Why a video crew could be relevant if KU examines AD’s pursuit of coach Les Miles
Kansas men’s basketball coach Bill Self leaned his shoulder on the office door, his left fist pressed against his cheek while deep in thought.
This was 7:10 p.m. on Nov. 4, 2018 — just minutes after KU athletic director Jeff Long had fired Jayhawks football coach David Beaty — and Self was ready to give his own informal input to Long about what might come next.
In an exchange that was captured in the ESPN+ documentary “Miles to Go,” Self suggested that the most intriguing candidates to him would be those who ask hard questions.
“Rather than just say, ‘God, I’ve got to get a job,’” Self said.
Long quickly steered the conversation in a different direction, while hinting a hesitance toward potentially hiring another team’s coordinator.
“I want to find a guy who’s been a head coach somewhere that’s built a program, because this is a build,” Long said. “This is a build.”
A few hours later, Long tweeted his search would bring KU an experienced head coach. Two weeks later he followed through, hiring old friend Les Miles to replace Beaty.
And sometime in between then, a film crew hired by KU Athletics was at Miles’ house to document events ... even before he had officially accepted the position.
Facts like these — available through public records — are likely to become relevant as KU’s top officials deal with fallout from two recently released investigations at LSU, with both casting light on sexual harassment allegations against Miles from a decade ago, while he was the Tigers’ head football coach.
Some spotlight also is sure to be on Long as well, especially when it comes to a few specific questions: How did he come to his decision to hire Miles? And what, if any, vetting did he do beforehand?
A report from CBS Sports on Sunday quoted an anonymous high-ranking KU Athletics official saying the school had properly researched Miles before hiring him. A previous statement from KU Athletics said it was unaware of the allegations against Miles when he was hired.
“We did background checks. We did all of those kinds of things,” the KU official told CBS Sports. “We talked to people about Les and what he was doing. No one gave any indication of this.”
Long put Miles on administrative leave Friday while starting a KU investigation into the events, but questions are likely to loom about whether Long should have had knowledge — along with scrutiny regarding the process that led to Miles becoming KU’s coach in short order.
There are some clues out there, however, that at least provide a window into Long’s overall thinking with the Miles hire.
And altogether, here’s what sworn testimony and previous interviews tell us about Long’s mindset when it came to selecting KU’s next football coach.
‘No. 1 candidate from Day 1’
Beaty’s firing eventually did more than open the door for Miles to take over the Kansas football program.
It also opened an opportunity for KU Athletics’ secrets to be aired in public.
That’s because a few months after being terminated, and being told he would receive his $3 million buyout, Beaty was informed by Long that KU was seeking to fire him “for cause” while alleging non-major NCAA violations against him. Beaty sued for his buyout, which led to depositions taken from both Long and former KU Athletics fundraising director Matt Baty that were later unsealed.
Baty, who worked at KU from August 2016 through November 2018, was asked specifically under oath about whether he formed an impression that Long — whose official first day as AD was Aug. 1, 2018 — had an interest in Miles. Baty said that he sensed Miles was the leading candidate starting in August, with Long having conversations with him about what donors might think about Miles as the coach.
“My opinion, yes, I believe Les Miles was the No. 1 candidate from Day 1,” Baty said.
Baty, when contacted by The Star, declined comment.
Cameras rolling
Long’s deposition also revealed that Miles might’ve been more than a run-of-the-mill applicant.
When asked by Beaty’s lawyer Michael Lyons, Long admitted that a camera crew for the KU documentary “Miles to Go” began filming in Miles’ house between Nov. 4 and Nov. 18. That means the film crew was shooting footage of Miles before he had been given — or had accepted — KU’s open position.
Long, when asked, said it was not fair to assume the show’s producers knew at the time that Miles was going to be the team’s next head coach. KU had hired JM Associates to produce the show, which was owned by Bo Mattingly — a man identified by Long as a “local talk show host” out of Fayetteville, Arkansas, who had a relationship with Long and KU deputy athletic director Chris Freet from their tenures at the University of Arkansas.
“They took the chance it was going to be Les Miles,” Long said, “and they felt like the opportunity to be with someone of Coach Miles’ stature, it was worth their risk of going there should he get the job.”
A moment during Miles’ introductory news conference also appeared to raise questions about whether Miles was given information about Long’s coaching search as it was happening. When Long was talking about the stress of the previous two weeks, Miles interjected by revealing the honesty of their conversations during the interview process when it came to competition for the gig.
“He would say, just occasionally, that, ‘I’m going to go talk to this guy, and I’m going to go talk to this guy,’” Miles said with a smile. “I said, ‘Hey, hey, I’m right here. You wanna talk to me.’”
‘He’s been a friend of mine for over 30 years’
Long, in his deposition, gave inconsistent answers when asked how early his conversations went back with Miles regarding KU’s job.
The two, Long said, had known each other since 1987, and Long revealed he’d been contacted by coaches interested in the Jayhawks’ opening even before his first day as AD on Aug. 1, 2018.
