The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football

by Jeff Benedict

  “If he will transfer, I will give him a release,” Leach said.

  Hance said he would talk to Craig James. In the meantime, he wanted Leach’s assurance that Adam would not be put in any kind of confined areas during the next practice.

  It was midnight by the time Hance reached James, who had waited for the call. He gave Hance an earful. “He tells the trainer put his fucking pussy ass in a place so dark the only thing he can do is reach down with his hands and touch his dick to know he has one?” Craig said. “I’ve been in this business all my life, and I’ve never heard a coach anywhere at any level put someone in confinement like that, especially with a concussion.”

  “I’ve spoken to Leach,” Hance told James. “He said this is all about playing time and you’re a helicopter dad.”

  James was incredulous. As an ESPN analyst, he hung around lots of teams and attended plenty of practices. It wasn’t unusual for coaches like Mack Brown at Texas, Pete Carroll at USC and Urban Meyer at Florida to invite him on the field. “But when I went to Tech practices, I made a point to stay on the sidelines and away from the football kind of stuff,” James said. “Adam would not have wanted a perception by his teammates that anything was going on.”

  Hance offered up the same three options that he had previously discussed with Leach. But James said his son had no interest in leaving the program—he loved Tech and his teammates. Rather, Craig wanted Leach held accountable.

  Getting nowhere, Hance decided to conduct an internal investigation.

  Charlotte Bingham didn’t work directly with athletics at Texas Tech. A former trial lawyer with the Lubbock firm Crenshaw, Dupree & Milam, she joined the Texas Tech University System as assistant vice chancellor for administration. She reported directly to Hance, and her responsibilities included oversight of any employee complaints related to discrimination or violations of university policy. On the afternoon of December 20, Bingham received an urgent call from Hance. He told her about Craig James’s allegations. He asked her to get to the bottom of the matter.

  Over the ensuing forty-eight hours, Bingham interviewed Craig and Adam James, the team doctor, the team trainer and members of the football staff. Leach was the last person she interviewed. While Bingham questioned Leach on December 22 in Lubbock, Craig James flew to San Diego to work the Poinsettia Bowl. That night over dinner he told a colleague at ESPN what was going on. His colleague gave him one piece of advice: consider hiring a PR firm. “This will be a big deal if it breaks,” his colleague told him.

  James didn’t hesitate. Already weighing a run for U.S. Congress, he called his political consultant back in Texas as soon as he got to his hotel room that night. His consultant recommended Spaeth Communications in Dallas. Spaeth’s Web site said it specializes in “mastering the media,” “witness preparation and trial support” and “crisis management.”

  The following day, James authorized his lawyer James Drakeley to retain Spaeth.

  Meanwhile, Charlotte Bingham met with Kent Hance, university president Guy Bailey and athletic director Gerald Myers and gave an oral summary of her findings:

  1. Mike Leach did not require Adam James to stand in an electrical closet. James entered the closet voluntarily and without the knowledge of anyone on the football staff. Nor was Adam James locked in a shed; in fact, the door had no lock.

  2. Adam James was mistreated by being required to stand in a darkened, enclosed space on two occasions.

  3. Mike Leach was extremely profane in how he dealt with the situation.

  4. The team physician concluded that the coaches’ handling of Adam James posed no harm or health risks.

  5. Craig James threatened to sue the university and dispatch a team of lawyers “and depose everybody at Tech.”

  Bingham’s findings were also shared with two senior members of the board of regents—Larry Anders and Jerry Turner, a prominent attorney who had been the captain of the Tech football team in the late 1960s. Disturbed, the trustees wanted Craig James’s complaint handled swiftly.

  Hance called Craig James in San Diego and told him that his complaint had been “substantially verified” by Bingham’s investigation.

  “Okay,” James told Hance. “What’s going to happen?”

  “Tell us what you guys are looking for,” Hance said.

