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Baylor Rape Scandal for Blogcritics--Part Four

(This is the fourth article in a five part series analyzing athletes, universities, and crime. The primary focus of the series is the ongoing revelations from the rape scandal at Baylor University and was originally published at Blogcritics Magazine on January 12, 2017)
Welcome back to NCAA: Fact or Fanatic, where the season is over but the questions and problems remain. We’ve been taking a look at the staggering number of collegiate athletes who are committing crimes, and the universities’ responses. But there’s another entity we need to factor in here, and that’s the NCAA. How is it possible that the NCAA can cite a school for a violation because of a picture of the coach being too close to a recruit, but not weigh in at all on athletes committing crimes?For an example, let’s go back to Baylor.There isn’t a college football fan in the country who doesn’t know what went down at Baylor. New reports from women who were sexually assaulted continue to come out. The Pepper Hamilton report indicated that the university was involved in shaming victims who filed a report, threatening to tell their parents they’d been drinking or promiscuous, and in that manner kept their star athletes in school. The police department buried victims’ reports, thereby obstructing justice in these cases.Through all this, the players continued to play, the seats in Baylor’s new stadium continued to be filled, and the university as well as the fans and alumni are unrepentant, defiantly pronouncing their support for disgraced and dismissed head coach Art Briles as Baylor kept the entire corps of assistant coaches on staff in 2016.What do we hear from the NCAA?Not a damn thing. And that’s the status quo regarding any athlete committing a crime. In December, 2016 17 college football and seven college basketball players were arrested or cited for crimes, according to Arrest Nation. Take a look at the schools involved:Mississippi State University – 3 arrests/citations/charges
Ohio University – 3 arrests/citations/chargesAuburn University – 2 arrests/citations/charges
Florida State University – 2 arrests/citations/chargesEastern Kentucky University – 1 arrest/citation/charge
Marian University – 1 arrest/citation/charge
Morehead State University – 1 arrest/citation/charge
Texas A&M University – 1 arrest/citation/charge
University of Arkansas – 1 arrest/citation/charge
University of Florida – 1 arrest/citation/charge
University of Houston – 1 arrest/citation/charge
University of Kansas – 1 arrest/citation/charge
University of Michigan – 1 arrest/citation/charge
University of South Carolina – 1 arrest/citation/charge
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga – 1 arrest/citation/charge
Utah State University – 1 arrest/citation/charge
Western Michigan University – 1 arrest/citation/charge
Youngstown State University – 1 arrest/citation/chargeBut that’s just in one month. It doesn’t give you the true scope of the problem. Let’s take a look at Arrest Nation’s stats for 2016. First off, the top eight universities in athletes arrested or cited for crimes:University of Missouri – 9 Arrests/Citations/ChargesAuburn University – 7 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Georgia – 7 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Nebraska – 7 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of South Carolina – 7 Arrests/Citations/ChargesMississippi State University – 6 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Colorado – 6 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Miami – 6 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Notre Dame – 6 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Washington State University – 6 Arrests/Citations/ChargesUniversity of Florida – 5 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Illinois – 5 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) – 5 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of North Dakota – 5 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Wyoming – 5 Arrests/Citations/ChargesBaylor University – 4 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Florida State University – 4 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Indiana University – 4 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Texas A&M University – 4 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Alabama – 4 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Iowa – 4 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of North Texas – 4 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Oklahoma – 4 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga – 4 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Youngstown State University – 4 Arrests/Citations/ChargesArkansas State University – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Coastal Carolina University – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Illinois State University – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Lindenwood University – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Louisiana State University (LSU) – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Ohio University – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Purdue University – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Arkansas – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Hawaii – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Kansas – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Kentucky – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Massachusetts – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of New Mexico – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Tennessee at Martin – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
West Virginia University – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Western Michigan University – 3 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Xavier University – 3 Arrests/Citations/ChargesArizona State University – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Bowling Green State University – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Chapman University – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Colorado State University – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
East Carolina University – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Eastern Kentucky University – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Montana State University – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Southern Utah University – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Stony Brook University – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Arizona – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Connecticut – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Maryland – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Michigan – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Nevada – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Oregon – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Southern California (USC) – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
University of Utah – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Utah State University – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) – 2 Arrests/Citations/Charges
Western Kentucky University – 2 Arrests/Citations/ChargesBoston College – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Brigham Young University (BYU) – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
California State University, Fresno (Fresno State) – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Central Michigan University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Clemson University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Cornell University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Eastern Washington University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Florida Institute of Technology – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Gonzaga University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Grambling State University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Iowa State University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Jacksonville State University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Johns Hopkins University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Kent State University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Louisiana College – 1 Arrest/Citation/ChargeLouisiana Tech University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Marian University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Marshall University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Maryville College – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Miami University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Michigan State University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Morehead State University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Morehouse College – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Mt. San Antonio College – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
New Mexico State University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Ohio State University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Oklahoma State University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Penn State University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Portland State University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Shorter University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
The Citadel – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
United States Military Academy (Army) – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of Akron – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of California, Davis (UC Davis) – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of Houston – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of Idaho – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of Maine – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of Minnesota – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of Missouri – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of Montana – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of North Alabama – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of North Carolina – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of Tennessee – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of Texas – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
University of Texas at San Antonio – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Washburn University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge
Wesleyan University – 1 Arrest/Citation/Charge

NCAA National Office, IndianapolisThe sports breakdown in these 273 incidents are as follows: college football, 203 arrests; basketball 57; baseball 4; lacrosse 2; soccer 2; track and field 2; gymnastics 1; softball 1; and volleyball 1.Oh, and college coaches? Twelve arrests or citations. Twelve. Just let that simmer for a moment.The scale of the problem is horrendous, and annually it keeps on growing. Keep in mind that, as we’ve previously discussed, only 1 in 10 sexual crimes are reported to police or the university. These stats also don’t count allegations that university doesn’t follow up on.You’ll note that the worst offender is college football. But there’s another factor we need to consider. Not included in the stats above is another group that should concern us:Former players.In 2016, 97 former college football players were arrested or cited for crimes. Professional football had 33 arrests in 2016. How is that possible? These players got a full ride to their university. They didn’t shell out a single dime for an expensive education. Even if pro football didn’t pan out, they received an education.Didn’t they?Not necessarily. Right now, the University of North Carolina is under investigation by the NCAA for academic fraud perpetrated from 1993 to 2011. Wainstein’s report focused on courses in the formerly named African and Afro-American Studies (AFAM) department requiring only a research paper or two while offering GPA-boosting grades. Many were misidentified as lecture courses that didn’t meet.Wainstein estimated more than 3,100 students were affected between 1993 and 2011, with athletes across numerous sports accounting for roughly half the enrollments.That means more than 1500 student athletes got college credit and high grades for a course they never attended. One would have to be stupid to believe this sort of thing isn’t going on at other major universities. And this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.Ever hear of Dr. Jan Kemp?Kemp was a remedial studies professor at the University of Georgia in the early 1980s. You know – when Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker was there, and Georgia won a national championship. The academic situation was dire in the football program, and Kemp was the whistleblower who brought the whole process to a grinding halt. The university fired Kemp in 1982, after she refused to pass UGA football players in her classes if they hadn’t earned a passing grade.According to an ESPN article by Tom Farrey:

Leroy Ervin, Kemp’s boss, was secretly taped at a faculty meeting. “I know for a fact that these kids would not be here if it were not for their utility to the institution,” he was caught saying in a staff meeting. “They are used as a kind of raw material in the production of some goods to be sold as whatever product, and they get nothing in return.”Vince Dooley, at the time the Bulldogs’ coach and athletic director, testified that athletes were admitted with SAT scores of less than 650 out of a possible 1,600. “In order to be, we think, reasonably competitive, we thought that leeway was necessary,” he said at the time.

Kemp won her wrongful termination suit. She was reinstated at UGA, where she continued to teach remedial studies to college athletes until her death in 2008. Kemp’s reasons for speaking up about the UGA football program and its low academic standards was a benchmark moment.

“All over the country, athletes are used to produce revenue,” she told The New York Times a month after the trial. “I’ve seen what happens when the lights dim and the crowd fades. They’re left with nothing. I want that stopped.”

When you look at cases like these, and then consider the numbers of athletes who are charged with crimes, you have to start to wonder: What is going on in our universities? And why isn’t the NCAA doing anything about it?The fact of the matter is that the NCAA hasn’t changed that much since the 1980s. Back then, in the UGA case:

Georgia would face no NCAA violations. The NCAA, an athletic body that usually lets schools determine if its own academic policies were violated, just was not interested in her information. Kemp recalls an NCAA investigator telling her, “We don’t want to hear anything about grades. All we’re interested in are cars, or trips, or things of that sort.”She told him she hoped the university did give the athletes cars, since they weren’t getting an education.

So the NCAA had little interest in maintaining the academic integrity of college football programs as far back as the 1980s. But what are they doing now?For that we need to look at another school: Penn State.In the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, the NCAA was driven to act. They forced Penn State to vacate 111 wins under Joe Paterno, pay a $60 million fine, and accept a bowl ban and scholarship reductions. The problem was that most of the sanctions were lifted. Why?Because the NCAA was punishing people who had nothing to do with the abuse. Players. Fans. The game. Most of the sanctions were lifted because of the legality of the consent agreement the NCAA had forced Penn State to sign. Kansas State President Ken Schultz serves on the NCAA Board of Directors, and he stated:

“As the board of governors, we don’t have any desire to go in and have to do these sort of actions with any of our colleague institutions ever again,” he said. “This was a truly extraordinary circumstance and the board felt that they had to quickly and decisively put forward a set of sanctions … I hope it is a once-in-a-hundred-year type of occurrence and that we’ll be able to use the regular compliance activities” in future cases.

So what effect does this have on the Baylor case? Or Minnesota or North Carolina? Texas attorney Kevin Lindstrom weighed in.

…we have clearly gotten mixed signals from the NCAA over the past few years. Their actions in the Penn State matter may have an unfortunate chilling effect in situations such as Baylor where they absolutely should be aggressive.Here is the key differences in the Baylor situation to the Penn State situation. In the Sandusky matter, it was a college employee assaulting children. While awful, I can see why people were critical of the NCAA for involving itself in such a matter that did not involve student athletes. Baylor, on the other hand, was student athletes committing crimes against other students and other student athletes. That screams jurisdiction for the NCAA.

The distinction he makes there is sound. Sandusky’s child abuse occurred in his off-season camps which, while they were held at Penn State facilities, did not involve or include student athletes. The NCAA sanctions against Penn State were a knee-jerk reaction to the horrified response throughout the athletic and academic worlds. And while the sanctions ultimately did a lot of good when that $60 million was distributed to organizations that lead the fight against child sexual abuse, the harm the NCAA inflicted upon student athletes at Penn State, who were innocent of any involvement in Sandusky’s crimes, was unjustified.That brings us to Baylor. As Lindstrom points out, NCAA has direct jurisdiction here. These are student athletes who committed crimes, and the university administration, staff, coaches, and even the campus police colluded to keep those crimes from being prosecuted. As a result, victims were more than ignored. They were bullied into silence by individuals who are directly answerable to the NCAA. So here’s our question:What, exactly, in the role of the NCAA in the Baylor case?The NCAA may not get involved in the Baylor case at all.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has notified Baylor that it won’t exert its executive authority to impose sweeping sanctions against the school for broad institutional failings, and will instead follow its normal investigative process, according to people familiar with the matter.

Wait – what?So although the NCAA self-identifies as having the authority to impose sanctions, it’s not going to? If this isn’t the type of case that falls directly under its jurisdiction, what is? Sure, it can stomp through the minutiae of Ole Miss’s recruiting records, imposing sanctions for feeding recruits breakfast or going to Hugh Freeze’s house. It can raise all kinds of hell about overnights in hotels or a coach’s behavior. But in a case like this involving student athletes, it’s not going to impose sanctions?To be fair, the NCAA is looking into recruiting offenses by Baylor assistant Kendal Briles. Yes, that would be Art Briles’ son, who still worked at Baylor for the 2016 season. So what violation was so dire the NCAA could sanction Baylor when they refuse to do so in the sexual assault case?

According to the NCAA release, Briles and Wallis tried to find loophole in the rules that allowed them to see more prospects in the spring. This involved attending a recruit’s track meet and turning their backs when the recruit competed so it did not count as an official evaluation. The NCAA stated the two coaches attended the track meets during the spring of 2015 and were in a position to be seen by recruits. This put Baylor over the limit of two evaluations per prospect during the spring recruiting period.Briles and Wallis were suspended for the 2015 season-opener against Lamar. According to ESPN, the violations were related to the recruitment of Sachse’s Devin Duvernay and Stafford’s Hezekiah Jones.

