26mi235 wrote:The timing is part of the picture here. My guess is there that she had a few strong enemies and that they decided this was the time to stop her rather than enshrine her and found a way to transform rumors in action, and given the climate change since Penn State (but also, the climate has been progressively changing in that direction from when I started teaching in the early '80s).
Maybe. There might also be at least a slim chance that in the absence of a conspiracy, a former athlete from that 2002 team returned after quite a while to be coached by Bev recently, and that maybe something happened during their latest coach-athlete association that made the athlete choose to reveal details of the past relationship, or threaten to go public. Stranger things have happened, so I'm not ready to accept the conspiracy theory as having the highest probability of explaining the situation just yet, although I won't rule it out either.
A lot of folks have brought up the timing of this issue, but don't forget that Jerry Sandusky's Penn State crimes were also nearly ten years old but that didn't save the University from having the hammer dropped on them.
jazzcyclist wrote:A lot of folks have brought up the timing of this issue, but don't forget that Jerry Sandusky's Penn State crimes were also nearly ten years old but that didn't save the University from having the hammer dropped on them.
I don't think the NCAA would drop the hammer on UT though, unless it turns out that the coach also committed crimes that were covered up. In comparing this to Penn State, whether or not higher officials were previously aware and covered things up at the time could be one ace in the hole that Coach Kearney could be holding since it could further damage the institution's reputation and put them more at risk of possible civil suits by the athlete (or athletes) involved. If there's an ugly lawsuit between Coach Kearney and UT, I wonder if more former and present UT women's track and field athletes and staff would tend to feel more loyalty to their University and possibly to the athlete involved, or to their coach if they have to be involved. Hopefully it won't come to that.
polevaultpower wrote:I've never heard of the NCAA punishing a school for a non-criminal relationship between an athlete and a coach?
Prior to the Jerry Sandusky scandal, I had never heard of the NCAA punishing a school for criminal actions at all unless it violated NCAA bylaws. Even when there was a murder and a coverup involving Baylor basketball players, the NCAA let the criminal justice system handle it.
Blues wrote:a former athlete from that 2002 team returned after quite a while to be coached by Bev recently, and that maybe something happened during their latest coach-athlete association that made the athlete choose to reveal details of the past relationship, or threaten to go public.
You must have contacts. That is the exact story that is being passed around locally.
There's also a conspiracy theory like you mentioned but the above is most likely what happened.
At this point let me interject that these are real people with real feelings we're talking about here, and speculation on specifics on who the person might be should stop at this level. Thanks for understanding.
gh wrote:At this point let me interject that these are real people with real feelings we're talking about here, and speculation on specifics on who the person might be should stop at this level. Thanks for understanding.
Sorry gh. I've followed blues' lead and erased my error.
thanks for erring on the side of caution, but there was no need to yank your originals. If I'd objected to their presence I would simply have excised them myself. I merely said that the investigative trail should end at that point.
However, in this case it's not specified whether the student was an athlete, and the university has already disciplined him years ago.
It was a student, and though the two situations are not identical, it makes you wonder how things would have been handled with Kearney had she not voluntarily resigned.
That said, Applewhite far from out of thw woods. From ESPN -
While Dodds and Applewhite both said in their statements that the matter had been dealt with, Texas has called a special meeting of the board of regents for Sunday at 1:45 p.m. ET.
"We are first and foremost concerned with the safety, health and well-being of our students on all 15 UT campuses and wherever they travel under the auspices of our institutions," the board said in a statement. "As a result, it was with great disappointment and sadness that we learned a short time ago about the reprimand given in February of 2009 to one of the assistant football coaches employed by UT Austin for inappropriate conduct during the football team's trip to the Fiesta Bowl in January 2009."
The agenda for the Sunday meeting states there will be a personnel matters discussion, as well as a "discussion regarding legal issues concerning individual athletic personnel" and a "discussion regarding legal issues related to inappropriate relations between employees and students."
I dont think it matters if she was an athlete or not. Obviously the woman wasn't a football player under Applewhite's purview, while Kearney was involved with an athlete she coached(an important, and key, distinction).
guru wrote:I dont think it matters if she was an athlete or not.