  “He needs to apologize for what he’s done,” James said. “And he needs to be held accountable.”

  After hanging up with James, Hance received a text message from him that left no doubts about James’s stance. “Adam’s claim has been verified,” James texted Hance on December 23. “If any person or organization associated with Tech did what Mike did to Adam, they would be fired, which is exactly what we expect to happen to Mike.”

  The decision whether to fire the head football coach rested with the athletic director, who reported to the president. But neither Myers nor Bailey wanted to fire Leach. They thought it was unnecessary and suggested some ways to resolve the matter that weren’t so extreme.

  Hance called Leach and suggested three things that would put James’s complaint to rest: pay a fine, perhaps as much as $60,000; apologize to the James family; and sign a statement saying that he would not punish anyone under a doctor’s care.

  “The main thing is we wanted him to apologize,” Hance explained. “Surely when you’re wrong, you say, ‘I’m sorry for any misunderstanding.’ ”

  But Leach had no intention of paying a fine or apologizing. “I’m not going to do any of those things,” he told Hance, “because I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Hance felt Leach was being unreasonable and suggested he give serious consideration to acting on his recommendations.

  “Well, if I don’t do it?” Leach said.

  “I’ll probably have to terminate you.”

  Up to that point, Leach hadn’t sought any legal advice. The bowl game was a week away, and his focus had been solely on Michigan State. But after hanging up with Hance, Leach called his attorney.

  After graduating from the law school at Texas Tech, Ted Liggett went to work for a small firm in Lubbock. He ended up representing lots of Tech student-athletes who had issues with eligibility. He also represented the athletic department during numerous NCAA investigations. When Leach arrived in 2000 Liggett became his personal attorney. They were polar opposites politically. Leach is conservative; Liggett a far-left liberal. But they became fast friends. Liggett had never attended a Tech football game until Leach became his client. Before long, he never missed a game. Leach gave him a sideline pass to every home game.

  It was late in the afternoon on December 23 when Liggett’s home phone started ringing. He was in bed recovering from back surgery. But he took Leach’s call.

  “I might have a problem,” Leach said.

  “What’s going on?” Liggett asked.

  Leach brought him up to speed on the incident and the investigation.

  Liggett was familiar with all the players. He had known Charlotte Bingham for more than twenty years. He was on good terms with Hance and Myers, and Bailey was a close family friend.

  “We’ll get this worked out,” Liggett told Leach. “But I need to start by talking to some of these people.”

  After an initial conversation with Charlotte Bingham, Liggett called Guy Bailey. They both felt they could resolve the matter and agreed to meet the following day—Christmas Eve—at Bailey’s office. Bailey said he’d make sure Gerald Myers attended, and Liggett agreed to bring Leach.

  But a blizzard hit Lubbock on December 24, pushing the meeting to the day after Christmas. The delay gave Bailey plenty of time to think through the situation. Bailey liked Leach a great deal and admired the excitement his coaching style had brought to Lubbock. He and his wife, Jan, went to every home game. They had even gotten to know many of Leach’s players on a first-name basis. It was Bailey’s sense that Leach and his players had a strong bond and that the incident with Adam James was an isolated one, not a systemic problem.

  Nonethel
ess, Bailey was uncomfortable with the way Adam James had been treated. After all, he had been diagnosed with a concussion. The dangers of concussions among pro football players were starting to attract national attention. That fall Congress had convened hearings on head injuries in the NFL. Public awareness around sports-related brain injuries was starting to pick up. Bailey felt it was only a matter of time before the NCAA faced similarly difficult questions about whether member institutions were adequately addressing the risks associated with concussions in football.

