Baylor ‘Set the Football Program on Fire’ as Scapegoat in Sex-Assault Scandal, Says Ex-Athletic Director

Baylor University’s former athletics director has a clear interpretation of how its high-profile sexual-assault scandal unfolded two years ago: A handful of board members and university officials concocted a plan to ensure that the football team would take the fall.

In the transcript of a deposition filed in federal district court on Friday, Ian McCaw — who was athletics director from 2003 to 2016, when he resigned after being disciplined — outlined in detail his perspective on the crisis. It led to the firing of Art Briles, the university’s football coach, and the demotion of Kenneth W. Starr, the president, who later resigned.

McCaw was deposed last month by lawyers for 10 women who are suing Baylor, asserting that the institution violated Title IX, the federal gender-equity law. Parts of the deposition were quoted in earlier court documents, but it wasn’t released in full until Friday.

He named people he believes are “bad actors” who were involved in either covering up the scandal or mishandling sexual-assault reports. Some of them remain at Baylor.

Among those McCaw named are Richard Willis, a former chair of the Board of Regents; five current and former members of the board; Christopher Holmes, the general counsel; Kevin Jackson, vice president for student life; Reagan Ramsower, who was chief operating officer until May; and Jim Doak, the campus police chief, who retired in 2014.

According to McCaw, those regents capitalized on the fact that most of the public scrutiny of the university in 2015 and 2016 was focused on allegations of sexual assault involving football players.

“I think the regents have intentionally set the football program on fire to deflect attention away from their own failures and the other failures across campus,” he said.

Several regents also didn’t like Starr’s leadership style, McCaw said, and were looking for an excuse to oust him.

Baylor issued a statement on Friday in response: “Despite the numerous, factually baseless assertions in Mr. McCaw’s deposition, one fact remains — several incidents of sexual and interpersonal violence involving student athletes were reported during his tenure as athletics director. It was the Baylor Board of Regents that stepped up and took action.”

McCaw was put on probation in May 2016, after Pepper Hamilton, a Philadelphia law firm, completed its investigation into Baylor’s handling of sexual-assault cases, and he resigned shortly afterward. That investigation concluded that the university had failed to respond properly to numerous sexual-misconduct reports and that high-level administrators and athletics-staff members had “directly discouraged” some students from reporting assaults.

“Principally, Art Briles was made to be a scapegoat,” McCaw said. “I think I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He is now athletics director at Liberty University.

Here are other highlights from the 359-page transcript of McCaw’s deposition.

Concerns About Liability

As McCaw told it, Starr was calling for “complete transparency” as Pepper Hamilton conducted its investigation. Ramsower, the chief operating officer, “was calling for a mea culpa moment when all of the university’s failings would be revealed.”

But by April 2016, McCaw testified, Ramsower told him that the possibility of a “mea culpa moment” was off the table. The reason: “The lawyers are pushing back on it for legal-liability reasons and loss of insurance coverage.” McCaw also cited “the damage to the brand and admissions” as concerns.

That’s why, in McCaw’s view, the board decided to pin the sexual-assault problems on the football program and fire athletics-staff members, so it would look as though the university had taken decisive action.

Race and Racism

The line of questioning used by the Pepper Hamilton lawyers during their investigation, McCaw said, suggested that they were singling out black football players. He said one of the lawyers asked a coach, “Why are there so many blacks on the team?”

“What was curious was when I would bring up other things like the rugby club or the tennis player or other things I was aware of through executive-leadership meetings, they changed the subject, didn’t want to talk about it,” he said. “They wanted to focus exclusively on football players, all of whom — all of whom were black.”

During Pepper Hamilton’s presentation to the board, McCaw said, the lawyers used phrases like “300-pound black football players” to describe alleged perpetrators. He didn’t see the presentation but said two regents later raised concerns about racial insensitivity to him.

The issue of race was brought into even sharper focus for McCaw when he looked at the findings of fact that the board released in May 2016: “This was a campuswide problem, and all of the attention was focused on black football players.”

The Investigators

McCaw had harsh words for Gina Maisto Smith and Leslie Gomez, lawyers formerly at Pepper Hamilton with whom he met several times during the investigation. He testified that several regents didn’t have confidence in their work.

One regent, he said, “nicknamed Smith and Gomez ‘wood’ and ‘shed,’ and said that some of the — his colleagues on the regents thought they were brought in to destroy the football program.”

He scoffed at the idea that the law firm’s investigation was objective: “They worked for the regents and were directed by the regents to create an outcome that was desired by the regent leadership.”

In the spring of 2016, a group of regents — the board chair and committee chairs — traveled to Philadelphia, McCaw said, to meet with the lawyers and shape their forthcoming presentation to the board.

But Miles Jay Allison, then chair of the athletics committee, was not invited, McCaw said. He said Allison later played him a voicemail from Willis, the board chair at the time, saying he wasn’t to come to the meeting and suggesting that Allison “would not be in agreement with what they were going to do.” Allison was “an advocate for athletics and the football program,” McCaw said.

Athletics and Title IX

McCaw said he hadn’t received any training on Title IX and how to handle sexual-assault reports until the fall of 2014. Still, he said, the athletics department has made “great strides in a short period of time.”

“There was a lack of training, so things were not handled as they would be based on today’s standards,” he said. “But I’m not aware of any wrongdoing within the athletic department.” His impression was that the rest of the university was “far behind us” in terms of education on responding to sexual misconduct.

No Report

In the end, Pepper Hamilton produced no written report after its eight-month investigation. McCaw said several regents had told him that the board’s leadership “didn’t want to wait six months and pay $1 million to have the report completed.”

“I think if they actually prepared a full written report and published it,” he said, “it would have devastating consequences for the university.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.