The NCAA has fined Baylor $5,000 because two assistants went to a track meet. In the meantime, fans have blacked out McLane Stadium in support of Art Briles, paid for full-page newspaper ads in support of Art Briles, and hung signs out of luxury boxes extolling Art Briles. And yet, the NCAA is silent.Look, there are major problems with sexual assault on college campuses. While Title IX is intended to provide a system through which victims can seek recourse, Title IX coordinators are not law enforcement. The investigation and prosecution of athletes who are accused of crimes must go through proper legal means and due process. You can’t expect a university panel to legitimately determine which cases are important enough to discipline a player.But in a case like Baylor, when the campus police are actively burying reports, you can’t even count on law enforcement to do what needs to be done.On many college campuses, the university police are exemplary and genuinely investing in protecting all students.But on some – campuses where the win and the almighty dollar are the most important factors – the system breaks down. When that happens, it’s never in favor of the victims. Never.That gap, between Title IX jurisdiction and the legal system, is what needs to be bridged. Title IX laws were designed to insure that both genders are treated equitably. In athletics, that means scholarships for both sexes must be equal, and athletes must have comparable privileges. Title IX is not designed to handle sexual assault allegations unless and until the victim has no other options.If the victim reports the assault to the university and the university police and nothing is done, as at Baylor; if after she reports the assault she is bullied or threatened by the officials who are supposed to be protecting her, as at Baylor; then Title IX is the only option she has left.That approach is not working. Lindstrom is able to speak authoritatively on this subject as well.

Well, first, we need to reevaluate Title IX’s role in investigating criminal issues between students. It seems that is putting someone who is often unqualified to know the details of something as complex as a rape case in an incredibly difficult position. Even for those who are in the business of investigating, prosecuting and trying rape cases have very difficult challenges, so how do we expect someone who has no experience with such matters to be able to address it fairly to the accused and accuser?

Excellent point.
101016-N-7647G-111 ANNAPOLIS, Md.In the end, it’s hard to escape the fact that the NCAA isn’t using the authority it already has in cases where it must be used. The same organization that gave SMU the death penalty for paying athletes to play, the same organization that punished football players for abuse that occurred without their knowledge or participation, is sitting on its thumbs regarding a case that’s far more severe than SMU’s and which falls directly under NCAA auspices, unlike at Penn State.As Laura Leigh Majer, Texas sports journalist with NFLFemale.com and host of “Down and Dirty Sports” on AltConRadio, remarked:

When the schools are not disciplining bad behavior, especially criminal behavior, and it appears an institution is covering it up, it needs to be taken to the next level.

So we find ourselves in a conundrum. The NCAA isn’t doing anything in these cases – remember, the UNC academic fraud case has been ongoing without result or sanctions since 2012  – which emboldens the universities to not do anything either. Meanwhile, Title IX coordinators have offices that are woefully understaffed and underfinanced and sadly underqualified to pursue these cases or to impose any penalties outside of lawsuits. And that leaves victims like the ones in Baylor and Minnesota with nothing.Apparently Ken Schultz and the rest of the NCAA governors are getting their wish. They have chosen not to act in this case. As a result, they have destroyed any respect the NCAA might have possessed as well as any trust. As for Baylor, it has additional problems. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges has given the university a warning that its accreditation is in danger:

The commission found Baylor out of compliance with several accrediting requirements related to the sexual-assault scandal that has plagued the Baptist university in Texas, including a failure to provide adequate support services for students and a failure to have “appropriate fiscal and administrative control” of the institution’s athletics program.

Evidently, the SACS isn’t quite as intent upon non-action as the NCAA Board of Governors and Ken Schultz are.Here’s the thing: In order to really make a difference in the world of college athletes and crime, there must be fundamental shifts of ideology at both the university and NCAA levels. Both must be willing to enforce penalties against student athletes who violate the law and the student code of conduct. When I was in college, if I’d been arrested for a violent crime against another student, what happened next would have been swift. I would have been arrested, charged, and tried for the crime. I would have lost my scholarship. I would not have been allowed to attend the university. And that would have been all she wrote, because at the end of the process I would most likely have served a sentence whose length depended on the degree of the crime. Period.Same thing if my GPA exploded. If I pulled a 1.7 GPA for the semester because I decided to play video games in the football center instead of going to classes, my scholarship (communications and sports information, by the way) would have exploded as well.Same for you, reading this column right now. Do you doubt it? Think for a moment. What breaks do non-athletes get when it comes to sexual assault?None in the communications department. I was a debater. None of us on the team could have committed such an offense and been allowed to compete. Ever.Texas sports journalist Laura Lee Majer’s answer to this question is direct.

The safety of all students on a campus should be a primary concern for a university.  No one should be above the law or given “special treatment” for being a star athlete if they break a law. I do not think universities are providing safe environments, and support for victims, overall.

We agree with her. What seems to be a point of contention, however, is when it’s the NCAA’s obligation to act. For that, Kevin Lindstrom has the correct answer, in our opinion:

I think it is an NCAA problem from the beginning. If we are talking about a student athlete, the NCAA needs to be kept appraised of it from the start. That transparency, while probably pretty burdensome on both the reporting school and the NCAA, would be essential to ensuring that something like Baylor can’t happen again.

So when will the NCAA act? Or will it continue to put it off like it has the UNC case? That’s the question that we, as taxpayers, alumni, and college sports fans need the NCAA to answer. Considering the NCAA is a tax-exempt organization that accrued revenue of nearly $1 billion in 2014, it is answerable for its decisions regarding cases under its jurisdiction. It might not think it’s responsible…it might not act like it is…But it is.We’ll wrap up this series next week with our final area of analysis: the fans. With college athletics generating so much revenue for everybody but the players, how much responsibility do football fans bear for the status quo? How do we impact colleges, players, coaches, or the NCAA? Why is the moral compass never pointing true north when it comes to athletes who commit crimes?Some of the answers might surprise you.

Baylor Rape Scandal for Blogscritics-Part Three

(This is the third article in a five part series analyzing athletes, universities, and crime. The primary focus of the series is the ongoing revelations from the rape scandal at Baylor University and was originally published at Blogcritics Magazine on December 25, 2016.)

Welcome to NCAA Fact or Fanatic, where usually at this time of year we should be making bowl game picks and anticipating the Final Four. Instead, however, we find ourselves compelled to write this emergency edition of our current series on athletes and crimes based on what’s happened in just the past couple of weeks and how that, in turn, reflects upon the NCAA, police departments, DA offices, and the universities.Just in case you thought all of the cases we’ve been talking about are safely in the past and can be ignored as aberrations, allow us to demonstrate why it’s irresponsible to ignore the issue of college athletes and crimes. These stories can never be permitted to lapse from public consciousness, because the problem isn’t going away. It’s growing.Allow us to lay this out for you with some of the most recent cases. We’ll start with the latest, one that seems to be following the same tragic path as the Baylor nightmare.University of MinnesotaOn September 2, 2016 a Minnesota woman reported that she was the victim of sexual assault – a gang rape if you really want to know –involving four football players who participated and six more who were involved peripherally. None of the players was arrested, although the four alleged perpetrators were suspended for a game. The local DA’s office declined to pursue charges, and the entire matter appeared to have been resolved.But then the university’s Office of Equal Opportunity And Affirmative Action recommended that the four alleged participants and six other players be suspended for their upcoming appearance in the Holiday Bowl, and all of a sudden the entire football team announced it would “boycott” all activities – practice, travel, and playing – relating to the bowl. The team statement said specifically: “The boycott will remain effective until due process is followed and suspensions for all 10 players involved are lifted.”
But then the football team read the 80-page report the OEOAA had compiled. You can read it here for yourself (fair warning, the content is graphic and horrific in its details). It alleges that the woman was repeatedly raped, not only by current football players but by a recruit on an official visit to the Minnesota campus; that she was held down by some men while others assaulted her; that “a crowd” of men watched and cheered on the action; that as many as 20 men were involved either as witnesses or participants; and that witnesses took pictures and filmed the assault.The report is difficult for any morally conscious person to read, describing as it does an ordeal that went on for over two hours and in such a public manner. On October 4, before the report was released, the players’ attorney Lee Hutton commented:

Fortunately, the families of these African-American student-athletes avoided a mother’s worst nightmare that their son would be wrongly accused of this type of misconduct. Now, my legal duty is to restore their tarnished reputations.

You may note that the players’ reputations are here considered so much more important than the victim’s. That definitely seemed to be the priority across the board – from the Minneapolis Police Department to the Hennepin County District Attorney’s office to the Minnesota athletic department. And definitely for the players, the teammates of the accused men. That’s triply apparent in a comment by linebacker Nick Rallis:

The most important thing is, this was not a stance about sexual misconduct. It’s not our place to say whether they committed misconduct, and those found responsible will be held accountable. I think now we’re just trying to get people to slowly understand. We are going to go down there to represent those 10 guys and how they were mistreated in the process.

Yes, of course – because the players were mistreated here.Not the victim.University of OklahomaThis story, like so many in the modern age, begins with a video.Keep in mind that Mixon hit his victim so hard, bones were broken in her face. This incident took place in 2014, but when the video was finally made public last week the resulting furor was enough to rile all of college football up.Why?Because Bob Stoops is an idiot.The Oklahoma football program made Joe Mixon, who was an 18-year-old incoming freshman at the time, sit out for a season. You know – they redshirted him. That was the punishment the coaches and administrators at OU thought appropriate for a five-star, superbly conditioned, top-tier athlete whose response to a skinny little girl was to punch her so violently that bones in her face shattered. In other words, Bob Stoops didn’t think the incident merited much more than a redshirt season – which probably benefited Mixon anyway before his first snap the following year. That was then. But now?No, really?Let’s be frank. Stoops had no interest in kicking Joe Mixon off the Sooners’ squad in 2014 because he knew the hotly contested-for recruit would show up on someone else’s team within a matter of days. He wanted Mixon in his backfield. He didn’t give a damn about the injuries Amelia Molitor received. On December 21, 2016, this is what Stoops had to say:

Dismissal is really the only thing that is possible. A young guy having an opportunity to rehabilitate and to have some kind of discipline and come back from it is really not there anymore. Hopefully, that message goes down even to the high school level that these things are just unacceptable to any degree and there’s no recovering, I guess … It never has been acceptable. What I’m saying is there’s no recovering from these incidents really anymore.

There’s no recovering from what and for whom? No recovering for the athlete? What a pity. We already know there’s no recovering for the victim in this case, between the injuries she suffered and the harassment she underwent on the Norman campus.There’s also no recovering for a big-time coach who watched this same video a couple of weeks after the incident and who somehow determined that he, Mixon, and the University of Oklahoma could recover with a redshirt year presented as a punishment. The Sooners’ football team certainly recovered: Mixon has rushed 168 times for 1,183 yards and eight touchdowns, and added 32 receptions for five touchdowns and 449 yards so far this season.Stoops’s response to Mixon’s actions in 2014 were those of a coach seeking to keep a prized recruit because wins trump morality. His response two years later is so self-righteous, so smug and condescending, that it’s readily apparent that if he faced the same decision today it wouldn’t change.He’s right. There’s no recovering from these incidents anymore. But it’s certainly easy enough to marginalize the victim in pursuit of the all-mighty W.University of MichiganDecember 21, 2016 wasn’t a great day in Michigan either. That’s when Wolverine WR Grant Perry was arraigned on multiple charges resulting from an incident that occurred in East Lansing on October 15. Perry was charged with one felony count of assaulting, battering, resisting or obstructing an officer, two misdemeanor counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, and an underage drinking charge.The following day, the University of Michigan had this to say:

The University was made aware of the arrest of student-athlete Grant Perry earlier this fall. He was immediately suspended from all team activities at that time and missed two games. Based on the information at that time, Grant was allowed to resume team activities pending the outcome of the investigation. Upon being informed that charges would be filed, he was immediately and indefinitely suspended from all team activities until the legal process is completed.

Purdue UniversityFour Purdue players were accused of sexual assault upon two women, also Purdue students, after an October 13, 2016 incident that occurred in off-campus housing. Three of the accused players have criminal backgrounds: One had been charged with battery involving serious bodily injury, the second faced theft charges, and a third was charged with possession of marijuana.This alleged assault was the fifth such case in four days reported to West Lafayette, Indiana police around or on the Purdue campus, but it isn’t believed to be related to any other case. So far, no one has been arrested or charged, which leaves the purported victims considering a civil suit. Mario Massillamany, of Massillamany & Jeter LLP, represents the victims.

School officials must move quickly to hold these players accountable for their actions and show these victims that their voices are being heard. Purdue and other schools have an obligation to send a message that this type of activity will not be tolerated. If there are others out there who have been victimized in this manner, we encourage them to contact us to get the justice they deserve.

University of Southern CaliforniaUSC linebacker Osa Masina pled not guilty on December 16 to charges that he sexually assaulted a friend in Utah. He was charged with forcible rape and two counts of forcible sodomy which are first-degree felonies. Allegedly, Masina gave the victim a combination of alcohol, marijuana, and Xanax and raped her while she was unconscious. A video of the assault was taken by Masina and sent to the victim’s ex-boyfriend through Snapchat.Deseret News Utah reported: “It wasn’t until her ex-boyfriend’s father contacted her own father, suggesting something may have happened to the woman at the party, that the woman said she reported the assault to her parents. After that, they went to police. Asked on cross-examination why she hadn’t attempted to contact police sooner, the woman said she was scared.”Masina’s family posted a $250,000 bond. Masina is on interim suspension from USC, has been forced to vacate his campus housing, and cannot enter the USC campus without prior permission and an escort.Masina and a teammate, Don Hill (also suspended from the university), are also under investigation for a similar incident in California two weeks prior to the alleged rape in Utah, with the same victim and the same modus operandi – the booze, pot, and pills. Masina’s attorney, Greg Skordas, had this to say:

“I haven’t been told anything on the record about the California case, but I’ve been told generally and been led to believe generally there won’t be charges filed on anything that happened in California,” Skordas said.