I think it matters. A college athlete (especially one on a scholarship) is much more vulnerable to coercion and authoritative influence by a coach than a non-athlete student would be, even if that coach is of a different sport. There's still more influence compared to students who don't fall under the jurisdiction of the athletic department in any way.
guru wrote:I dont think it matters if she was an athlete or not. Obviously the woman wasn't a football player under Applewhite's purview, while Kearney was involved with an athlete she coached(an important, and key, distinction).
Are you sure "a woman" was specified? I looked for it, but could not see any gender reference.
guru wrote:I dont think it matters if she was an athlete or not. Obviously the woman wasn't a football player under Applewhite's purview, while Kearney was involved with an athlete she coached(an important, and key, distinction).
Are you sure "a woman" was specified? I looked for it, but could not see any gender reference.
It's a fair assumption, considering Applewhite is married. Regardless, it's not a football player(if it was, I guarantee you someone would have dug this up and put it out a long time ago).
Most university policies state that one cannot have a relationship with someone in which they have power over. As in coach/athlete, professor/student, or advisor/advised etc..
Coachtheboyd wrote:Most university policies state that one cannot have a relationship with someone in which they have power over. As in coach/athlete, professor/student, or advisor/advised etc..
Yes, but with this football coach it was apparently a nonathlete student, so that power relationship just wasn't there. This guy wasn't a megacoach with influence outside of the athletic department, like Joe Paterno. As long as he reported it in a timely manner and the student was an adult and not an athlete or employee of the athletic department, the university should stay out of it and leave them alone.
Pego wrote:Are you sure "a woman" was specified? I looked for it, but could not see any gender reference.
I'm sure her name and pic will be plastered everywhere by tomorrow. She was a student athletic trainer with the football team and is currently a trainer at another college now.
Story on the Headlines: " The Kearney Case: Reckoning For Texas Athletics?" has an indication where things might be going. Her team is probably looking at all of the cases the have come up and maybe even digging up new ones, that involved different choices being made. There was also some indication that political dimensions might make it hard for UT to make a big settlement, although that is not the main point.
Well, the paper files seem incomplete, although the degree is unclear. If they did a legal request and the school is not fully forthcoming, it would likely come back to haunt them if the incomplete nature of the search on UT's side is identified.
Further, the position of Kearney's team is that the search probably applies to UT-Austin and there are a lot of faculty and staff, and something is likely to arise there.
The much broader class of faculty and students opens much greater possibility of cases being treated differentially. Those cases would be more 'similar'. However, the controlling element in the rules is the supervisor/underling not primarily that the person is a student. And legal distinctions are likely to matter here.
I still don't understand why Kearney would resign if she planned on fighting this. She should have forced Texas to fire her. How can she argue wrongful termination when she wasn't terminated?
jazzcyclist wrote:I still don't understand why Kearney would resign if she planned on fighting this. She should have forced Texas to fire her. How can she argue wrongful termination when she wasn't terminated?
Not sure that it makes a dime's worth of difference for some elements. Too bad Law Dude is not here very often any more.
Word is she offered to settle for $3M and UT said bring it on. $3M is nothing to them so she must really not have a case if they're not willing to make her go away for that amount of money.
I'm sure dozens upon dozens of coaches and faculty have had relationships with students but she's the only one that did it with a direct report or athlete and broke NCAA rules by providing other benefits (car, rent, etc.).
There seemed to be a hint that they might be constrained on money for a settlement and there was a sense that an actual lawsuit and penalty would be a required expenditure.
Civil cases are a lot easier than criminal cases and if UT wants to put their faith in a jury outcome before even knowing what the rules of the game will be, they would seem to taking a risk. Yes, the implication of this is that there might not be very much 'there' there. On the other hand, losing a lawsuit will probably look worse than making a settlement. It might be concerns about other cases being filed in the future that drives this decision but if it goes wrong with a trial, then the school is likely to worse off all around.
There is a tradeoff of certainty of a problem and a cost if they settle with moderate probability of losing and having it cost more. The decision maker might be someone where those potential future cost will be on someone else's watch and are too heavily discounted. They might want to talk to the ex-Penn State AD....
