The NCAA’s case against KU continues, and KU is continuing to fight the wrong battle
The story of Kansas athletics, a lawsuit with a former football coach and ongoing investigations into Jayhawks men’s basketball and football includes no winners. This is not good guy vs. bad guy, or one side operating from high ground while the other hits low.
Mistakes are everywhere, innocent victims nowhere. Everyone is low. They’re all losing, with the notable exception of billable hours.
That’s true on the surface, and it’s truer the deeper you go, the more people you talk to. The shame of it is how much could’ve been so easily avoided by people charged with looking out for the university’s best interests.
Jeff Long, KU’s athletic director, is at the center and the one man who could’ve — should’ve — diminished the drama.
David Beaty, the football coach fired for poor performance in Nov. 2018, could’ve helped himself by being more truthful. Les Miles, the man hired to replace Beaty, committed similar if less premeditated violations, and now has a difficult job made harder.
Bill Self, the Hall of Fame basketball coach, is the one with the most to lose.
Lawsuit and lawyers
Perhaps it’s best to set the scene.
You know that the NCAA’s response to KU regarding the investigations into football and men’s basketball came this week. University officials have long expected punishments. KU and the NCAA essentially agree on violations involving Jayhawks football but remain worlds apart on the specifics surrounding the basketball program.
Meanwhile, the KU athletic department is also hundreds of thousands of dollars deep into lawyers fees for a lawsuit filed by Beaty. He is suing for the $3 million owed on his contract and that he says Long promised him. The university claims that routine exit interviews uncovered NCAA violations on Beaty’s watch, turning it into a “for cause” firing.
These are the dueling monsters that Long and the university must contend with, and the outcome of this mess will hurt the short- and long-term futures of KU athletics.
University leadership is not helping.
Look, we can all see the NCAA’s investigation into men’s basketball through different lenses. Mine happens to be that it is objectively absurd for the FBI to use money and resources to, in practical terms, enforce outdated and hypocritical NCAA rules.
The breaking of said rules is not a crime, creates no believable victim and is done by schools everywhere because that’s how the incentives are set up in a multi-billion dollar industry where the labor remains — air quotes cannot be emphasized enough here — “amateur.”
Further, the view through my lens is that the NCAA is laughably overreaching to rules interpretations that haven’t been used for decades because the bureaucracy charged with protecting its profits has been threatened by market forces and embarrassed by other programs. Kansas basketball, with a high profile and history of winning or escaping punishments on contended eligibility cases, makes for a hell of a target.
But whatever interpretation you have of the NCAA’s investigation into KU basketball you must agree that the university should operate for its broader good and be in the business of suppressing drama.
Instead, the opposite has happened.
Unsightly situation
Beaty’s lawyers have publicly floated a subpoena for T.J. Gassnola, the Adidas consultant at the center of the FBI case.
Gassnola on the witness stand or with phone records made public would be a potential nightmare for the basketball program and the athletic department it keeps afloat.
Even if nothing emerged to tangibly damage KU’s case, something divulged could damage its image. College athletics are largely about image.
Long and others have been accused of trying to find “a dead hooker” in Beaty’s closet, and of making disparaging and sexual remarks about an elderly woman. Long and KU have strongly denied that allegation, and their stance that the dirt comes from a disgruntled former employee appears to be on solid ground.
But so what?
To what end is KU willing to fight in the mud on this? Where is the balance of the greater good? This public drama could’ve been avoided if KU paid Beaty what he was owed.
Long is not a dope. His background is in compliance, his reputation strong. He was, and remains, in a situation that’s impossible to navigate perfectly. The allegations against Beaty — initially uncovered after a staffer refused to sign a letter swearing she was unaware of any violations — came as a critical test at a critical time.
Long could’ve seen the NCAA investigation hanging overhead as an unforgiving demand to proceed with particular detail. With the NCAA already effectively inside his department, perhaps merely paying Beaty and not investigating further was seen as a non-starter.
Let’s go with that. It’s reasonable. After all, the NCAA has a reputation for settling scores with enforcement, and maybe it would’ve seen paying Beaty as a sign that KU isn’t serious about compliance. OK, fine. But KU has been open to settling with Beaty, which means it’s just a matter of price.
Now, even with a win in court much of the money saved on the settlement will have been spent on attorneys. The rest will have been more than lost in image, credibility, energy and time.
At what cost?
Take note of the second-to-last sentence of KU’s response to the NCAA’s response this week (emphasis mine): “The University absolutely would accept responsibility if it believed that violations had occurred, as we have demonstrated with other self-reported infractions.”
There will be some who read that as KU going over the top in its reporting of Beaty’s violations to create a weapon for the basketball case. Maybe that’s a stretch, maybe it’s not, but either way the university could’ve paid Beaty the balance of his contract — everyone agrees he was fired for on-field performance, after all — and still investigated the violations.
Beaty is not a saint. By all appearances he knowingly broke rules and then lied about it. But he also worked a difficult job without complaint and handled a midseason firing with class. He’s essentially being charged with having the wrong staffers coach KU’s quarterbacks. This is not some massive criminal plot. There will be no Netflix special.
More to the point, and this should’ve been obvious from the beginning: Beaty is not important enough to put the athletic department’s future at any risk.
Beaty went 6-42 overall, 2-34 in the conference and 2-2 against FCS schools. Everyone knew he would be fired and, in fact, he was fired for poor performance. But now KU is trying to argue the firing was for cause.
This is killing a fly with a machine gun, without considering to what it does to your walls and windows.
Look, maybe KU wins the case against Beaty. The university has good lawyers and sufficient proof that violations occurred. Maybe Beaty doesn’t see another dollar.
But even if a judge rules in their favor, KU officials must ask what they will have actually won. A he-said, he-said lawsuit with a coach who was in over his head and desperate for success? A pat on the head from the NCAA for taking benign violations seriously?
Then comes the harder question: Was it worth the time, money, dirty laundry aired and (most importantly) potential further exposure to basketball?
The last question is the only one with an easy answer.