Though he stopped short of calling the encounter with the woman in Utah consensual, Skordas said, “My understanding of the conduct of what occurred here wouldn’t have constituted a crime under Utah law.”He added: “I think that the difference in accounts of what happened are maybe not as distinct as you might think, but I think the way both individuals perceived things is quite different.”For Your Viewing DispleasureIn 2015, Florida State University quarterback De’Andre Johnson punched a woman in the face at a Tallahassee bar. Johnson was ultimately dismissed from the team.In June, Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen was confronted with a nasty problem caught on a nasty video of his nasty five-star freshman defensive lineman Jeffrey Simmons repeatedly punching a woman lying prone upon the ground:
Mullen and Mississippi State ultimately determined that a one-game suspension against perceived cupcake opponent South Alabama was sufficient punishment for Simmons’s arrest in the March incident. In one of the great beyotch-slaps of karma, South Alabama subsequently upset MSST 21-20.And Here’s the LatestTexas A&M WR Speedy Noil was arrested on December 20. Five grams of marijuana turned into an arrest on possession charges, a $2,000 bond, and Noil’s suspension from the team.Youngstown State RB Martin Ruiz was pulled over on a standard traffic stop after he made an illegal turn. The police detected the odor of marijuana, found a residue suspected to be marijuana – and a loaded gun in the glove compartment. Ruiz was charged with illegal possession of a firearm.That’s just in the past couple of weeks. We never have to look far to find college athletes being arrested for crimes ranging from possession to full-fledged rape. Every NCAA program will tell you that they have guest speakers, seminars, classes, and meetings with their players to prevent these athletes from breaking the law. And yet, not a week goes by without another report, another arrest, another crime that puts schools in the position of wondering which is the priority – getting the W on the field or selling the university’s soul. All too frequently, the soul is thrown out like refuse and the game, the victory on the field, is more important.And make no mistake, the programs that have sold their souls are easy to spot. Nick Saban’s defending national champion Crimson Tide had star linebacker Tim Williams and probable top-five draft pick offensive lineman Cam Robinson both arrested in 2016. Williams was arrested for illegal carrying of a firearm in September, while Robinson and a teammate were arrested in Louisiana for possession of narcotics and illegal carrying of a stolen firearm. It’s not until you read the DA’s explanation for why they declined to prosecute Robinson that you realize how significantly college athletes and the legal system have both been corrupted:“I want to emphasize once again that the main reason I’m doing this is that I refuse to ruin the lives of two young men who have spent their adolescence and teenage years, working and sweating, while we were all in the air conditioning.”Neither player was suspended, although both sat out for a game.Then there’s Baylor.Might want to consider adding Minnesota to Baylor’s side of the discussion, by the way, because all any reasonable person has to do is read the OEOAAO report on the sexual assault allegedly perpetrated on a single victim by multiple athletes, and it becomes clear that the idea that there’s nothing to prosecute is morally reprehensible. There are text chains, videos, and photographs of the assault –taken by both the perpetrators and witnesses.Witnesses watched while more than 10 football players allegedly restrained and repeatedly assaulted and raped a woman, and did nothing to help her. They were too busy taking videos and telling their friends to come on over and join in.But perhaps the most damning evidence from that horrible scene didn’t come from the victim. It came from one of the participants. (Names are redacted from this report by the university.)

[second assaulter] reentered the bedroom and the recruit started to get dressed. [second assaulter] appeared disappointed that the recruit did not ejaculate. [second assaulter]  referred to the recruit as a “recruit.” [victim] asked what [second assaulter] meant by “recruit.” [second assaulter] explained that the recruit was a football recruit visiting for the weekend. [victim] was taken aback and asked the recruit if he was in high school. The recruit said yes and that he was not going to come to the University because “it was too fucked up.” [victim] did not see the recruit again.

You read that correctly. A high school recruit was brought in to participate in all the “fun,” and he learned quickly why he didn’t want to attend Minnesota. Why would anyone, frankly? Especially a young woman who reads this report and the horrific events detailed in it. And her parents, upon learning that for some reason no one in local law enforcement or the DA’s office found a reason to arrest the players, charge them with a crime, or prosecute them.Keep in mind as well that this same incident sparked the “boycott” by the rest of the Minnesota team. Of course they boycotted, because the witnesses who took those videos, sent those texts, laughed on Snapchat, and shared those photos are part of that team. They aren’t guilty of a crime; they are guilty of callousness and complicity and just sheer bestial cruelty. So guilty that the recruit they were trying to impress with college life at Minnesota left for home with the determination not to attend the university. So guilty that they hid behind terms like “due process” and “justice.”And the university, police department, and District Attorney’s office hid back there too.But there’s one part of this horrific problem on our college campuses that we haven’t discussed yet, another participant in the tangled web of laws and sports, schools and money who could and should have a role in finding a way to solve the problems inherent in this flawed process. The NCAA should have jurisdiction over the behavior of student-athletes, coaches, and the programs they’re associated with.It should do a lot of things, but it doesn’t.Next time, we’ll focus on the NCAA and ask the questions that need to be asked. The first of those questions is the most obvious.Why isn’t the NCAA doing anything to discipline athletes who commit crimes, particularly sexual assault, and the universities who shelter them?Until we have an answer to that question, this crisis will continue to escalate. Consider that in 2016, college football leads all categories when it comes to athletes and crime, with 199 arrests so far and countless cases swept under the rug. After all, it’s just too fatiguing to hold athletes to the same standards as other human beings. They work outside in the sun and heat while the rest of us are sitting in the air conditioning. That’s what the DA said in Monroe, Louisiana, and the cops in Waco, Texas, and now apparently the same excuse holds true up in Minnesota as well.If the athletes aren’t going to be held accountable, who should be? We know who our vote would be for, and in the next installment of this series so will you.

Baylor Rape Scandal for Blogscritics--Part Two

(This is the second article in a five part series analyzing athletes, universities, and crime. The primary focus of the series is the ongoing revelations from the rape scandal at Baylor University and was originally published at Blogcritics Magazine on December 20, 2016.)

Welcome to Fact or Fanatic, where today we continue our in-depth look into college athletics and how universities and the NCAA handle the growing problem of corruption, bad behavior, and sexual abuse. This problem is so widespread and so malleable that everything’s gone to pot since we published the first installment.For example, in our previous column we extolled the Army-Navy game and how it represents everything good about college football.Sorry about that.As the Wake Forest spy ring story increases in scale, it appears that Army – along with Virginia Tech and Louisville – received Wake’s offensive game plans in the week prior to those games. So, our bad. We got sucked into the annual pageantry of the Army cadets versus the Navy midshipmen, and completely failed to discern that while the players were everything good about the game, the coaches were not.For shame.In fact today the NCAA decided to fine both Louisville and Virginia Tech $25,000. Wow. Those amounts are so huge for programs that make hundreds of millions of dollars annually, we’re sure no one else will ever stop and say no when a disgruntled play-by-play announcer offers a coach his opponents’ game plan. Cheating, at least, hasn’t evolved as quickly as some other faults. It’s not that different from a situation involving Tennessee and Florida, a Kinkos, Ron Zook, and Steve Spurrier two decades ago.Still lame.In addition, the past few days have been uber-busy in Minnesota. Ten players were suspended for the bowl game due to a sexual assault investigation. The case, which allegedly implicates six players as participants in the assault, wasn’t prosecuted due to a lack of evidence. All six players were suspended, but so were four more. That on its own is bad enough, but what happened next is worse: The remainder of the Gophers’ football team announced they would “boycott” the bowl game and “stand in solidarity” with their teammates.Wait – what?The Minnesota football team announced they would boycott all practices for the bowl game and even the Holiday Bowl itself. For a couple of days it looked like the bowl was in jeopardy, until Saturday when the Gophers finally capitulated. The night before, the players were made aware of the details in the 80-page Equal Opportunity And Affirmative Action report that laid out why the 10 players had been suspended. That report, allegedly, was the catalyst for the players and the university reaching a compromise that would send the remainder of the Gophers to the bowl game.The players also released a statement in which they acknowledged that sexual assault was unacceptable and that all women should be treated with respect, but – you know. Might have been nice if they’d thought that first BEFORE they decided to take a stand beside their teammates who blatantly didn’t share that point of view.Both these new disasters play right into what we’re going to break down in this second installment of our series on NCAA athletes, criminal behavior, and who’s to blame. Our guests Laura Leigh Majer and Kevin Lindstrom will be adding their expertise to our inquiry, and we are hoping to dig even further in our attempts to disinter the real roots of this ongoing disaster.We last discussed the tragically flawed situation at Baylor, the entitlement displayed by Stanford University rapist Brock Turner, and the impact both situations have had upon college athletics, fans, schools, and media. This time, and with the addition of these two latest scandals, we’re going to expand our focus a bit and concentrate on one aspect that is a constant in all these cases:The coaches.The Buck Stops HerePresident Harry Truman’s mantra is as applicable today as it was when he okayed the nukes that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to end World War Two. In college athletics, there’s a definite hierarchy of power and the coaches are the first power position in the chain. The coaches know their athletes intimately. They see and interact with them on a daily basis, season and off-season. They establish the code of conduct they expect their athletes to hold to, and if that code is violated they determine the first disciplinary actions.But in the world of big-money college sports, coaches are kept busy doing all sorts of things in addition to the coaching they must do week to week: practice, scrimmage, meetings, and so forth. Many big-name school coaches have weekly television and radio shows on the local stations, and appear on sports-related media from ESPN to the college newspaper.They are pseudo-celebrities in the towns that host their schools, and must make an appearance at every important school event. Have to keep both the media and the boosters happy, after all. Even during the height of the season, they are recruiting – setting up trips for recruits and their families to come to the campus, take in a game, hang with the current team in the facilities, and so forth.And let’s not forget the community service these coaches are expected to do. They invite children with disabilities or challenges to their practices, or meet groups of them on the sidelines before a game. Recently, for example, Tennessee head coach Butch Jones and several of his best-known players went to Chattanooga to meet the kids who’d survived a tragic bus crash the day before. Urban Meyer at Ohio State has paired with the Ohio Treasurer to create a system where the disabled can save money against future expenses. Every school has a story of its coach affecting positive change in its community, and that’s something we cannot overlook.The positive impact these coaches have upon their communities is indisputable.But beneath all those shiny PR moments lies big-time coaching’s soft, dank underbelly. Coaches affect more than you might think, and if a coach goes off the rails the program is not far behind.The Petrino EffectWe write fantasy, so we love epic stories of disaster, love gone awry, and betrayal. Thank all the gods we have Bobby Petrino to keep us amused, because he’s a fantasy epic George RR Martin would revel in. Petrino’s history is one of the most checkered in college football history, between job-hopping, recruiting weirdness, and bimbo biking. But no one could have seen adding cheating to that list. The fact that no one could have seen it means that someone should have suspected it, because Petrino is that kind of coach.Yes, we know Cardinal fans. Louisville hired Petrino the first time, and he got the school to the Orange Bowl and thinking big before he jumped ship to coach Atlanta (where he managed to last only 13 games before bailing out and returning to the college game at Arkansas). After a motorcycle accident shamed Petrino out of the SEC, he managed to last one season at Western Kentucky before getting re-hired by Louisville.Here he is once more, ready to launch his Cardinals against LSU in the Citrus Bowl, and what happens? His staff (yeah, right) accepted information from a disgruntled former Wake Forest assistant-turned-play-by-play-announcer without his knowledge (like we’re going to believe that) and got poor old Bobby stuck in a brand new mess.Of course.Bobby Petrino is the poster boy for why neither the fans nor the media can wholly trust a college coach anymore. In the days of yore, no one would have dreamed of questioning iconic coaches like General Robert Neyland, Bear Bryant, or Bobby Bowden. But the birth of the 24-hour news cycle and the instant reporting capability of online new sites has made it correspondingly more difficult for coaches to have that nod-nod wink-wink relationship with the press that some of those old-school coaches claimed as a benefit to their offices. We no longer trust our coaches and we have no reason to.Fans monitor flight traffic sites to see who their coaches are going to see – or conversely, which coaches are coming to be seen. Every minute of a coach’s press conference is covered on live stream, which gives the media the chance to color or taint the coach’s message at will – while the coach is still talking. And for a coach like Petrino, everyone becomes a journalist ready to break a new scoop.This kind of sports media free-for-all is prevalent throughout college football, except for one place.Waco, TexasWaco is a small city, with fewer than 130,000 residents and a pleasant blend of small-town virtues and big-city amenities. Trip Advisor’s list of things to do there includes several museums, the Cameron Park Zoo, and the Texas Rangers’ Hall of Fame. At #9 on that list is a place that may sound familiar: McLane Stadium, home to the Baylor Bears, almost literally the “house that Art Briles built” at an astonishing cost of $266 million. The stadium is a fitting home for one of the nation’s elite programs, and an equally fitting monument to one man’s ego and power in this otherwise friendly and deep-rooted city.For some reason, that 24-7 monitoring wasn’t going on in Waco. While Baylor football players were committing crimes and perpetrating sexual assaults, not one member of the local media reported on what was obviously a systemic problem at the university. And although alleged assault occurred as far back as 2011, it wasn’t until August of 2015 that Texas Monthly broke the story with “Silence at Baylor.”A must-read article, by the way.Not until that article was it confirmed to everyone who was whispering uncomfortably about the Baylor scandal (and in specific the Sam Ukwuachu case) and to the world at large that yes, the coaching staff at Baylor knew exactly what was going on, and didn’t give two shakes of a dog’s tail that they were bringing a sexual predator onto their campus. After all, why should they? The curtain of secrecy was drawn so tightly around the Baylor campus that everyone from the local media to the boosters to the alumni to law enforcement seemed to be in on it.Let us be frank. Regardless of the full-page ads, the banners of support hanging from luxury suites at McLane, and the fervent protestations of anyone even peripherally involved with Baylor football, the chances of any coach, athletic department employee, or administration employee being unaware of the ongoing problem are slim to non-existent. The legwork required to hide such criminal acts is prodigious, which makes the Baylor Campus Police and the Waco Police Department also suspiciously negligent. In fact, PBS reports that a 60 Minutes report claimed an alleged “history of Baylor campus police and Waco authorities burying reports of sexual violence.”Former Title IX Coordinator Patty Crawford sent a request to the Waco Police Department, asking for the records of any reported sexual assaults on Baylor students. She received an email from the Baylor Vice-President of Campus Safety that the WPD “do not want the actual police reports turned over to Title IX” – another example of university obstructionism that led to her very public resignation in October.That VP is Reagan Ramsower and here’s what he said to CBS Sports about Crawford’s claims:

Ramsower said the Baylor campus police department he oversees had a history of burying sexual assault complaints that came to them.Keteyian asked Ramsower about the investigation into the incident report. “Nothing ever happened for well over a year. What happened there? Was there an investigation? And if not, why not? You have a police report – ”“There was a police report; I suppose it stayed with the police department,” Ramsower said. “It never came out of the police department. That was a significant failure to respond by our police department, there’s no doubt about it.”

