The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (71 page)

“There were three things in my decision-making process,” Floyd said. “One is the allegation surrounding Mike’s departure from Texas Tech. I am acutely aware of that circumstance. I did my due diligence around it. But I was still aware of the public perception of his departure from Tech. Second, I have this allegation from a parent involving his son in the program. Third, I have this issue involving Marquess.”

There was one other factor. Moos had already issued a formal statement to the media. He hadn’t run it by Floyd. Nor was he required to. But in this case Floyd wished he had been given a chance to review it. “When I read it, it seemed a bit dismissive and defensive,” Floyd said.

He placed another call to Moos, who defended his statement. Moos also pledged to conduct an internal review of Wilson’s claims. As soon as the game was over, he planned to drop everything and turn his full attention to interviewing players and coaches.

Floyd didn’t discourage Moos. But he also knew Moos was very close to Leach and the football program. Floyd, on the other hand, had purposely kept his distance, never traveling with the team or attending practices. “Part of the whole vexing issue with university presidents and athletic programs is that university presidents get too close to the program,” Floyd said. “They
lose their objectivity. We have to manage athletics like we do everything else at the institution. There is a balance between supporting a college coach and his team without all this engagement.”

Sitting alone in his conference room, Floyd had a gut instinct that an internal review conducted by the athletic department wasn’t going to be sufficient. Not this time, anyway. Wilson’s letter had cast a national spotlight on WSU. The university’s response would be closely scrutinized. “I wanted to be objective,” Floyd said. “But I had the potential of a huge PR issue on my hands involving a highly paid football coach at WSU. I had to get ahead of it because if I did not it was going to overtake the institution and me.”

When Floyd emerged from his conference room at halftime, UCLA was crushing WSU 37–7. The game was shaping up to be an even bigger disaster than the previous week’s loss to Utah. That was the least of Floyd’s concerns. He invited Scott into the conference room for a private discussion.

Behind closed doors, Floyd briefed him on the situation. Scott immediately grasped the implications. Floyd then went out on a limb: he asked Scott to conduct an investigation into Wilson’s claims.

“I have a lot of confidence in my AD,” Floyd said. “I had no concerns about that. But in the spirit of transparency, I have to have some independent review that will confirm or deny the allegations. I have to bring the issue to closure. I also have to bring the Texas Tech issue to closure. That was the subliminal issue here.”

Scott wanted to help. But he had a concern. The Pac-12 had never conducted the kind of external review of a program that Floyd was requesting. There was no precedent for the conference investigating one of the conference coaches. Scott wasn’t sure the conference had the manpower or the know-how to do what Floyd wanted: a full-fledged, transparent probe of the allegations by Wilson and the parent who had written a letter the week before.

Floyd assured Scott that the conference would be given unfettered access to players, coaches and the athletic department. There would be complete cooperation on the part of the university. “Clearly, in a post-Penn State environment I have to take these issues very seriously,” Floyd said. “The issue shifts to how is a president going to deal with it.”

Scott promised that the Pac-12 would conduct an investigation. It might require outside help. But it would get done.

By the time Floyd and Scott emerged from the conference room, the mood in the president’s suite had changed dramatically. VIPs were shouting and clapping. WSU was making an improbable comeback. Down by thirty at the half, Leach’s team played with a renewed sense of urgency. The Cougars ended up scoring twenty-nine second-half points. Even Floyd got swept up in the electricity that had filled the stadium. With 1:36 remaining in the game, UCLA clung to a 44–36 lead.

A few suites down, Bill Moos watched as UCLA ran out the clock, escaping with the win. But Moos was ecstatic. The first half and the second half were like two different games. WSU had roared back. It was proof that the players believed in Leach and his system. The only thing that bugged him was the fact that the team’s effort was sure to be completely overshadowed by Wilson’s letter.

He was right. After the game, Floyd got an e-mail from Ryan Durkan, a member of WSU’s board of regents. One of the top land-use lawyers in the Pacific Northwest, Durkan was already concerned about the letter from the parent when she saw the news about Wilson’s letter. She addressed her e-mail to Floyd and the chairman of WSU’s board of trustees, Scott Carson. “Elson and Scott, it seems that now the allegations have risen to the level of physical abuse, that we have an issue on which the Board should be briefed. With the vote on the football ops center coming up at the next meeting, we risk looking ill informed if we don’t address the allegations. We are not in a position to judge the merits, but after the training we had on the Penn State situation, it seems that we at least have a duty to ask questions. Your thoughts are most welcome. Ryan.”

Floyd e-mailed her, saying he’d call her. He planned to tell her about the Pac-12 investigation.

