U. of Maryland President Steps Down After Damning Football Report

Bill O’Leary, Getty Images

Updated (10/30/2018, 4:55 p.m.) with news of the University of Maryland’s news conference late Tuesday afternoon.

Wallace D. Loh, president of the University of Maryland at College Park, will step down following an investigation into an embattled football program described as having little oversight, where players were afraid to speak up. He will retire in June 2019. The Washington Post first reported the news.

Meanwhile, Damon Evans and DJ Durkin, the athletic director and head football coach, respectively, will keep their jobs.

Speculation had been swirling since Friday, when Loh, Evans, and Durkin met with the university system’s regents. The day before, regents had been presented with a nearly 200-page investigative report that describes a program with little administrative oversight, in which “problems festered because too many players feared speaking out.” It also described inappropriate behavior by Rick Court, the former strength-and-conditioning coach, who at one point threw what the report described as a “trash can full of vomit” at players.

According to the Post, regents strongly urged Loh to allow Durkin to return from a suspension that was imposed in August. Many regents were impressed by their in-person meeting with Durkin during Friday’s board meeting, the newspaper reported. Loh reportedly differed, telling the regents during his meeting on Friday that the university needed to find a new football coach.

Regents also reportedly urged Loh to allow Evans to continue in his position. The board’s 17 regents have direct firing authority only over the president, not the coach or the athletic director. Many regents struggled for days to reach a consensus on what to do, the Post reported.

Reports of Loh’s fate broke shortly before a Tuesday-afternoon news conference held by the university system, at which Loh confirmed he would step down.

In his prepared remarks, Loh praised Evans as “one of the finest athletic directors in this country” and did not mention Durkin. When asked about his relationship with the football coach, Loh said, “He has been a successful coach in terms of many aspects of football. He is coming back. And we are very supportive of the recommendation of the Board of Regents.”

Loh also did not say when, exactly, Durkin would be returning to the sidelines. That decision is within Evans’s domain, he said.

News outlets, meanwhile, reported that several players walked out of a meeting with Durkin earlier on Tuesday.

The board chair, James T. Brady, said at the news conference that Durkin has the “major job” of winning back some people’s confidence. Brady also said regents believe that Durkin had been “unfairly blamed” for the dysfunction of the department. All three men — Loh, Durkin, and Evans — have accepted that they share responsibility, Brady said.

“There will be no third chance for any of those involved to get this right,” Brady said. He also bristled at the idea that because Loh is the only person who will step down, it meant that athletics were taking precedence over academics.

Disturbing Findings

Before arriving at the decision to make no immediate personnel changes, regents reviewed the new 200-page report, which is separate from a previous report that examined the death of a 19-year-old football player this year. The new report was posted online in full on Monday by the university system.

Brady said in a statement on Thursday that the regents had accepted the findings and recommendations made by an independent commission. “This excellent report provides the board and the people of Maryland a much more complete window into the culture of the football program and athletics department,” he said.

The report was commissioned by Loh — and then taken over by the regents — in August after an explosive investigation by ESPN. The sports network reported that the football program’s culture was toxic, rife with abuse and bullying. Evans placed Durkin on leave, along with two other members of the team’s conditioning staff. Court resigned shortly after.

By then the program was facing intense scrutiny over the death of Jordan McNair, an offensive lineman who died in June after suffering heat stroke during a practice in late May.

The investigation of McNair’s death found that more than an hour and a half passed between when he reported exhaustion and when his ambulance left for the hospital. Loh said the university took “legal and moral responsibility” for the training staff’s mistakes.

The report given to the regents on Thursday stopped short of describing the program’s culture as toxic. “By definition, Maryland’s football culture was not toxic. … In light of our conclusion that Maryland’s football culture was not ‘toxic,’ we do not find that the culture caused the tragic death of Jordan McNair,” the report says.

Durkin had earned the loyalty and respect of many of his athletes and coaches, the report says.

But the investigation, which sought feedback from more than 200 people, unearthed some troubling findings:

• In 2017 the university’s Title IX office met with Durkin about investigating allegations of sexual misconduct against two football players. Either the athletic director at the time, Kevin Anderson, or Durkin, or both of them, “solicited and facilitated payment to a law firm to represent the accused players” in a way that violated university protocol. The firm’s services were eventually paid through speakers’ fees from university-foundation funds. Those decisions were “questionable at best,” the report says.
• Perhaps most troubling, according to investigators, is that the athletics department paid for legal services for the players but not for the complainant, who was also affiliated with the department. Loh described Durkin as a “babe in the woods” regarding the complexities of a Title IX investigation. His failure to question the payment arrangement was “troubling,” the report says.
• Court, the strength-and-conditioning coach, used homophobic slurs and challenged players’ manhood as a motivation technique. (Court, in the report, denies that, but the experience was recounted “by many.”) He would attempt to humiliate players by throwing food, weights, and, on one occasion, the container of vomit, the document says.
• Disturbing videos of “serial killers, drills entering eyeballs, and bloody scenes with animals eating animals” were shown to the players. Durkin maintains that “horror movies were sometimes shown at breakfast to motivate and entertain players.”

The commissioners who compiled the report did not make personnel recommendations but did offer other suggestions, including that the strength-and-conditioning coaches should not be supervised by the head coach; that the university should adopt a medical-care model in its athletics programs; and that the department should track and analyze athletics-related complaints.

Commissioners who conducted the two-month investigation include retired U.S. District Court judges, sports-medicine experts, and professional football players. (One member, C. Thomas McMillen, who was a Maryland basketball player, a U.S. congressman, and a university regent, is the brother of Liz McMillen, editor of The Chronicle.)

Before Tuesday, state lawmakers, university donors and boosters, and College Park employees reached out to the board to voice their opinions.

Senior athletics officials also sent a letter to the board to make a case for Evans, the athletic director, The Washington Post reported. “Over the course of the last year, we have witnessed and been a part of a sea change with how our department operates and the morale of our staff,” the letter states. It also points to recent feedback from the university’s human-resources department describing Evans as a “top performer across campus management.”

Players, boosters, and parents have also offered opinions on Durkin. McNair’s father called for Durkin’s ouster during an appearance on Good Morning America.

Democratic lawmakers from districts around College Park sent a letter to the board last week in support of Loh, while critics have called for his termination. Faculty members have voiced concerns about what they see as “very limited oversight” of the athletics department in general, The Chronicle has reported.

Since Loh took office, in 2010, he has overseen several controversies in athletics, including in 2013, when the university announced it would move to the Big Ten Conference.

Emma Pettit is a staff reporter at The Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter @EmmaJanePettit, or email her at emma.pettit@chronicle.com.