Doesn’t it make you wonder?Doesn’t it make you think about how the university was able to keep all this under wraps? And if Art Briles had avoided just one mistake – offering Sam Ukwuachu a position at Baylor after he was off Boise State’s team for being abusive to his girlfriend – he might still be sitting in his office today, the gloried head coach of an elite program, and no one besides the victims, the perpetrators, and the officials involved in the cover-up would have any idea that the Baylor athletic department was manufacturing not ways to win on the field, but ways to encourage players in their entitled behavior, and teaching them that with enough money and power anything can be made to no longer exist.Baylor wasn’t producing future pro football players. Baylor was producing serial rapists and batterers. And the coaching staff and administration were in it up to their eyebrows, especially Briles.As Laura Leigh Majer points out: 

“The alleged crimes happened under his watch. For him to build the success of the Baylor football program to the level he did, he had to have a close watch over all the activities of the program. Consequently, he has culpability for the alleged crimes. He allowed this behavior to continue. He accepted transfers who were known to have abusive pasts.”

Her opinion gels with what Brenda Tracy, sexual assault victim of the 1998 Washington State gang rape case and advocate for tougher sexual assault penalties, 

“Unless the published information from the Pepper Hamilton Report is significantly inaccurate, he certainly contributed to the environment that led to the problem being systemic. If nothing else, it appears that his protection of the football program impeded investigations, and he certainly was not proactive about disciplining his players or coaches.”

We also asked if the response of the university, alumni, boosters, and fans was detrimental to both Briles’s case individually and the school’s. “To the second part, absolutely. We have seen it in multiple situations where cover-up and denial are making the efforts for justice more difficult, whether it be Penn State or Watergate. The aggressive nature of their denial of any wrongdoing by Briles, when compared to the suffering of the victims, is astounding to see.”Coaching Pedestals with Feet of ClayThe local media in any big college town has dual allegiances. First off, if they want to survive in the post-print digital age, they must be able to attract the most views from their fan base. If you don’t think that absolutely impacts media coverage of college sports, then we’d courteously recommend a gut check – one thoughtfully provided by the International Business Times in its article “Sports Journalism in the Digital Age”:

With this explosion of information, however, come profound questions for the sports media industry and those who rely on it for news and entertainment. Technology has massively disrupted online sports journalism, bringing fans an unprecedented range and volume of content choices while simultaneously altering legacy business models in sports media. At the very least, sports journalists will continue to face powerful new competitors with unbeatable access. And one way or another, their old prerogatives will be challenged.

The Baylor case is one such episode, when old school journalism directly confronted new age media. During the five years of the alleged cover-up, local media never once undertook the investigative journalism that would have easily revealed what was going on. In fact, as late as this summer, Waco local television station KWTX-10 was still releasing articles with a decidedly pro-Briles and pro-Baylor slant. Apparently, “anonymous sources” report that:

Pepper Hamilton, the independent law firm the university hired to investigate the sexual assault scandal that engulfed the school’s football program, fumbled, according to university insiders and secret recordings of meetings with athletic staffers obtained by KWTX, which suggest that the firm’s investigators came to Waco with an agenda to purge members of the football program and had a racial undertone in their line of questioning.

Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently there are racial overtones present when a woman says “No.”But here is where the flaws of the journalistic model are grossly apparent. In an age of mega-monster journalism like ESPN or Fox Sports, so many stories are reliant upon first being reported by local media. If the local media is on board with the university and the football coach, then those stories that can cause a winning program to implode are not filed. It’s not until an external media source, like Texas Monthly, breaks the story that the national outlets get involved. And when that outlet is ESPN and Outside the Lines, the story isn’t just broken, it’s nuked.Waco media isn’t alone in this type of turn-the-other-cheek behavior toward a big-name coach for a national football powerhouse. That’s the way it’s always been in college football, unless a coach’s transgressions are so huge that they can’t be hidden. Think of Ohio State coach Woody Hayes’s little faux-pas in the 1978 Gator Bowl, when he punched a Clemson player.Those mistakes you can’t hide from anyone.But in 1978, it took a coach hitting a player on national television for the public outcry to be loud enough for a legendary coach to get fired. Not until 1987 did the sports world learn what it would take for an entire program to get nuked by the NCAA, when Southern Methodist University received the “death penalty” for paying its players. The story was broken by the local ABC affiliate in Dallas, WFAA, and investigative journalist John Sparks. The ongoing activity at SMU was an open secret in Dallas, especially as it involved big-name players like Eric Dickerson and a cadre of wild and woolly boosters working in conjunction with the coaching staff of the Mustangs. As Sparks himself said in 2011:

The story culminated more than two years of work. SMU’s president, athletic director, head football coach and recruiting coordinator abruptly resigned, and by the time the dust had settled, the NCAA handed down the death penalty that led to the cancellation of SMU’s 1987 and 1988 seasons, the university changed its form of governance, boosters were banned for life, the Methodist Bishops investigated and the trail led to Texas Governor Bill Clements – who admitted he had known about the payments and had ordered that they continue even while SMU had been on probation.

So the behavior of Baylor alumni, boosters, and fans along with that of university administration, officials, and coaches perhaps isn’t that shocking. Perhaps that’s just the way it is in Texas, or the South, or college football in general. Perhaps the golden rule of CFB coaching is “don’t get caught” – advice Petrino obviously is incapable of following. Or “don’t fib about emails,” like BCS-championship winning coach Jim Tressel did at Ohio State. Or maybe even “best not take that recruit to your house for breakfast,” like Ole Miss’s embattled head coach Hugh Freeze did. But a lot has changed in our society since SMU got the first, last, and only death penalty administered by the NCAA to date. As Sparks remarked:

After it became clear that the death penalty decimated SMU’s football program, the conventional wisdom was that the NCAA would never again hand down such harsh punishment. So an atmosphere where no one was going to let the death penalty happen again provided the perfect haven for “anything goes.” No one was going to do anything about it. What better environment for those who would cross over the line to operate in?

Indeed. And now once again, the college football world is looking at a private, church-affiliated university in Texas and wondering if obstruction of justice for elite athletes who commit crimes merits the same punishment that another private, church-affiliated Texas school received 30 years ago for their blatant payment arrangement with its players.But there’s an element to the Baylor case that sets it apart from the SMU case. While coaches were involved in the Pony Excess scheme, the impetus and financing came from boosters, and the case was broken by local media looking into the story for over two years.At Baylor, the impetus for the alleged cover-ups originated within the university itself, aided and abetted by local law enforcement and ignored by the local media for five years.

“Let me first state my personal bias as a woman from Dallas who was in junior high when SMU was given the death penalty,” Majernik begins. “That said, let me also state that the accrediting agency claims Baylor failed to provide ‘appropriate fiscal and administrative control’ over their athletic programs.  Conclusion: YES, in my opinion, Baylor should receive the death penalty from the NCAA. SMU’s transgressions were nothing by comparison. The unfortunate part of such action is, of course, the players who did not commit any crimes but have to pay the penalty.”

Counters Lindstrom: 

“They have fired the enablers in the big leadership positions, which was not insignificant. We saw the president, athletic director and head football coach of a major college program resign or be terminated. How often has that happened? So to the extent that they recognized there was a significant issue and that current leadership not only wasn’t going to solve the problem, they were clearly contributing to it, they made very legitimate efforts.”

As an aside, we know two other places where the termination of the president, athletic director, and head football coach took place. One was SMU in the 1980s, and the other was Penn State just a few years ago when university president Graham Spanier, AD Tim Curley, and HC Joe Paterno all resigned or were fired. So it’s happened at least twice before. That being said, look at the gravity of both cases – and the Penn State case is one we’ll examine in depth in our next installment of this series – and that should reveal the scale of the Baylor situation comparatively.Lindstrom continued: 

“On the other hand, clearly they have not been as aggressive about their Title IX program as they should have been, and they made a very selfish decision to keep the remaining coaching staff on board in order to not lose their players. While they are paying the price for that in some ways now, I sincerely hope that there were no other assaults or issues that any of those coaches could have impacted negatively, both for the victims’ sake and for Baylor’s.”

It didn’t quite work out that way, unfortunately. And Baylor’s lack of punishment for the assistant coaching staff under Briles’s regime has resulted in more embarrassment for the university in the wake of Baylor’s claim that Briles and other athletic department officials knew of a 2011 gang rape but didn’t report it.

Earlier in November, Briles’s son Kendal, the Bears’ offensive coordinator, and other members of the team’s staff issued a statement in which they claimed that the student-athlete’s coach had reported her rape to Judicial Affairs. They quoted that coach as saying that Art Briles had “handled the matter honorably.”

The Baylor “Culture”Wow. The arrogance and insensitivity involved in Briles’s former staff releasing such a statement when confronted their current employer’s report is mind-boggling. If there were, for some reason, any lingering doubts that Art Briles’s influence permeated the entire investigative process during these events, or that it still hovers over like Waco like a miasma of doom, go ahead and set them aside.There’s been a lot of talk about “culture” when it comes to the burgeoning disaster of sexual assault cases on American college campuses. In particular, culture is a hot-button word being utilized in cases allegedly involving student-athletes. But culture is a nebulous word, here used as a kinder way of saying cesspool or pigsty – a euphemism for what people are hesitant to come out and say.At Baylor, however, the euphemism “culture” is very specific. Baylor University was so invested in winning football games, in having top-tier facilities, in playing the big-money game of recruiting top tier athletes, in gaining the prime time television slots, in having Heisman trophy winners, in beating arch-nemeses like TCU or Oklahoma, in straddling the top of the CFB world, that the university created a culture where it was all right for their players to assault “just a few” women sexually, where it was all right to threaten a victim with disciplinary action if she didn’t play ball, where it was all right to make a quiet phone call to the Waco PD about those inconvenient little matters, where it was all right to obstruct justice in order to get those wins, get those top draft picks, and hoist those trophies.In case you had ever wondered what the “culture” part actually means, there you have it. And no, we don’t have to backtrack and tuck an “alleged” in there before the word assault, because Baylor players have been convicted of those crimes already. The culture isn’t created by the music played at games, or the uniforms, or the nightclubs that let athletes in for free, or the palatial facilities big-time programs have for their players. The culture is created by the head coach and the assistants, the athletic department the coaches answer to, and the administration that oversees the athletic department.At Baylor, the culture was solidified when in June of 2014, Art Briles defiantly accepted Sam Ukuawachu as a player on his football team in the full knowledge that the athlete had been dismissed from Boise State because of domestic violence – and then that player sexually assaults a Baylor student just four months later. That one move by Art Briles sealed his “culture” and his legacy, and the resulting disaster has unfolded as a result.Because what did that one action express?Come to Baylor, where we don’t care about your past and will help you evade future punishment by enabling and protecting you in the present.

“The safety of all students on a campus should be a primary concern for a university. No one should be above the law or given ‘special treatment’ for being a star athlete if they break a law. I do not think universities are providing safe environments, and support for victims, overall.”

Majernik’s point is a good one, and one that plays right into how we want to close this article. Because it has become patently obvious that at Baylor, the safety of all its students was never the priority. The safety of those who played on Saturdays in McLane Stadium – that was the priority and the focus of the “culture” at Baylor University, and everyone bought into it.Except, perhaps, for the 17 women who are claiming to have been sexually assaulted by 19 football players. But certainly, Art Briles and his staff and the university they represented handled the matters honorably. Or as Shakespeare brilliantly put it in Marc Antony’s funeral oration in Julius Caesar:

The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest– For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men–

Unfortunately, there’s one more piece to this puzzle we have to investigate, one more element to factor into this issue, and that’s the role of the NCAA. Can we all at least agree on one thing? Regardless of the ominous silence resonating from the NCAA offices, the governing body of collegiate athletics must play a role in what happens next.And to do that, there has to be a meeting of the minds between two diametrically opposed ideologies: big money sports, and Title IX.

