our problem really isn’t with the administration per se, whether it’s the athletic director or president of the university,” Walsh said. “Our problem, as I view it, is our … very limited oversight of the athletics department.”

Enrollment has grown by about 3,000 students since Loh took office, in 2010, and six-year graduation rates have improved. Incoming freshmen had higher grade-point averages and reading and mathematics SAT scores in the fall of 2017 than they did in the fall of 2010.

The president dismissed speculation about his job security. “This is not about me,” Loh told The Washington Post on Monday. “As president, my job is to lead the institution. When there are difficult issues or easy issues, it’s my job to address them.”

Still, the president has overseen several controversies in athletics in recent years. An announced move to the Big Ten Conference, in 2013, drew pushback from alumni and coaches. And Evans, named athletics director shortly after McNair’s death, faced questions about his character and judgment after he was accused of not properly reporting a romantic relationship with a subordinate. Maryland’s human-resources department found no violation of university policy or evidence of an improper relationship, officials said.

Talking to Students

Juan Uriagereka, a linguistics professor, is grappling with how he should talk to his students about McNair’s death, knowing only that he will emphasize due process and the need to seek truth. The father of three kids, Uriagereka said he had lost sleep over how the controversy has unfolded.

He wonders why the investigation into the football team’s culture began only after ESPN’s exposé. He wants to know who knew what and when, who dropped the ball in overseeing football and why.

Uriagereka supports Maryland’s Terrapins, and occasionally watches their football, basketball, and soccer games. Now he wonders if he and his colleagues — engrossed in research and teaching — perhaps naïvely take a smoothly run athletics program for granted.

“You expect all of that to work,” he said. “In that sense, that’s when it comes as a big shock.”

Betty Malen, too, is an athletics supporter — a self-described “obnoxious fan” at women’s basketball games.

An education professor, she concedes that creating functional oversight systems is challenging. Faculty members, she said, are not powerless but realistic about what they can and cannot control.

“Faculty tend to be realistic, despite the stereotype that we have our heads in the clouds,” she said. They understand, she said, “the complexity of bureaucracies and the complications of preventing tragic behavior.”

Clarification (8/23/2018, 11:20 a.m.): This article has been updated to include word of the University of Maryland’s finding in the case of Damon Evans, who is now athletics director.

Lindsay Ellis is a staff reporter. Follow her on Twitter @lindsayaellis, or email her at lindsay.ellis@chronicle.com.