  Less than two months before Adam James sustained a concussion, researchers at Boston University School of Medicine documented the first case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)—better known as degenerative brain disease—in a college football player who did not play professionally. Mike Borich, a wide receiver at Snow College and Western Illinois University in the 1980s, died from a drug overdose on February 9, 2009. He was forty-two. During his college football career Borich sustained at least ten concussions. After college he had no concussions or head injuries. Yet by his late thirties he displayed many of the symptoms found in NFL players diagnosed with degenerative brain disease caused by head injuries. So Borich’s father donated his son’s brain for research. After diagnosing Borich with CTE, a leading sports concussion expert said, “Brain trauma in sports is a public health problem, not just an NFL problem.”

  Bailey had read about Borich’s case in the New York Times. He also felt the university had an obligation to answer concerns and complaints from parents, whether over grades, housing or, in the case of Adam James, the standard of care afforded to a student-athlete following an injury. Over the weekend he drafted a letter that he hoped Leach would sign. He and Myers planned to present it to him at the meeting.

  “Gerald and I are going to talk to Mike,” Bailey told his wife as he left the house.

  She asked when he’d be back.

  “It shouldn’t be very long,” he told her. “I think we can get this done in half an hour.”

  There was one problem: Bailey had no idea that Hance had already called Leach and given him an ultimatum. Hance hadn’t told Bailey.

  When Liggett and Leach arrived at Bailey’s office, Bailey asked Liggett to wait in the reception area. “We want to meet with Mike alone,” he said.

  Leach entered and took a seat opposite Bailey and Myers.

  “We’re here to help you, Mike,” Bailey began. “We want to work through this and get to a solution.”

  Then Bailey handed Leach the letter and asked him to read it.

  Dear Coach Leach,

  As you know, we have been conducting an inquiry into allegations by a student athlete that your treatment of him, subsequent to his being diagnosed with a mild concussion, may have been injurious to his health and served no medical and/or educational purposes.

  The letter went on to outline five guidelines that the university wanted Leach to follow:

  1. All practices and team meetings would be monitored by the athletic director.

  2. All injured players had to be cleared in writing by a physician before being eligible to practice or play.

  3. Leach had to acknowledge an obligation to treat student-athletes with respect.

  4. Leach had to treat all student-athletes at all times in a fair and responsible manner and cease any actions not in compliance with his employment contract.

  5. Leach would not retaliate against any student-athlete who suffered an injury.

  “Well, I already do these things,” Leach said. “They’re in my contract.” He pushed the letter back across the table.

  “Mike, if you will sign this letter and make an apology to the James family,” Myers said, “we will get this situation behind us.”

  “Listen,” Leach said, “if you don’t want me here, let’s negotiate an exit strategy and I’ll leave.”

  “There’s not any reason to talk about that,” Myers said. “We have no interest in that.”

  “I will find another job,” Leach continued. “And you can hire somebody that you’re more pleased with. But you’re not going to railroad me with false charges.”

  The bad blood between Leach and Myers stretched back to the previous year’s difficult contract renegotiations. Bailey, on the other hand, had a good rapport with Leach. “Look,” Bailey said, “concussions are a serious issue. It needs to be addressed. It can be addressed through an apology or some kind of letter of explanation that shows you were doing what you felt was in his best interest or welfare. But somehow we have to demonstrate that we had the welfare of the student-athletes covered.”

  Leach didn’t argue with Bailey. But he didn’t back down, either. “First of all,” Leach explained, “Adam James was treated as if he had a concussion. Two, I did the same thing with Adam James that I did with other injured players: I told the trainer to handle him. Did I tell him to get him off the field? Yeah, I told him to get him off the field.

  “He had him stand in the garage,” Leach continued. “I found out half an hour later that this is where he had him stand. I don’t have a problem with it. But since when have I ever commanded a trainer or doctor to do anything? Nor do I have the ability to. They don’t answer to the head coach. They answer to the assistant AD.”

  Bailey repeated that he simply wanted Leach to explain that in writing.

  “We were not asking necessarily that Mike say he was wrong,” Bailey explained. “But say, ‘Here is why I did this and here is why I think my actions were in the best interests of your son.’ ”

  After making his request, Bailey asked Leach to step out and send in Liggett.