Baylor Football Scandal for Blogcritics--Part One

(This is the first article in a five part series analyzing athletes, universities, and crime. The primary focus of the series is the ongoing revelations from the rape scandal at Baylor University and was originally published at Blogcritics Magazine on December 14, 2016.)

Welcome to NCAA Fact or Fanatic, where we’re stoked that Army just broke the 14-year-old streak against Navy. It was a great game, and if your last name is Poe, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with naming your son Edgar. (Go Army! He had a great game too.)Watching the military academies play is an annual don’t-miss pleasure for me. The teams respect each other. The attending cadets from West Point and the Midshipmen from Annapolis are polite, they are competitive but respectful, and their joy when they win is unvarnished and unrestrained. You don’t see a player punching a fan in the face (and then getting rewarded by being a Heisman finalist) or a coach stomping off the field without shaking his opponent’s hand.Army and Navy represent everything good about college football, and that’s why their annual post-season game is such a pleasure to watch. But 2016 hasn’t been a big year for the good side of NCAA athletics.For many reasons.At several major universities with high-profile athletic programs, the news in the past few years has been embarrassing. The University of North Carolina’s academic fraud was exposed two years ago. Ole Miss’s academic fraud was supplemented by special benefits and illegal recruiting. Notre Dame recently self-reported its own academic fraud, and in August had six players arrested on the same day. The University of Alabama just this season had two star players (Cam Robinson and Tim Williams) arrested for drug and/or gun charges at different times.Four different universities. Four different types of violations or crimes. And four times that college football fans have questioned the NCAA’s response to each specific situation. UNC has yet to receive any sanctions or punishment for the decades-long scam that allowed athletes (and other students as well) to skate past required GPA totals. Ole Miss voluntarily sacrificed scholarships – 10 to be exact – but the NCAA has so far been mum, and word is the Rebels are about to be slammed for allegations of a far more serious nature. Notre Dame was forced to vacate all wins from 2012 and 2013. As for Alabama, its stars sat out one game each against inferior opponents.And then, there’s Baylor.Let us be clear. Sexual assault on college campuses is a skyrocketing national problem. According to the Office of Civil Rights, which is part of the US Department of Education and is responsible for Title IX enforcement, 347 US colleges have been reported for Title IX violations. Of those cases, 57 have been resolved, leaving 290 open. (If you’d like to see the schools on the list, head to their website. Some of the schools are surprising.)That’s a staggering number. But it doesn’t reveal the entirety of what we’re looking at here. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center tells us that one in five women and one in 16 men are sexually assaulted while in college. More than 90% of sexual assault victims on college campuses do not report the assault, while 63.3% of men at one university who self-reported acts qualifying as rape or attempted rape admitted to committing repeat rapes.It’s an indisputable fact that Baylor’s not the only school with Title IX issues. What makes Baylor stand out is the prominence of its football program paired with probably the stupidest, most self-destructive behavior the school, its staff and administration, and fans could have demonstrated after the story broke. Considering that Baylor is a Baptist-affiliated private university, the outrage was proportionately higher. And as more details pile up and more women – including victims of at least four alleged gang rapes involving football players since 2011 – are added to the Title IX lawsuit against the university, we felt we needed better perspective on the Baylor case and the environment that incubated such behavior.So we have brought in a pair of experts for their take on the issue: one male attorney and one female sports journalist.Kevin Lindstrom received his journalism degree from Texas A&M and his law degree from SMU. He worked as a journalist for the Temple Daily News while getting his degrees and is now an attorney in Dallas.Laura Leigh Majer graduated from the University of Texas-Austin with a Bachelor’s degree in History, and received her Masters of Public Administration from the University of North Texas. She is an NCAA Special Contributor to NFLFemale.com and host of “Down and Dirty Sports” on AltConRadio. She lives in Dallas.Some of our questions were sent to both Lindstrom and Majer. A few were individual and pertained specifically to the insight they are best qualified to offer. We thought it important to have both a male and female point of view, one that answered to the law and the other to the media – and we feel the credibility each offers to the tangled Baylor web of disaster is necessary in helping to disentangle the web of craziness surrounding not just Waco, but the entirety of college sports.Obviously, it’s going to take more than a single column to dig our way through everything, so this is the first component of our approach to the complex dilemma. This series of articles will be focusing on Baylor University primarily, but make no mistake: This is a national problem, and one that has reached unacceptable levels of prevalence.“I find the Baylor football scandal a disgusting outrage and how it has been handled to be a travesty.”Majer didn’t mince words with her first assessment of the ongoing scandal. Lindstrom agrees.

“As background, I think big time football came to a small private college and no one was ready for it. There were not enough safeguards, whether that be in making sure the police departments knew the correct protocols, or Baylor’s Title IX office, or the athletic department. Add to that a win-at-all-costs mentality and some conscious decisions to bring in players even though there were legitimate questions about their background, and you have a recipe for systematic problems. As crimes were committed, the focus was on protecting the football program, not protecting the victims.”

We’re talking about a university where 17 women have reported domestic violence or sexual assault involving 19 football players in the past four years. So this isn’t some fluke we’re talking about. Baylor regents recently admitted there are 125 cases of sexual assault or harassment the university is currently investigating. One hundred and twenty-five. How is that possible?It’s important to understand that Baylor University has been in active conflict with the requirements of Title IX for decades, as the Dallas Morning News reported in May.

Baylor has had a history of resisting Title IX, the 1972 law which barred sex discrimination on campuses that receive federal money. In 1974, when Baylor women couldn’t wear pants on campus, the school’s president called the law “the grossest grab for power in federal history.”

You couldn’t dance on campus at Baylor until 1996, couldn’t be part of a consensual sexual relationship or be homosexual until 2015. The university’s resistance to equitable treatment of male and female students is further complicated by a student code of conduct that is guided by restrictions on drunkenness, lewd or indecent behavior, students living together outside marriage, and

Expression that is inappropriate in the setting of Baylor University and in opposition to the Christian ideals it strives to uphold.

Yes, we’re choking on that last one as well. Baylor’s policies emphasize a “boys will be boys” mentality, while expecting girls to “act like ladies” – a pair of outdated, unrealistic ideologies for the 21st century. Its sexual conduct policy is equally out of touch:

Baylor will be guided by the biblical understanding that human sexuality is a gift from God and that physical sexual intimacy is to be expressed in the context of marital fidelity. Thus, it is expected that Baylor students, faculty and staff will engage in behaviors consistent with this understanding of human sexuality.

Why are these rules so important? Because while students and athletes alike are expected to follow them, they are the same rules that were used to browbeat sexual assault victims after they reported the rapes to the administration. In order to have an athlete dismissed or otherwise punished, the victim would be dismissed from the university as well.“There is still a blame-the-victim mentality, and unfortunately, because there are a few very dramatic cases of false reporting, I think it’s harder to fight against it,” Majernik said.Blame The VictimAccording to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center:

A multi-site study of eight U.S. communities including 2,059 cases of sexual assault found a 7.1 percent rate of false reports (Lonsway, Archambault, & Lisak, 2009). A study of 136 sexual assault cases in Boston from 1998-2007 found a 5.9 percent rate of false reports (Lisak et al., 2010). Using qualitative and quantitative analysis, researchers studied 812 reports of sexual assault from 2000-2003 and found a 2.1 percent rate of false reports (Heenan & Murray 2006).

Obviously the true numbers of false reports are well below 10 percent. But that slim chance seems to be applied to almost every case of a star athlete accused of an alleged sexual assault. Not just at Baylor, either. Since the 2006 Duke lacrosse team rape case, every alleged assault by a star athlete is considered by the fans of that particular school to be a false claim by “cleat chasers” or “gold diggers” who entrapped the athletes into consensual sex and then reported the encounters as rapes.One of the more egregious examples occurred with Stanford University’s star swimmer, Brock Turner, who found an unconscious girl and raped her. Turner’s family inundated both mainstream and social media with statements like this (bolding mine):

His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life. The fact that he now has to register as a sexual offender for the rest of his life forever alters where he can live, visit, work, and how he will be able to interact with people and organizations. What I know as his father is that incarceration is not the appropriate punishment for Brock. He has no prior criminal history and has never been violent to anyone including his actions on the night of Jan 17th 2015. Brock can do so many positive things as a contributor to society and is totally committed to educating other college age students about the dangers of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity. By having people like Brock educate others on college campuses is how society can begin to break the cycle of binge drinking and its unfortunate results.

That shifts the focus from Turner, the rapist, to the victim’s drunkenness and promiscuity in a classic “blame the victim” tactic that unfortunately has been successful in US courts for centuries. Turner’s sentence was correspondingly light. Six months in prison (he served three and was released), three years of probation, and lifelong registration as a sexual offender add up to a mild price to pay for a man who found an unconscious woman lying on the pavement and whose first thought was not to call 911 like any normal person would, but to remove articles of her clothing and have sex with her without her knowledge or consent. And as the victim said in her statement to the court (which we advise you to read in order to understand the horror of the process for victims of sexual assault):

It is deeply offensive that he would try and dilute rape with a suggestion of “promiscuity.” By definition rape is the absence of promiscuity, rape is the absence of consent, and it perturbs me deeply that he can’t even see that distinction.

We have to agree. It’s hard to call an unconscious woman promiscuous by any stretch of the imagination. The only thing more difficult to imagine is Brock Turner having a positive impact on anyone. Even the thought of him talking about alcohol and promiscuity is nauseating, and burgeoning with a self-righteous sense of entitlement that is apparently wholly genetic.Apple…tree.So inherently, there are societal issues in dealing with sexual assault, the criminal process, and particularly the status of being a star athlete at a large university and how that impacts investigations. As Lindstrom pointed out: “To be fair, because athletes are on a pedestal, there is the possibility of them becoming a target, and so to the extent that there should be safeguards against that, that makes sense. But surely there is a way to protect both the athletes and the general student population without allowing one side to get away with abusing the other.”If there is a way to do that, no one has found it yet.At Baylor, whose strict Christian code already forces the student body to try and disguise the normal pastimes and pleasures of young adulthood, victims were browbeaten into silence after reporting alleged crimes to the administration. As USA Today reported:

Investigators with the Pepper Hamilton law firm who dug into Baylor’s response to sexual assault claims determined the school’s rigid approach to drugs, alcohol and sex and “perceived judgmental responses” to victims who reported being raped “created barriers” to reporting assaults. Some women faced the prospect of their family being notified.“A number of victims were told that if they made a report of rape, their parents would be informed of the details of where they were and what they were doing,” said Chad Dunn, a Houston attorney who represents six women who have sued Baylor under the anonymous identification of Jane Doe.

It’s no wonder that an estimated 90% of women who are the victims of sexual assault never report their rapes. It’s an easy defense strategy to claim a victim “asked for it” by the way she behaved, the way she was dressed, the way she talked, the way she presented herself – and somehow, legally, that translates into a examination of her past sexual history, a gauntlet the alleged rapist doesn’t have to face.Reactions and ConsequencesWhat really sets Baylor apart from the more than 200 other universities and colleges currently dealing with Title IX sexual assault claims is the incomprehensible support that the school, staff, football players, boosters, and alumni have given to the university – support that clearly demonstrates the ideology that wins are more important than students’ safety. Although the university president, athletic director, and head football coach were all fired or encouraged to resign, there’s been very little effort on the part of the university to rectify the culture of its campus – a culture where it’s a known fact that star athletes are going to be protected from the consequences of their own actions.That culture is what led Baylor’s Title IX Coordinator, Patty Crawford, to resign in October. As Diverse, a website dedicated to documenting diversity in higher education, reported on October 5, 2016:

Patty Crawford told CBS This Morning that the university set her up “to fail from the beginning.” Crawford, who resigned Monday from her role enforcing the federal standards meant to prevent discrimination based on gender, said she received “resistance” from senior leadership but did not identify those leaders.Baylor officials marginalized her by leaving her out of meetings, undermining her authority and making decisions that should be left to a school’s Title IX coordinator, she said. The treatment led her to file complaints with both the university and U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights. Charges that she was the victim of retaliation are included in those complaints.“I never had the authority, the resources or the independence to do the job appropriately,” she said.

The events that have occurred since the firing of Coach Art Briles and the resignation of former Baylor president Ken Starr seem to bear this out. Although Briles was forced out, his entire staff (including his son and son-in-law) remained through the 2016 season.Prominent Baylor alumni ran a full-page ad in two Texas newspapers in June, thanking Starr for his “integrity, leadership, character” and “exceptional care for students and their well-being.” And believe it or not, they didn’t stop there. You can go to the website and personally send Starr a letter of gratitude and support.Ten days later, alumni and boosters began a movement to bring Briles back as head coach. Briles was fired on May 25; the meeting of the regents where this movement was considered occurred about two weeks later.And let us not forget the Baylor-TCU game on November 5, to which fans were urged to wear black – and more specifically “Bring Back CAB” (“Coach Art Briles”) shirts. SBNation’s article showed long lines of people waiting to get their shirts, as well as Tweets from players.

Lindstrom weighed in on the matter with some strong words. “We have seen it in multiple situations where cover-up and denial are making the efforts for justice more difficult, whether it be Penn State or Watergate. The aggressive nature of their denial of any wrongdoing by Briles, when compared to the suffering of the victims, is astounding to see.”

Majer agrees. 

