This is ‘mentoring’ women? KU must part ways with coach Les Miles for conduct at LSU

Now we’re really talking about Neanderthal thinking. Make sure you bring fit, pretty, blonde female students to Les Miles’ athletic department cave? “Mentoring” young women with career advice and alleged kisses in his car? Wasn’t his job as Louisiana State University head football coach to mentor young men?

This guy didn’t want a football recruiting staff at LSU — he wanted a harem. Did the University of Kansas realize who they hired as coach in 2018? If not, why the heck not?

And how could they possibly keep him on now — they can’t — after the release of yet more damning information in a 2013 LSU report on Miles’ inappropriate “mentoring” of fit, pretty, blonde student workers? The document includes reports of his texting several and kissing one while she was in his car for career advice. Allegedly Miles thought the career counseling should happen in a motel or condo.

The report says, ironically enough, that after the team’s national championship in 2007 Miles became more “hands on” in hiring staff. No kidding.

All this, after The Times-Picayune and New Orleans Advocate reported in February that Miles had reached a legal settlement with a former LSU student intern who’d alleged he hit on her.

Is society fed up to the gills yet with the time-honored and women-dishonoring practice of sweeping sexual misconduct under the rug with secret legal settlements? It would’ve been nice for every female on the KU campus to have known about Miles’ penchant for leveraging his position with female student workers.

While the just-released 2013 report found no proof of sexual relationships with the student workers — and Miles both denied and shrugged off the allegations of kissing and unwanted touching as his “mentoring” the young women — it did find his behavior inappropriate. You think? But just a reprimand, a requirement to sign these sexual harassment policies and, oh by the way, don’t make the student workers into your texting friends or babysitters. You think? You think that’s enough?

And think about this: In his reportedly requiring the student workers to be “blonde,” he de facto precluded women of color. What we have here is your basic human resources and social equity nightmare. How many flashing lights and sirens are required in the HR Department before one is asked to leave? Oh, wait, that’s not how it works. When your team’s record is just 2-2 at LSU, that’s when you get fired, as Miles was in 2016. Not when the man had to be banned from being alone with female students on campus. OK, thanks. We have our priorities explained now.

When are the Neanderthals on wheels going to join us in the 21st century where, approximately 21 centuries too late, women have the right to go about their lives and pursue their dreams and careers without being put upon by knuckle-dragging superiors and co-workers out for a good time at the expense of someone else’s safety, dignity, well-being, and job performance?

Miles may not have gone as far as some predators, but he was sure working out of their playbook. LSU, despite the release of the 2013 report and a broader investigation of how it handles sexual misconduct allegations, still has a lot to answer for. So does KU. And so does Les Miles.