At first, Long said Miles was not one of the people that contacted him before Beaty was terminated. Later, though, Long admitted to having phone talks with Miles before that Nov. 4 date, saying, “He’s been a friend of mine for over 30 years. In that conversation, he expressed that should we have an opening, he’d be interested.”
Long said he did not say whether he’d be amenable to Miles taking the position then, saying KU was still in the process of evaluating Beaty.
A few minutes after that in his deposition, though, Long said he had taken phone calls from people reaching out about KU’s potential opening before Beaty was fired. Long said “there may have been calls by Les Miles in there,” before stating, “Clearly Les Miles and his agent had expressed interest in the job should it come open.”
Long later made it clear that he was returning Miles’ calls during that time.
“I’m sure I indicated to him that I had an interest in talking to him at the appropriate time,” Long said.
‘I’m going to forget his name as well’
Long’s potential lack of interest in other candidates appeared to come through later in his Feb. 27, 2020 deposition, which took place 16 months after he completed KU’s search.
When asked by Lyons to list the others he’d had in-person interviews with besides Miles, Long failed to correctly identify any of them.
He mentioned:
• “Todd Graham or Grantham” (current Hawaii coach Todd Graham)
• “And then there was the gentleman — and again, I’m struggling with his name. He was working with the L.A. Rams at the time. I could find his name, but it’s not coming to me.” (Rams senior offensive assistant Jedd Fisch)
• “And then I interviewed the defensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals, and I’m going to forget his name as well.” (Lou Anarumo)
Other indications showed that Long was, at the least, spending time on strange diversions that had nothing to do with landing KU’s next coach.
On Nov. 13, a flight plan for KU’s jet set the destination for Baton Rouge, Louisiana (where Miles lived) instead of its actual destination of Colorado Springs, Colorado, where Long flew before returning to Lawrence. Long went into further detail about that at Miles’ introductory press conference.
“I had some fun throwing some misdirection at some of the media that might have come out to the airport once or twice when they thought something was going on and there might have been, you know, fictitious flight plans scheduled from one place to another,” Long said, before deadpanning, “but I don’t know who would have done that. I read the reports and where planes were coming from, and I was really surprised.”
A few seconds later, Long would still call the search “an important, serious process.” He said that Twitter, at the time, was an outlet for him to relieve stress, which perhaps was what was intended on Nov. 13 when he sent out an image of Los Angeles found on the Internet with the caption, “Beautiful sunset in LA this evening...”
Long, of course, was not there.
‘I think this decision rests with me’
On Nov. 4, 2018, during a news conference announcing Beaty would no longer be KU’s coach, Long made one thing abundantly clear: The next move was going to be his.
There would be no search committee, and Long said he would only rely on some search advisers.
The responsibility to properly look into Miles’ past, then, perhaps could have been expected to be Long’s, as well.
Whether he fulfilled that role will now be a question for KU chancellor Douglas Girod as he evaluates Long following the recent Miles revelations. The chancellor’s office, when asked by The Star whether Girod was satisfied with Long’s vetting of Miles before he hired him, referred to a previous KU Athletics statement saying the program wasn’t aware of Miles’ sexual harassment allegations when he was hired in 2018.
It’s possible Long could not have known about Miles’ history, or that it would have been nearly impossible to find out. That’s because there were steps taken to keep the 2013 Taylor Porter report out of the public eye, which went as far as to replace Miles’ name with “XXX” so that it wouldn’t pop up in any searches for open records requests.
Taylor Porter attorneys also revealed this in a later email to LSU Athletics and Miles after the report was released: “Miles, his counsel, LSU, and its counsel, agree to keep this letter (and its contents) confidential unless compelled to divulge it by final order of a court of competent jurisdiction; any such order shall be contested by LSU’s counsel and, at Miles’ option, Miles’ undersigned counsel.”
Miles’ lawyer, Peter Ginsberg, claimed Saturday that KU had “significant information” on the Taylor Porter report before last week, though it’s unclear whether Ginsberg was insinuating that Long received that earlier in 2021 or ahead of Miles’ hiring in 2018.
Ginsberg did add that “KU also had performed thorough due diligence before hiring Coach Miles.”
Another thread for KU remains relevant too.
When Miles was hired on Nov. 18, 2018, KU provided a copy of his signed term sheet. In a section at the end labeled “contingent offer,” Miles’ agreement said it was contingent upon “successful completion of a background check.”
KU Athletics, when asked Friday by The Star, did not respond to a question regarding whether that background check took place; the report by CBS Sports, however, could indicate that happened.
Miles, Long and Girod eventually signed the contract nine months later in August 2019, guaranteeing Miles nearly $14 million over five years if he was not fired for cause.
Some questions have yet to be addressed for KU in a public setting: Did Long know about the accusations against Miles before putting ink to paper? And if not, did he do enough research on a friend he’d already known for three decades?
No matter the answers, one thing can be certain: Long was well aware of his own burden on the day he fired Beaty.
“I think this decision rests with me,” Long said of hiring KU’s next coach. “I think the chancellor has trusted me with this decision, and I think that’s one of the reasons he hired me, and he has expressed that belief in me to be able to do the job.”