Scott Carson had just gotten off a plane in Seattle when he heard the news about Wilson and saw Durkan’s e-mail. He sent a note back to her and Floyd. “I do believe we have an obligation to understand what in the world is going on,” Carson said. He wanted to talk to Floyd on Sunday.

Wilson’s claims drowned out WSU’s impressive comeback. The postgame press conference made it pretty clear that Leach’s off-the-field problems had eclipsed the game. The situation had reached a point where it threatened to compromise Leach’s impressive recruiting class. It was bad enough
that WSU had fallen to 2-8. But all the noise about abuse wasn’t going to resonate well with parents—particularly mothers—of high school players leaning toward WSU.

Frustrated, Moos was still awake at 11:33 on the night of the game when his cell phone buzzed, alerting him that an e-mail had just come in. It was from Marquess Wilson. “Mr. Moos this is Marquess … With that letter I wasn’t trying to accuse the coaches of hitting players or anything. I was just trying to put it in different terms and now everything is getting misinterpreted and I didn’t like that at all … I simply was trying to get my story across and get my name cleared instead of having it say I’m suspended for breaking team violations … That could mean like I did drugs or something … I was never trying to harm the university or the program with it.”

Moos read it again. It was hard not to be incredulous. But Moos also felt an instant sense of relief. Wilson had essentially validated what Moos had believed all along: that players were not being abused; they were being pushed to become better. And for whatever reason, Wilson wasn’t on board. So he bolted.

Moos told Leach. His reaction was anticlimactic. He didn’t think the original complaint was a big deal. The fact that Wilson recanted hours later wasn’t a big deal either. One thing that Leach had learned a long time ago is that when you are coaching a hundred-plus kids—most of whom aren’t old enough to drink legally—issues are going to flare up. It’s best to keep a level head and keep moving forward.

It was after midnight by the time Moos forwarded Wilson’s e-mail to Floyd with a simple note: “Elson, sent to me at 11:33. Unfortunate as our guys gave a valiant effort and deserved to be the lead story. Bill.”

Floyd didn’t see Moos’s note until Sunday morning, around 8:00. It did little to change his mind about doing an outside investigation. He e-mailed Moos: “Well, the damage is done now. I must repair it and move on. ESF.”

Over the next couple days, Floyd received some push back on his plan to have the Pac-12 conduct an investigation. What was the point? Wilson had recanted. Besides, Moos was still doing his internal review. And there were all kinds of risks associated with having outsiders poking around the football program. It was impossible to predict what they might find and where those findings might lead.

But that was exactly why Floyd felt compelled to go forward. “Why do this review if Marquess recanted?” Floyd said. “Well, it was because I had another complaint that no one knew about. [The letter from the parent.] So Marquess’s recant wasn’t sufficient.”

Richard Evrard is a partner at Bond Schoeneck & King, a law firm out of Overland Park, Kansas. Before joining the firm in 1992, Evrard was an attorney for the NCAA, where he worked on enforcement and was the director of legislative services. After leaving the NCAA, he represented institutions accused of NCAA infractions. His expertise caused the law firm to ultimately put him in charge of its Collegiate Sports Practice Group, which had represented Minnesota, Kansas, Ohio State and other universities through major scandals involving academic fraud, payments to players and recruiting violations.

When Larry Scott directed the Pac-12’s general counsel, Woodie Dixon, to choose someone to conduct a review of WSU’s football program on behalf of the conference, Dixon retained Evrard to develop an investigation outline, conduct interviews and draft a final report to be presented to the Pac-12 and the university. Specifically, Evrard and his team developed four areas of review:

All of these lines of inquiries were potential minefields that could expose the university to lawsuits and NCAA sanctions. No one understood that more than Evrard.

By way of background, Evrard’s team started by looking into the events that touched off Marquess Wilson’s departure from the team. The trouble began at halftime during the Utah game in Salt Lake City. WSU had played a miserable first half. Things came to a boiling point in the locker room when a defensive coach attempted to motivate players by using his hands to urge his players to be more physical. He emphasized his point by pushing
some players on the breastplate sections of their shoulder pads while shouting four-letter words at them. At least one player got emotional and used equally strong language to shout back at the coach, a reaction that the coach said was exactly what he was looking for. That’s what he wanted to see them do in the second half—respond with emotion.

Wilson wasn’t one of the players being pushed in the locker room during halftime. But that incident, coupled with the coaching staff’s decision to make players do sandpit drills on the day following the loss to Utah, is what brought him to a breaking point. But when asked by investigators whether he had been physically abused, Wilson insisted he had not. “I wasn’t trying to accuse anybody of abuse,” Wilson told investigators. “I mean, they never touched us. I wasn’t trying to say that in my letter … I mean, that, there was no point where I was trying to say that they’re abusing us.”