Athletic Director’s Path to Redemption Included an Inquiry About His Relationship With a Subordinate

Damon Evans’s public redemption narrative was sealed Monday, when the University of Maryland at College Park named him as athletics director. It is a scenario that few would have envisioned eight years ago, when an embarrassing drunk-driving arrest cost Evans the same position at the University of Georgia.

His path to the top job at Maryland, however, is even more complex and messy than has been publicly acknowledged. During his tenure in Maryland’s athletics department, which began in 2014, questions persisted about Evans’s character and judgment, triggering a human-resources inquiry into allegations that he was in an amorous relationship with a subordinate that had not been reported in accordance with university policy, The Chronicle has learned.

The inquiry, which appears to have wrapped up about a year ago, found no evidence to support the allegations, university officials said.

“In this matter, the university’s human resources department looked into the allegations and attests that they found no violation of university policy and no evidence of an improper relationship,” Katie Lawson, a university spokeswoman, said in an email.

The Chronicle has chosen not to identify the woman because the university found no wrongdoing.

Whatever the findings of the university, concerns about Evans’s relationship with the woman were significant and widespread enough to feed perceptions that the woman was in a protected class of employees who could not be crossed without retribution from Evans, according to interviews with former employees, sources close to the athletics department, and a formal complaint obtained by The Chronicle. Kevin Anderson, the university’s former athletics director, was sufficiently concerned about the relationship, even after hearing a denial from Evans, that he severed the reporting line between the two of them, according to a source with direct knowledge of the investigation, who was not authorized to discuss the matter and requested anonymity.

Evans repeatedly and emphatically denied the allegations in an interview with The Chronicle on Wednesday.

“I just want to sit here and set the record straight and say that those rumors, innuendoes, or allegations are absolutely false, and there is no basis to them moving forward,” Evans said.

‘Messing With His Girl’

Few careers in college athletics administration have been as closely watched as that of Evans, whose trajectory in the business has, at points along the way, been both pioneering and tragic.

When he became Georgia’s athletics director, in 2004, Evans was the first African-American to hold such a post in the Southeastern Conference. He was, at 34, also the league’s youngest director.

The historic nature of Evans’s appointment at Georgia made his downfall all the more newsworthy, and the lurid details of his arrest, in 2010, seemed sufficient to sink a career. When Evans was pulled over in his black BMW, he repeatedly referred to his position as Georgia’s athletics director and pressed a patrol officer about whether there was “anything you can do without arresting me,” according to a police report. He also sought to explain why he had, stuck between his legs, a pair of red women’s panties, which belonged to his female passenger. She was not his wife, and he referred to her as a friend.

Evans’s resignation at Georgia had an air of finality. The promising career of one of the few black administrators in big-time college sports had been cut short by a costly mistake.

So it was a big deal, in 2014, when Anderson, then Maryland’s athletics director and another of the few African-American directors in the profession, decided to give Evans a second chance. With a new position as senior associate athletics director and chief financial officer, Evans had another mentor and a shot at resurrecting his career. He moved to College Park, but his wife and two children remained in North Carolina. They now plan to join him.

It was not long after his arrival at Maryland that his colleagues in the athletics department began sharing their concerns about what seemed an overly cozy relationship between Evans and a female coworker, whom he would come to supervise.

Employees in the department, who saw Evans as ascendant within the organization, were reluctant to publicly disagree with the woman for fear of how Evans might respond or retaliate, according to a formal complaint that was filed with the university’s human resources office, in 2017. The complaint, filed by a former employee, said that Evans took an unusual personal interest in a professional disagreement that the employee had had with the woman. The employee said that he was surprised when Evans visited his office about the dispute, because Evans “had never come to my office before or after,” according to the complaint.

After his disagreement with the woman, the complaint said, the employee was inducted into a broad whisper network within the athletics department, where coworkers discussed navigating around what they saw as an inappropriate relationship that shaped the culture of the department. To avoid getting crosswise with Evans, the employee said he was told, he needed “to be careful messing with his girl.”