 

“I look at the support for Briles from alumni and boosters with incredulity. I’ve said many times that if this happened at my alma mater, I would be outraged and would expect full reporting and the harshest punishments for those involved. I do not understand how a fan base can place the success of a football team over the survivors of crimes committed by the players.”

Let’s be frank. The odds of Art Briles not knowing what his players were doing, and particularly at a college with a set of the most ridiculous and unrealistic expectations for young adults’ behavior, are slim to nonexistent. This is borne out with the recent revelation that both Briles and former athletic director Ian McCaw were made aware of a gang-rape perpetrated by football players against a female athlete in 2012 – and neither did anything regarding the report.Haven’t hit your outrage quota for the day yet? Liberty University just hired McCaw as their athletic director. Both Liberty and Baylor are Baptist-affiliated schools.And Briles just last week sued Baylor for making him the “scapegoat” in the gang-rape case, a case where five football players assaulted a female athlete. The former head coach doesn’t appear to have any sort of regret or sense of personal responsibility when it comes to what happened on his watch. Apparently, he’s more concerned about his future in coaching, seeing as his lawsuit claims that Baylor officials are conspiring to keep him from getting another job.Says Lindstrom: 

“Right now, it seems it is incredibly too easy for a school to do what Baylor did for FIVE YEARS. Five. YEARS. If you want to talk about potential liability, once you establish that there is a pattern, anything after when a reasonable person should have been aware that the system is allowing crimes to happen with impunity, I know I wouldn’t want to be in front of a jury trying to explain why I had enabled a football player to be involved in a gang rape of a student. That is the sickening thing, frankly, that it wasn’t just a one-off. This was a consistent pattern that involved more than ten students and more than 10 student athletes.” 

The truth of his statement is frighteningly, despicably clear. Those five years were the most successful years in Baylor football history.Those five years bankrolled the $266 million dollar McLane Stadium, where on November 5, 45,000 Bears fans blacked out the game just to receive a 62-22 ass-kicking from the Horned Frogs in a powerfully karmic manner.Those five years saw Baylor’s first Heisman Trophy recipient, quarterback Robert Griffin III.Those five years saw Baylor institute its Title IX office – in 2014, three years after having such an office was made mandatory by the Department of Education. (See Pepper-Hamilton’s report summary for more insight.)College athletics aren’t blood sports, but they can create a few – and clearly did so at Baylor. The blood isn’t on display for everyone to witness. It’s a private exsanguination that occurs after the very public assassination of a victim’s character. It’s a bloodletting where the image of the university’s branding or the image of a star athlete takes precedence over doing what is not only right, but required by the law and by basic human decency. And while there are multiple universities who must accept responsibility for the blood spatter on their own campuses, Baylor University stands out as a coven of vampires, feeding from its victims, while hiding behind the mantle of the Baptist church to shield its transgressions.A parasite.“What is really frustrating about the Baylor matter to me, personally, is that everyone dropped the ball,” Lindstrom adds. “The media, the police, the school and the football program all failed the victims, and when it became a clear pattern, how can those involved not feel a sense of responsibility for the later victims would probably would not have been victims had they been doing their jobs?” Lindstrom’s comment leads to questions that cannot or will not be answered, which makes his vexation easy to understand. That’s why we’ll explore them more fully in the next installment.But Laura Leigh Majer expresses her dilemma in words that resonate with us, and probably will with you as well.

“I no longer look at the game of college football the same way. I had very little joy in the 2016 season. Instead, I pulled the curtain back and saw what it is: a big money-making game. If any changes in the culture are going to be made, it will be on so many levels, from the field, to the school, to the press box. There are still a lot of men who don’t like women covering sports, especially football.”

“I had very little joy.”  For some, those five words might apply to a disappointing season, or a loss to their school’s most hated rivals. But Laura Leigh Majer is not only a true fan of the game, but a member of the sports media as well – and she states unequivocally that she can no longer enjoy the sport she loves so much. We know exactly what she means.We opened this column talking about the Army-Navy game and why it was mandatory viewing for us because of the unvarnished joy the academies have when they win, and because they represent everything that is good about college football. In a year where there is an ongoing saga of athletes accused of committing crimes, it’s hard to come up with a way to reassure Laura that there are still joys to be found in college football.Mostly because we can’t even convince ourselves. Or our daughters.We will continue this ever-changing and ever-horrifying story in our next column, where we will evaluate the culpability not only of the universities, but of the NCAA in general. Ms. Majernik and Mr. Lindstrom both have more to say, and so do we. We realize this article is long, but the subject is too important to skim over. And when it comes to student safety on American college campuses, there’s no such thing as digging too deeply into these parasite-infested waters.And that’s a fact.

The Little Drummer Boy and the Carol of the Coyotes

This cold, wet night is better suited for October than December; Halloween instead of Christmas. But there can be no doubt. This is Christmas Eve, incontrovertibly the night when Christians the world over celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the foundation stone of their entire belief system.

Perhaps that is why people like me find ourselves so baffled on December 24th. Christmas is a holiday rooted deeply in belief, both individual and cultural.
As a child, I believed. 

Christmas was a time of magic and wonder, and Christmas Eve was the night when all the small magics of childhood come together in a breathless kind of anticipation. Will Santa come? Will I get that doll/game/book/toy I asked for? Or does he know about the time I locked my three-year-old brother in the bathroom with the tub running. I’m sure Mom told him about that. She never forgets anything. As a result, Santa Claus doesn’t either.
Was there anything ever so delicious as slipping in between cool sheets with the heaviness of blankets and comforter, determined to stay awake so you could hear the hooves of the reindeer as Santa landed on the roof? How one moment, you were straining to hear Santa’s arrival and the next you were opening your eyes and finding that somehow, incredibly, it was Christmas morning?
But those are the happenings of childhood, when everything was possible.
As adults, that magic is lost.
For a decade, I didn’t have Christmases with my family. Any of my family. I created Christmas for my friends whose families had disowned them. The gay community was at its craziest, most frenzied pace during the 1990s. Especially around the holidays. We drank and danced and dared each other to think longingly of the Christmases of our childhood, and tried to create our own magic without the fallacy of Santa Claus and the unforgiving families we'd left behind. I wasn’t gay, but they didn’t care. I invited them all to my table—young and old, well and sick, forgotten and forbidden, and we created our own family.
A family for a day.
But that family, like the first, has fallen into the past.
Now I stand alone on the back deck, while behind me my family sleeps. My husband, secure in the home of his parents, sleeps soundly in our bed. But I can’t. My father is eight hours to the south; my oldest daughter eight hours to the east; my youngest daughter half an hour and a world of anger away. My children now have children, and they already sleep—seven little souls worn out with their own effort to stay awake for Santa. Seven little souls secure in the belief that on Christmas Eve, magic happens. My daughters are busily being Santa, arranging gifts under the tree and anticipating the morning madness.
The simple drama of Christmas, enacted by players who know their roles in the world of that personal and distinctly unique thrill of the holiday. 

And yet...

I once again find myself alone on Christmas Eve, but I don’t mind this aloneness as once I did.
The night is wild and wet, the wind whistling through branches stripped bare from a sudden and violent slide into autumn, and now face the winter with stoic desperation. The air stings against my skin, softly singing a susurrus of sovereign solitude. But I hear another song, a song I've rarely witnessed. I hurry to the rail of the deck in the corner nearest the forest, and I wait in silence for the song to begin once more. 

And it does.

Not too far from here, in the ravine near the spring, coyotes are singing as well. Their song isn’t lonely, but proud and autonomous. Not the Christmas carols we all sing, but just as sacred and far more rare.



You know, even as an adult I find that some Christmas carols bring tears to my eyes. The Little Drummer Boy always gets me. The imagery on its own is so perfectly expressed.
Little baby
I am a poor boy too
I have no gift to bring
That's fit to give our King
Shall I play for you
On my drum

Mary nodded
The ox and lamb kept time
I played my drum for Him
I played my best for Him
Then He smiled at me
Me and my drum
Think of a child who has nothing but a drum—no parents, no friends, no school. His drum is the only thing that stands between him and starvation, and his ability to play that drum is the only company the child has. So when he finds himself standing beside the manger where the newborn Christ lies on his bedding of straw, he feels compelled to give the infant a gift. He can’t compete with the gold, frankincense, and myrrh the three wise men bring. He gives the baby the only thing he can—he shares his talent. Playing the drum is his gift, and the Christ child smiled.
I’ve never been able to sing the whole song through. Every Christmas I try, and every Christmas I fail. For anyone who is both blessed and burdened with a creative talent, the imagery hits too close to home. Anytime you share your talent, it’s a breathless, terrifying sort of gift. Not everyone can understand what you’re giving them. Not everyone values it. But then you reach that one person, a total stranger, who experiences your gift and is grateful that you gave it.
And for that one, paralyzing moment, you are no longer alone.
Like me, now, standing in the dark, cold corner of the back deck. It no longer matters that my family is scattered over four states. It no longer matters that I, alone, am awake and welcoming the midnight’s ominous silence. For I am not alone. Instead, I listen to the coyotes caroling deep in the ravine, and as their voices rise into the heavens the clouds break apart and reveal an arctic night’s sky. The stars are icy, their light static and brittle. The moon is still hiding her argent face from the field and woods beneath her. And I? I am breathless with the wonder of the moment. This moment is a gift. I don’t know who gives such a thing to me. Maybe I’m fool enough to think it something significant instead of just a completely random jumble of occurrences. But for now, it’s mine and mine alone. No one else is experiencing this, so it must be meant for me. A gift…and a lesson. I am not alone. I have never been alone. I have chosen before to keep myself aloof—apart—and therefore safe in my isolation. I have been the coyote singing a wild song to the aurora borealis…not because I saw the northern lights, but because I believed they was there. Now the clock chimes midnight, and it is Christmas Day. The coyotes have fallen silent, and the skies have clouded back over. A rain that’s more solid than liquid has driven me back into the warm silence of the house. The kittens are curled up in their basket, and my husband still sleeps. Leaving me to ponder the gift of knowledge Christmas gave me, and the strange gratitude I have for the perfect serendipity that led me outside, hurting and alone, so that some providence could remind me of the true miracle of Christmas.

I am never alone. Merry Christmas.

Post-Op Thoughts: Creativity Vanquishes Pain

I have three-quarters of a million dollars invested into my spine, but that's not the most expensive aspect of the injury that started me on this road to disaster.

Chronic pain in general and chronic back pain in particular are so all-encompassing. Every aspect of your life is impacted--mostly by taking things away. When I was in the car wreck that blew up my spine fourteen years ago, I had an extremely active lifestyle. Swimming, scuba, hiking, off-trail hiking, rock climbing, bicycling...all activities I loved. All gone now. I would walk 1-2 miles a day. The furthest I've been able to walk for the past four years is a block.

Half a block for the past year or more.

I do all my shopping online so it can be delivered. I haven't been in a brick and mortar store shopping in two years at least--mostly because even though I can't walk in WalMart, I don't think it's right for me to take the little carts away from people who "really" need them. And then I get pissed when I see people who don't really need them zipping through the aisles like it's a NASCAR race.

I can't pick up anything heavier than a gallon of milk. Been that way since 2012. And, of course, I ignore that rule when there are grandbabies or cats involved.

Or my laptop.

As a writer and editor, I spend the majority of my time on the computer. But I cannot sit up for longer than half an hour at a time, so I have learned how to awkwardly write with the laptop perched too high on my abdomen.

Basic life activities are gone--driving a car, for example. If I slipped behind the wheel of my PT Cruiser now, I'd automatically be guilty of an OMVI because of the medications I'm on. Housework is out save for a few easy chores and the ones I've figured out how to do by sliding around the house on my butt. As you can imagine, my baseboards are immaculate. The crown molding, not so much. I can fold laundry, as long as the basket is brought to me. For the rest, I've learned some life hacks but my house makes me fussy because it's not the way I like it to be or feel.

Now I am six days out of another major back surgery, and once again lying on my mother-in-law's couch while I fret and worry and wonder for the umpteenth time: "Will this one actually work? Will I get that life back I enjoyed so much? Or will this be just another patch-up job that raises my hopes and then destroys them, leaving me to fight out of the depression that came after the last four-five-six surgeries?"

There's no way to answer that. With the type of bizarre condition in my spine, the success or failure of this procedure won't be known for months--six months before it's official according to my spinal surgeon. But I'll know sooner.

I know--you're sitting there, reading this and thinking that I'm whining. And you're right; I am whining. Hard not to, if I'm being honest. But my whining doesn't lead to me lying in bed, feebly asking my mother-in-law for cups of coffee or just one more cupcake. (She knows me too well. That's why the cupcakes are here.) When I'm told to walk a half hour every day, I walk an hour. When I'm assigned exercises to do in bed every four hours, I do them every three hours. I push myself, always, to supersede my doctor's expectations.

For example, in order to get released from the orthopedic hospital I was in, patients had to walk 150 feet. I went 125 feet two hours after I got into my room post-surgery. Just like an athlete striving to improve their strength or agility, I know that for every extra foot, every additional effort, the healing will be faster and more thorough. I never do too much, but I never settle for just enough either.