  When Liggett came in, Myers handed him the letter he had prepared for Leach. “Ted, if you can get Mike to sign this letter,” Myers said, “we will get this situation behind us.”

  Liggett looked it over. He wasn’t surprised that Leach had refused to sign it. “I don’t think he thinks he’s done anything to apologize for,” Liggett told them.

  Bailey said he understood that and made clear that he wanted Leach to remain the head coach. But the university needed something in writing from Leach. Otherwise, it was going to be very difficult to prevent the situation from going public. Then all bets would be off.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Liggett told them.

  While Bailey and Myers met with Leach and Liggett, Kent Hance was communicating with Craig James. “Mike Leach’s actions with Adam were inhumane and dangerous, designed to inflict punishment and create great mental anguish,” James wrote in an e-mail. “Action must be taken to not only insure the safety of Adam but to protect his teammates from this and other forms of abuse Coach Leach inflicts on his players.

  “Kent, I ask you and the board members this: Have each of you seen the shed and electrical closet Adam was confined to? I’d recommend each of you visit the places—walk in them and turn the lights off. NOW, imagine standing there for three hours in the cold without being allowed to sit down or lean against the wall. This story will become public at some point and you can count on the fact that some television cameras will show this picture.”

  The regents were getting antsy, too. So was the university’s legal team, led by general counsel Pat Campbell. In consultation with the lawyers and the trustees, Hance told Bailey and Myers that they needed a letter from Leach by noon on Monday.

  Craig James wanted answers by Monday, too. “They were getting ready to leave to go down to the Alamo Bowl,” James said. “He is still the head coach and our son is about to go and be under his guidance again on the football field. We hadn’t heard back with certainty what the procedures would be.”

  Mike Leach spent the remainder of the twenty-sixth trying to prepare for the bowl game. Liggett told him to focus on football; he’d handle the ongoing Adam James matter. In the back of his mind, Liggett was convinced that Leach was going to have to make some kind of concession to get the problem behind him. But he was hoping to delay any action until after the bowl game. He called Charlotte Bingham, updated her on
the meeting with Bailey and Myers and said he would continue to work toward a resolution.

  The following morning Liggett got a voice mail from Bingham.

  “Hi, Ted. This is Charlotte. Sorry to call you on a Sunday morning. I did want to touch base with you. Actually, after our conversation last night I did visit with both the chancellor and the president. Here’s where I think we are. One, a number of … things just keep happening in terms of … let’s just put it [at] outside pressure. And so what I really think needs to happen, if there’s not just some incredible objection Mike needs to sign the letter that he … sign the letter that he was presented with. Return that to … return it to Pat or return it to the president, and then he needs to work on some sort of apology. And also the chancellor would like you to get that either to the president or to Pat on Monday.”

  Reading between the lines, Liggett determined that the reference to outside pressure was code for Craig James. It was Sunday night before Liggett reconnected with Leach and told him about Bingham’s voice mail and the Monday deadline to produce a letter of apology.

  “If there was a Monday ultimatum,” Leach said, “they should have told us that at the Saturday meeting. They never told us that.”

  Liggett agreed. But that no longer mattered.

  “If you don’t sign the letter, Kent is going to come after you,” Liggett told him.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not signing it,” Leach said.

  Once Leach left for San Antonio without providing the letter, Gerald Myers told Guy Bailey he planned to suspend Leach. Bailey pledged his support. “But we need to make sure we’ve got the backing of everybody above us,” Bailey told Myers.

  They quickly convened a phone conference with Hance and board members Anders and Turner. One of the issues they discussed was the ramifications of suspending Leach on the eve of a bowl game. That step was sure to achieve the one thing they had been trying to avoid—bad publicity. But the board members were beyond that issue. One of them asked Bailey a simple question: If a dean had refused to cooperate with your request to write a letter to a parent who had complained, what would you do?