The complainant said he could not comment on the document, and The Chronicle is withholding his name, which was derived from a private personnel record that the university does not consider to be a public document.

The university, citing mandatory exemptions for personnel records, denied multiple records requests from The Chronicle related to Maryland’s investigation.

The complaint offers few concrete details about how athletics employees came to believe that Evans’s relationship with the woman was more than friendly, beyond sightings of the two on campus together in Evans’s black Maserati at early morning hours. But the document suggests that concerns about the relationship were widely enough held to affect the climate of the workplace.

Evans disputed this characterization, saying, “I just don’t agree that there was a widespread perception” of an inappropriate relationship.

Secret Inquiry

The university refused to provide a precise timeline of its human-resources investigation, but a member of Maryland’s Board of Regents said that he was briefed on its conclusions about a year ago. The inquiry appears to have predated the 2017 complaint from the former employee, suggesting concerns lingered after the university closed its inquiry.

The human-resources inquiry began after Anderson personally questioned Evans about the relationship.

“I told Kevin this was absolutely false, these rumors were not true,” Evans said. “What happened subsequent to that, and what Kevin did, I can’t speak to it. But I know that he and I had direct conversations.”

“And subsequent to that,” Evans continued, “I never had another conversation with him about it.”

Evans’s denial did not stop the inquiry. In fact, quite the contrary. Anderson reported his concerns up to Michael R. Poterala, vice president and general counsel, and Nicholas Hadley, the faculty athletics representative, according to the source with knowledge of the investigation. At their recommendation, the matter was referred to Jewel Washington, assistant vice president of human resources, and Diane Krejsa, the university’s deputy general counsel and chief of staff, the source said. Both recommended that Anderson should change the reporting line as soon as possible, which he did, the source said.

None of the people who the source said were involved responded to email inquiries Thursday.

The change in reporting lines was billed as part of a larger reorganization within the department, but one of the main motivations was to separate Evans and the woman, the source said. The other changes, while important, were a form of camouflage to “protect everybody concerned,” the source said.

Anderson, in an email to The Chronicle, offered only a general comment.

“Without confirming or denying the allegations regarding Mr. Evans,” he wrote, “I am confident that I always satisfied my duties and obligations to the university, including all duties and obligations to abide by HR policies and procedures and the spirit of those policies and procedures.”

Evans acknowledged that the woman, who now reports to him again, was removed as his direct report for a period. But he said he did not see any connection between the change and the allegations.

“How are we moving forward is the way it was explained to me,” Evans said.

The university’s sexual-misconduct policy does not expressly prohibit consensual relationships between supervisors and subordinates, but “strongly discourages” them and requires that they be reported. Such relationships, the policy states, “reflect an imbalance of power, leading to doubt as to whether such relationships are truly consensual.”

The university did not provide detailed information about how its human-resources department investigates third-party reports of consensual relationships or any information about how this particular matter was resolved. There was no information provided, for example, about whether the university had interviewed anyone beyond the principals involved or examined documents, phone records, or emails.

Barry P. Gossett, vice chairman of the university’s Board of Regents, told The Chronicle that Wallace D. Loh, the president at College Park, had informally briefed him on the inquiry. Loh told Gossett that he had also informed Robert L. Caret, the system’s chancellor.

“It was investigated fully,” said Gossett, who was a member of the search committee that led to Evans’s hiring this week as athletic director. “Dr. Loh had the people at the university check the rumor out and do the things necessary that had to be done. Those things could be serious. There was no evidence found of anything that was substantial evidence. That’s what I was told, and I have no reason to go investigate those things.”

Loh was not made available for an interview.

James T. Brady, the board’s chairman, said he was also briefed on the human-resources inquiry and was satisfied with its rigor and conclusions.

