Moments after the men charged into his apartment, Caperton Humphrey remembered the baseball bat in his bedroom.
If they came at him — and Humphrey believed he saw the imprint of a pistol in one man’s jogging pants — he needed a plan to fight back.
For months, four of these men had been his teammates on the Kansas Jayhawks football team. Now they and about a half-dozen others were in Humphrey’s living room, threatening him, his father Jamie, and even Caperton’s 15-year-old brother. Seconds later, Jamie Humphrey dialed 911, putting his phone on speaker before setting it on a countertop.
Caperton Humphrey didn’t know it, but the end of his time with KU football was just a few days away, with this serving as the breaking point.
The final resolution: KU’s athletic department agreeing to pay him more than $50,000 in benefits to go home after he reported threats and harassment from teammates.
Where was Les Miles in all of this? Well, he was informed and here’s what he proposed as a solution:
… Miles did meet with Caperton and the four other football players, though, asking both sides to apologize. Neither side obliged.
Miles, according to Caperton and Jamie, offered a different solution. The players would settle their differences on the practice field, pitting them against each other — head-on — in full-contact drills.
And what about Miles’ enabler, Jeff Long? Apparently his major concern was keeping his fingerprints off the body.
The final version — signed by all parties on April 2 and 3 of 2019 — had similar language to the first draft sent by Reed to Caperton earlier in the week, with KU Athletics requiring that the agreement be signed by both his parents. In addition, KU was not represented on the document by its athletic director Long, but instead by Reed.
According to one person with extensive experience in compliance, that approach is unusual.
No shit, Sherlock.
It never ceases to amaze me how Jeff Long was held up as some sort of paradigm for collegiate sports management. Which says more about the latter than the former, I guess.
(h/t)
Get The Picture 