My lot in life has been bizarre, and is certainly not helped by the piece of broken hardware in my spine that if it shifts can either kill or paralyze me without warning. No one could have anticipated the butcher job that took place during my first back surgery in 2006--when a surgeon put the wrong sized artificial disc into my lumbar spine, had to pry it out, and in the process of hammering the correct size prosthesis into place with a sledge hammer broke it and started this fourteen year spiral of doom. No one believed me for six years when my pain worsened instead of improved. I was treated as if I was a drug addict, looking for a bigger fix. Not until I got an infection at that same level did anyone finally diagnose the real problem--and in the process reveal that the artificial disc had been shredding my spinal column and could not be removed. The prosthetic was inserted from the front, and was now insinuated between arteries on the front and my spinal cord on the back. The subsequent fusions weren't done to 'fix' my spine, but to keep that artificial disc from killing me.

And after the gazillionth back procedure in four years, it turned out that the fusion intended to secure that broken artificial disc was also broken.

It's hard for anyone to look ahead at their life and accept that regardless of what they do, regardless if they do exactly what the doctor tells them, all the parts of their life they particularly loved are a permanent thing of the past. But there's an aspect of healing I possess that many of my disabled peers do not. An outlet.

Creativity is both a blessing and a curse. It's a curse because your parents were right. "You can't earn a living writing stories. That's just a pipe dream."

And for most people, it is. A debut author's first book is released, and when it doesn't sell they give up. Mentally, they've made the transition from "anyone can write a book" to "I am a failure as a writer" and they don't try again.

But creativity is also a blessing. For one thing, you're running around with your characters in your mind, watching their story unfold and finding a way to share it with your readers. For another, people with the right personality traits (for me it's being damn stubborn) are taught not to give up. Ever. Sure, the odds of me being able to walk much more than a block for the rest of my life are pretty much non-existent, but I have made the choice not to let that define who I am. I live vicariously through my words, and create new worlds that both intrigue and challenge not only my characters but myself.

And all of this led me down a path that once was closed to me, and brought me to Charlie Burris and the Orange & White Report--writing articles and features about college football when I was told during college that there was no place for women journalists in sports--unless they covered ice skating or gymnastics. Plus every Saturday, I get to interact with the other O&W writers and argue or theorize or analyze football games while they're ongoing. That transforms me from a woman old enough to be their mother lying in a huge back brace in Ohio to a sports journalist, and fulfills a long-ago dream of mine in the process.

In the end, then, my overriding thought after my fourth major back surgery in ten years would have been applicable whether I regain the life I missed or continue in the life I've had.

1. My spine cannot restrict my mind.
2. My world is much, much more than the four walls that I am usually trapped within.
3. My life is not over; it's richer and rewarding beyond my expectations thanks to the people I interact with every day online.
4. Never give up on your dreams and ambitions.
5. It's 11:14 am and Florida still sucks.

So don't feel sorry for me; I don't feel sorry for myself. And as you look at your life and the things you wanted but didn't get, don't think those things are past you either. Life or circumstance don't dictate your destiny--you do.

Even with failed hardware in your spine.

LiveSciFi Night Two Zozo Investigation Live blog

11:07 pm EST Have Choloe Dykstra doing the closet game by herself is not only great, it's also great fun and very funny. See the progression there? God love her--she's starting the night investigation off on a hilarious note. Totally awesome.
12:26 Okay, so I got totally distracted by football--yeah, I know. My bad. That being said, they're getting ready for their first Ouija session of the night. Now with the extra fuel of folks not normally involved in this kind of investigation, this might prove to be an interesting sort of event. 
That being said...Ohio State got beat by Penn State. Just shaking my head. And laughing.

LiveSciFi Zozo Investigation Day Two Live Blog

So here's what sucks about falling asleep. You miss stuff. 

I was up early yesterday, had a conference with my literary agent, then wrote my column, and all that fun stuff. On top of that, considering the pain level a chronic pain sufferer deals with, the medications totally knock you out. Unthinkingly, I took my meds at the regular time last night. So by the time we started hitting 3:30 - 4 am, I was pretty much done for the night. 
I kept waking up when things would happen, but then dozed back off. My own fault. Should never have said, "I'll just lie down for a while." 
So now I'm hours behind, and will have to watch catch-up footage here in a bit when it's posted. My own fault. 
That being said, though, right now the house is empty and for the past hour it's been echoing with bangs and snaps and clicks on a fairly constant basis. To me this is compelling because there is literally no one there. 
10:56 HUGE bang in an empty house. Something feel somewhere.
11:12 Another huge bang followed by what sounded like a cough.
11:30 in the past half hour, we witnessed extensive tampering with the camera system in an empty house. IR lights going off and on, cams switching from day to night vision, and all accompanied by significant noises. This house isn't just haunted at night. It's haunted by day.

11:49 One of the things that makes a live streamed investigation interesting is the simultaneous chat. Even when the investigators aren't in the house, there are hundreds of people still monitoring the equipment. This serves a couple of purposes. First off, it keeps people engaged in the event. It also leads to an ongoing dialogue about what's happening. Sure you get your kooks talking about orbs or claiming to have seen stuff that isn't there. Middle school kids need hobbies too and for the most part that seems to be annoying grownups. But if something significant happens, like a loud noise, the chat rooms dissect it the same way investigators do. But second, those transcripts provide time stamps to evidence. The team can go back later and match up the video with the log the chat room creates, and that can lead to evidence they might otherwise have missed.

Although probably not in this house. No way to miss what's going on now.

12:36 If you talk on speaker phone during a live stream, the entire world hears your conversation. And nothing else. That is all.

1:03 If the tornado siren test is going on, it's probably not the best time to do an EVP session. Mostly because you can't hear anything. Just sayin', Darren.

1:47 Okay, I'm going to be a little stern here because I'm seeing things I do not like. First off, the only reason a paranormal investigation has any validity at all is through the strict adherence to protocols and running a controlled experiment. You eliminate as many external influences as possible. You turn off your phone. You create a control. You document any changes you observe, like something falling over. You use your own equipment. You handle other people's equipment with care. If a session is disrupted by outside sources, you end the session and discount any potential evidence.

For almost an hour and a half, I and the rest of the chat have watched in horror as all of the above strictures have been ignored. YOU DON'T HANDLE SOMEONE ELSE'S PERSONAL EQUIPMENT OR POSSESSIONS CARELESSLY, like holding an antique doll by the head or so roughly a limb falls off. You don't try to use someone's personal technology.

How do I know this? Because I did my first investigation in the late 1980s and multiple ones since. Pretty much the last two hours and counting can be tossed out the window because someone who doesn't know what he is doing is destroying the validity of the investigation with every step and decision he makes.

It's a damn shame.

2:27 And the torture continues, unabated. Talk about a room of pissed off viewers. Good lord.

The thing I've always liked about LSF is the interactive nature of their live streamed investigations. Evidence captured in a totally silent house while the investigators are asleep or out. All of that has been destroyed. We went from a morning of continuous activity, to an afternoon of absolute bullshit. What makes that even worse is that the LSF team isn't there and all this destruction is coming at the hands of a guest to the investigation who is trying to force activity when he didn't need to.

Paranormal investigation is about creating a situation in which activity can happen, not bombarding the place in the middle of the afternoon with frantic trigger object shifting and blaring music and constant movement. One of these dolls could get up, walk down the stairs, and dance a jig in the middle of the living room floor and it couldn't be construed as evidence because of what's going on around it.

3:45 and all's well. Torture has stopped--mercifully--for the time being. I'll be glad when the investigators get back and turn this back into a serious attempt to capture paranormal activity.

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LiveSciFi Zozo Investigation Night One--Live Blog

October 21, 2016 (7:00 pm EST) So what am I doing, you ask? 

Tonight at 10 pm EST, the LiveSciFi paranormal investigators will kick off a three-day ghost hunt at a residence in Oklahoma City that is purported to be haunted AND oppressed by a demonic entity known as Zozo. Now, if you read my last blog post, you know that I did a lot of research and wrote a few articles ahead of this upcoming investigation...and that the nasty critter set off a chain reaction of paranormal activity around my house and particularly around my computer. 
Ergo...I figure this is a safer and more fun way to take notes during the investigation. Blogger will automatically back my stuff up, and I can jot down observations, opinions, and instant reactions to what happens during the lockdown. So take that, Zozo! 
And here's the kicker. Although I enjoy paranormal investigations, I am also seriously skeptical. I don't put much stock into orbs, or creaky noises, or random lights. If I see something that might be paranormal, I'll jot down what I saw and an approximate time so I can go back once that block of video is done and go through it. 
But if I think something is out and out hokey horseshit, I'll jot that down too. Sorry kids--just the way I roll. At the end of the weekend, I'll put it all together in a followup article and we'll see what we've got. See something you think I should look at? Leave me a comment (time stamp or approximate time place) and I'll take a look at it. Sound good? 
Lay in the snacks, kids. Going to be a long night.

8:35 pm --dangit, isn't this thing started yet? Viewers are starting to show up on the LSF website chat and the YouTube chat. Seems to be more anticipation for this investigation than I've seen in quite some time.

9:00 The normal plethora of trolls and spammers are showing up now. Guess there's not a middle school in America that has homework over the weekend anymore.

10:03 So far, my "live feed will start 5 minutes late" bet is still alive.

10:04 still alive

10:05 c'mon man! It's ten bucks!

10:20 Time is money, guys. Time is money.

10:38 So yeah. I totally lost the start time betting pool.

Okay so it's 11:00 and time for the first Ouija session. Why you ask? Because Zozo is the Ouija board demon, and that's how the entity selects its victims and stalks them.  That whole thing about opening a door? Yep. Ouija. Spiritual door opener.

11:10 So the Ouija session has kicked off pretty darn quick. If nothing else, Zozo is predictable. According to what's coming through, it seems pretty happy to have company. Especially this company since it's spelling out H-A-H-A-H-A

11:14 Zozo just claimed it was a friend. Not sure to what, but there you have it.

11:19 Well, Zozo at least can tell a bad joke. "Saint Zozo" smfh

11:25 Zozo just said it would make a noise/create a disturbance at 1:34. I will be watching, and if that doesn't go down, I will totally call it out as a liar. I ain't playing.

11:28 Sure would have been nice to get the answer to Nicole's question about the possessed woman in SF who went after Tim, but Darren decided to pull the focus instead of letting that line of questioning proceed for some reason.

11:29 Doesn't take Zozo long to get back into its MO. All the laughing and joking aside now, and we're to gloating over a dead cat and threatening to kill Tim.

11:40 End of the first hour-ish. I think the strongest takeaway I have at this moment is that the Ouija session was moving much faster than normal. Also, getting the loud growl on the EVP session fits entirely with Zozo's recent interactions with Tim on the Ouija board. And that's disconcerting. For that EVP to have occurred so early in the live stream can only mean bad things are ahead in the next two night. Craziness.

11:46 Tim's first scratches of the weekend and it's not even midnight yet.

See, here's the deal. Coming up on ten years of dealing with the Zozo entity for Tim, and thirty-five years of dealing with the entity for Darren. This is like an all-you-can-eat spiritual buffet for it. When you're working in this field and you already have a paranormal attachment or you're sensitive to paranormal events, in a charged location and with another person present who suffers the same thing the entity is pulled in like a magnet to iron fillings.

11:51 For a guy who didn't want to say the word "Zozo" an hour ago, he sure is saying it a lot now.

11:53 So Darren is wearing a shirt with a skull on it, is looking into a scrying mirror and he sees...a skull. Wow, dude--really?

11:56 All right--let's talk research. The "14th century source" Darren Evans cites for the Zozo entity being known as a demon isn't a 14th century source. It comes from an 1876 issue of the Catholic Review, and it's referring to a sermon St. Bernardino preached regarding gambling with dice. The term " commune omnium daemonum" is a generic term of the medieval church. And if you want to check out that source, head here and look for yourself. I asked Darren for the original 14th century source when he questioned me not citing that story as fact in my articles. He did not provide me with that source.

In proper research, the word Zozo being mentioned like that four hundred years later is secondhand--kind of like hearsay. This isn't a reliable or valid source citation, so much as it is forcing something totally unrelated and MAKING it sound like a source. Want to convince me? Show me a literal, physical source from the 14th century, not an article from a journal 400 years later.

And then, too, the source isn't about a demon named Zozo. It's about a sermon preached by a saint where he substitutes gambling terms for the items used in a Catholic Mass. It's about how to take a sermon and relate it to your audience in terms they understand and relate to--a sermon used as an example of how to create an effective Catholic Mass during the season of Lent. It has nothing to do with demonology, and it doesn't chronicle or identify a demonic entity. It's an allegorical tale, created by a priest to demonstrate the evils of gambling. (BTW St. Bernardino didn't like much of anything. Even hear the phrase "bonfire of the vanities"? That's where people take the things they enjoy or that give them pleasure out into the street and throw them on a fire. This guy is the one who started all that crap)

The earliest source this Latin, Greek, and French-reading writer with mad Google-fu skillsfound in my research is the 1818 Dictionairre Infernal, regarding an event in France two years earlier. And THAT source can be found here. At the end, I have to question this as being presented as fact, because it's not. And it bugs me that it was presented as such.

12:03 So Darren refuses to touch the Ouija board, but he'll confront the entity, and look in scrying mirrors for it, and scribble things on paper in an attempt to summon it? I am confused. And that Z-word he didn't want to say is now being used every other word. I wonder...how long will it take him to touch the Ouija board? Hmm... Earlier he said it had to do with intent, right? So here's my question--what's so different about intent in why he wouldn't say Zozo early on in the investigation, but will now?

12:13 Hard to do an EVP session in the house when someone is in the other room bellowing like a drill sergeant.