“This is a campus issue and the campus dealt with it,” he said. “They have a human-resources department. It was thoroughly vetted there. There is a policy. That policy was followed to the letter of the law. We got to an answer that made it very clear that there was no violation of the policy. Period.”

Over the past several months, as the search for an athletics director neared a conclusion, concerns about Evans leaked out of the department into a network of university supporters. In May, Barry DesRoches, an alumnus and athletics booster, sent a letter to the regents, Loh, and Caret, suggesting another review of the allegations that Evans had been in an unreported relationship with a subordinate.

“If Mr. Evans were to be selected and is to be effective in the position, all existing innuendo must be effectively and immediately removed,” DesRoches wrote. “To do otherwise would mean his tenure would exist under a cloud.”

Tumultuous Times

Questions about Evans’s judgment come amid a tumultuous period for Maryland athletics, where leadership has been in a state of flux, employee departures have been opaquely explained, and tough questions persist about the recent death of a football player who had trouble recovering from an organized team workout.

Evans’s rise to the top job followed Anderson’s resignation, in April, from the directorship, a position he had held for seven years. In October, as questions arose about Anderson’s conspicuous absence from the department and his failure to attend several consecutive football games, the university beat back reports that he had been fired. Soon thereafter, Maryland officials said that Anderson would go on a six-month sabbatical and that Evans had been given control of the department’s day-to-day operations.

But Anderson never returned to his post. He has since been named interim athletics director at California State University at Northridge, where he will not be a candidate for the permanent position.

Anderson’s departure set up a familiar scenario for Evans, who was once again positioned to succeed a mentor who did not appear ready to go. Much the same thing played out at Georgia, in 2004, when Evans succeeded Vincent J. Dooley, a legendary Bulldogs head football coach whose contract as athletics director was not extended as he had hoped.

Asked if he feared being seen as opportunistic, Evans said, “I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve been presented. Kevin Anderson brought me here, gave me an opportunity, a second chance. And I want this to be stated: He gave me a chance when no one else or very few people might have given me that opportunity, and I’ll never forget that.”

For Evans, there has been no honeymoon period. A shadow hung over his coronation this week, as the university celebrated his appointment while at the same time mourning the death of Jordan McNair, the 19-year-old football player who was hospitalized in May, after a team workout, and died two weeks later.

The university has commissioned an external investigation into the matter.

And now, Evans realizes, another wave of questions will come about his conduct and character. He says he is ready for it.

“I am going to lead our department and move us forward, as I promised that I would do,” Evans said. “Take a look at my actions. Judge me based on what you know about me and your interactions with me, and then move on from there. I can’t control rumors. I can’t control innuendoes or what people say. What I can control are my actions and how I comport myself. I would tell the Terp Nation as well as anyone else: What is being said is not true.”

“Do I like the fact that it’s out there?” he continued. “Absolutely not.”

When Loh, Maryland’s president, introduced Evans as the next athletic director this week, he assured the university that he had done his due diligence before making the final decision. He had sought the counsel of Michael F. Adams, Georgia’s former president, who told Loh that there was “not a whiff of impropriety” during Evans’s tenure there, apart from his arrest. The same, Loh inferred, was true for Evans’s years at Maryland.

Evans’s future success, and by extension that of Maryland’s athletic department, depends heavily on the veracity of this public narrative — the story of a man, humbled and enlightened by a public failure, who has cleaned up his act. Maryland’s president says he believes it.

“It is truly a human story, a very typical human story of fall and redemption, from mountaintop to valley bottom,” Loh said Monday, before introducing Evans. “Then over eight years of slow, painful ascent back to the top. That tells me something about his personal qualities, of perseverance, of striving forward, of never giving up.”

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.

Correction (6/29/2018, 12:22 p.m.): This article originally misstated the name of the institution where Kevin Anderson is interim athletics director. It is California State University at Northridge, not the University of California at Northridge. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.