12:35 EVP session not in your skill set man. Ask a question, give them 30 seconds to answer. then ask another question. Don't tell it stories.

12:38 we are now winding down the second hour of this investigation. The last 40 minutes has been the Darren and Zozo show. Unfortunately, even Zozo appears to be dozing off.

12:52 Getting creeped out off a letter--rare.
Just turning on the Ovilus for the first time and it says "Z" when you're investigating the Zozo house? --priceless

1:04 Okay the voice that Ovilus generated is uber-creepy. Also find it interesting that it said "birds" considering the connection that's come up with birds before in both Tim's and Darren's history with the entity. And yes, the South Park version of R. Kelly's In The Closet is now stuck in my head. Travolta and all.

1:10 'abort' 'sharp' and 'cross over' rapid fire on the Ovilus. Again...interesting.

1:14 setting up for a Ganzfeld experiment--whenever sensory deprivation is involved, the paranormal activity seems to get more intense. Also, keep in mind Zozo's promise of activity at 1:34

1:34 Since this moment occurred during the Ganzfeld experiment, it's hard to say if Zozo kepthis promise. Did I notice paranormal activity? No. Did Tim act totally bizarre all of a sudden? Yes. But was it what Zozo said it would be? No. So yeah==> so totally unimpressed Zozo. A demon should do better.

1:36 Things not to do on an investigation 101--never rip ping pong balls taped over your co-investigator's face. Be gentle and kind to their eyes.

1:36 "DO YOU HAVE A HEADACHE" is probably not the thing to
yell into someone's face if you think they have a headache. Just sayin'.

1:45 The third hour is in the books and we have a couple of good EVPs. Not bad, but not exactly burning down the house here, either.

**taking a break** So we will too. Briefly.





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Zozo Investigation and that Demonic Haunting Story I Never Told You

So you guys know I'm normally keeping myself pretty busy, and especially at this time of year. Not only is football season in full swing, which means writing for the Orange & White Report and my weekly Fact or Fanatic column, but I'm in the middle of publishing eight novels (two more to go in digital; six more in print). And because I just cannot be too busy, this month is also October which means my mind turns none-too-gently to the paranormal world. 

We spent October of 2015 shredding the abysmal A&E television show Cursed: The Bell Witch and the absolutely execrable Destination America Exorcist Live! and putting together my blog series The Real Bell Witch, all of which you can see by going to the Paranormal, Bell Witch, & Zozo page tab at the top of the blog. 
Wait...you noticed the extra name, didn't you? Well, that's because this year, I'm trying something different. 
I've been working with Tim Wood out at LiveSciFi on a series of articles about an investigation they're doing this weekend in Oklahoma City--an investigation into an entity known as Zozo or the Ouija board demon. If you've never heard of that name, do a quick Google search. You'll turn up over 34 million results. 289,000 of those results are YouTube videos. And Tim is the king of paranormal on YouTube with over 400,000 subscribers and 68 million views--and counting. This weekend, LSF is working with a guest investigator, Zozo expert Darren Evans. 
Let's link everything up real quick so that you can go see my articles, the Blogcritics interview, the LiveSciFi site, and Darren's blog and new book, just released in May, about the entity. That's my formal work. But this is my blog, so here I get to tell you about some of the crap that's gone on since I started doing interviews and crafting articles last week--and that leads me to a story I've hinted about, but never told before.

It's your lucky day.





Last Thursday, the three of us talked on a three-way call just as a preliminary. and you know me--I was taking serious notes. First off, I find paranormal things pretty fascinating, but primarily I was noticing similarities in Tim and Darren's stories. Not the 'they talked ahead of time' similarities, but elements that popped up in both their experiences that have also popped up, frighteningly, in mine.  One of the articles I did, Ouija Board Demon Zozo--Connecting The Dots outlined those similarities. What I neglect to include in the story was how I shared many of those characteristics, and they stem from my adolescence and two hauntings. One, of course, is the Bell Witch haunting in Adams, TN. You guys have heard all about that. The other was the demonic oppression of a friend of mine in college--an oppression that manifested in activity right before my eyes that absolutely could not be explained.

This is the story of that incident--an incident I referred to last year but did not tell. Seems appropriate to do so now. All the names, naturally, have been changed, and bear with me: by the end of this post, it'll all make sense.
My friend's oppression began after the death of his younger brother in a mysterious car wreck. The brother had been involved in a high school "coven" with nine friends. Of those ten kids, eight died: four in the same car accident, two by suicide, one murdered, and the last of some totally bizarre infection. I have no idea what happened to the other two. After his brother's funeral, the entity hopped to my friend, Jeno. 
Jeno was a smart, good-looking boy--football player and brain, infectious grin, and a sweet personality. I'd known him since high school, when he'd been in the same class I was. His family was Mormon and in every aspect he was just a normal, happy guy. But after his younger brother's death when we were both in college, everything suddenly went wrong. He literally started to almost wither into nothingness. Within a month, he looked gaunt and uptight. Our mutual friend Rob, Jeno, and I would hang out some nights. We usually would go to this bizarre park in the middle of Clarksville right off Crossland Avenue down this crazy steep hill. That park was basically some fifty year old swings and a parking lot, but behind it were a few trails and a creek. We liked it there. People rarely went there during the day, much less the night. 
On one of those nights that fall of my sophomore year in college, we went to that park. It was September, and still warm. Despite that, Jeno was wearing a turtleneck sweater. And as we sat in our usual spot in a clearing tucked out of sight of the road, Jeno told us what was happening. 
His house was haunted, he said, since his brother's death a few months earlier. He would wake up in the middle of the night, fighting with an unseen force pummeling him in the bed. Things would fly off his wall. Drawers would open and crash into the opposite side of the room. Voices would suddenly issue in an empty room, and terrible smells would emanate from his younger brother's closed and unused room.
I was fresh off my first investigation of the Bell Witch Cave and the Edens farm, where I'd experienced things much like what Jeno was talking about. In fact, I'd stood outside on the front porch of Bims Eden's empty house and listened as the living room furniture was rearranged--things that neither Rob nor Jeno knew about. So I was able to take Jeno's story at face value.
But what I didn't expect was the condition of his body. 
The first time he lifted his shirt and showed the massive bruising on his torso, I was startled--and I couldn't help but be slightly skeptical as well. What I couldn't figure out was a trio of scratches that started on the right side of his neck and continued in an unbroken, continuous diagonal across his chest and finally terminated on his left hip. It was like someone had taken one of those little three-pronged gardening forks down his body, but the cuts were too deep and sharp-edged for that. They had scabbed over, and even the scabs were precise and identical.
For a few days after, I tried to figure out if there was some way to do that to oneself. It was so weird because the scratches were the same depth, the same width, and completely seamless. On top of that, Jeno was right-handed. There was no way he could have done that to himself in such a perfect symmetry. But I didn't say anything to him about it at the time. When you're nineteen and a good-looking guy is telling you he's being attacked by a ghost his dead brother's coven conjured up, you figure it's probably not a good idea to comment but just to be supportive. 
A few weeks later, we were hanging out in the same park. It was October--my birthday weekend, in fact--and it was one of those perfect, crisp autumnal evenings you get in Tennessee when the season is changing. We weren't even talking about the haunting at the time; we were planning a road trip as I recollect. Jeno didn't drink, I couldn't drink, and Rob...was Rob. He was drinking, smartalec thing that he was. At any rate, we were laughing one minute and the next minute, Jeno screamed and fell backwards, landing basically on my lap. Instinctively, I grabbed his shoulders and his body was so hot (temperature) that I could feel the heat baking through his jacket and sweater.
The next thing I knew, three burns came up on the side of his throat. Each burn was as wide as my thumb. Rob pulled off Jeno's shirt and those burns followed the exact same path as the scratches had. 
I saw those burns pop up. If you're a woman and have ever burned the side of your neck with a curling iron, that's exactly what it looked like. Except Jeno was six feet tall and those burns crossed his body like a sash and disappeared into the waistband of his jeans while he was wearing a thick cable-knit sweater and a Member's Only jacket. (dated myself there) And these weren't surface burns either; they were second degree burns. We took him to the ER--I don't even remember the BS story we told to try to spin the whole mess. That night after he was released, we took him back to Rob's place, figuring he might be able to rest there. Jeno pretty much passed out as soon as we tucked him up on the couch, exhausted as he was and full of pain meds, while Rob and I sat across the room trying to figure out what in the hell we'd just seen. 
I had been at the Bell Witch cave just a few days before, and had gotten several EVPs (my first ones, actually) before the cave suddenly went spook-monster on me and drove me out. Ultimately I had been dive-bombed by crows on my way back up the cliffside trail. Creepy birds and animals tried to get hit by my car the whole twelve miles home--which has happened to me more than once on that winding country road between Adams and Clarksville. There is a strong voodoo element in the Bell Witch legend due to the fact the Bells owned slaves. The story is full of strange-looking black animals, blackbirds, dead men's lanterns, and "witchballs"--a kind of fetish the slaves made to protect themselves from the entity. So I was already a tad...jumpy and Rob knew this. But as we sat there trying to rationalize what had happened, the lightbulb in the hanging lamp over his kitchen table exploded. like--literally exploded, glass shattering, sparks in the wiring, sounding like a pop gun kind of exploded. 
Rob and I just stared at each other over all that glass, and Jeno said suddenly from the couch, "It followed me here." 
My first thought at the moment was uncharitable to say the least. Thank you so fucking much for bringing your pet ghost, Jeno isn't the best retort in such a moment. But Jeno's voice was hard to describe--terrified and quiet all at the same time--and it made such an impact on me that I couldn't say a word. Rob, bless him, instantly popped up with, "Man, we need to take you to a church." 
That's when we found out that the Mormon church in town had excommunicated Jeno. He'd gone to them for help when all the manifestations began after his brother's death, and they had literally shunned him. 
Rob and I were both Catholic. Clarksville is a military town. Rob's mother was Spanish; mine was French. 
So we loaded  Jeno into the back seat of my Bug (yes, I was a vintage VW kind of punk girl back in the day--a 1972 Superbeetle, Tennessee orange of course) and took him to the rectory next to the church both our families attended. Our parish priest was a great guy--a chain-smoking, Scotch-drinking, honest-to-God Irish lean whip of a man who had baptized, christened, and First Communion-ed me. The trip over lasted maybe five minutes, and it was the longest five minutes of my life. After what we'd already seen happen that night, and the knowledge of how Jeno's brother had died, a VW Bug didn't seem like the safest place in the world to be. On top of that, it was three o'clock in the morning, and we were going to wake up a priest. 
It's a testament to who Father Mike was that we didn't even hesitate to go to him though. This was the same priest I argued reproductive rights with, the same one who always told his congregation that if they were in spiritual trouble to come to him. I figured this would qualify, and all I wanted to do was to get Jeno to someone who knew what to do. 
The rectory is a sold-looking Victorian building next to the original Church of the Immaculate Conception in Clarksville. Rob, who was quite a bit smaller than Jeno, was literally hauling him up the front porch steps while I banged on the door and rang the doorbell. The porch light snapped on and Father Mike peered out when he opened the door. He took one look at me, then on to Rob and Jeno, and immediately pulled us all into the house.
And what happened from that point on is something I don't talk about. There were further occasions when Jeno was attacked in front of me--the worst happened one night after he'd been kicked out of his parents' home and was living in a small apartment right off-campus.Jeno had two couches in his shabby living room. I was asleep on one and he was on the other when suddenly he screamed. I jumped up like a scalded cat and he was fighting for his life against something that was only visible because it was under the blanket with him, like some huge freaking guy had crept up on that couch with him and crawled under the quilt to strangle him. I hauled Jeno off the couch into the floor, the blanket went flat, and the attack stopped.

We sat up the rest of the night in the floor with every light in the house on and my rosary beads around his neck.

But there was nothing else I could do. I couldn't help him and organized religion wouldn't. The response of both the Mormon and Catholic Churches to Jeno's situation made me angry--angry enough to forego religion for a long, long time.

As in decades. Father Mike protested on Jeno's behalf, and was moved to another parish within six months.  Before he left, he told me that it was dangerous to spend so much time with Jeno trying to help him and told Rob the same thing. But being know-it-all twenty year-olds, we ignored him. Unfortunately, Rob told Jeno what the priest had said.
Six weeks after that, Jeno left Clarksville and I never heard from him again.

So how does this all tie back to the Zozo investigation? 
Several elements of my story--French background, involvement with slavery, voodoo, blackbirds/crows, creepy-acting animals, death in a suspicious car accident, demonic oppression of friends or associates, Ouija boards, and paranormal activity--line up exactly with the similarities between Tim Wood and Darren Evans as I outlined in that Connecting the Dots article. 

All that is history. Let's talk the present.

Since last Thursday after I hung up the phone and began to research and write the articles surrounding this weekend's upcoming investigation of the Zozo house, I've been getting poked paranormally in my house. The notes I took that night and Darren's phone number mysteriously disappeared from my computer, even though I had saved my work (being a writer makes you autosave-suspicious) and turned off the computer that night. A pair of lights in my living room blew within three minutes of each other. One lamp fell from the end table for no reason--I watched it fall and there wasn't a cat near it or under it. My mother's rosary beads disappeared from my closed jewelry box in the bedroom. (found it under the living room couch)  Had a few random bangs on the front door and one from inside the linen closet in the hallway. (I live in a century-old house). I spent three days looking at the TV or computer screen with one hand over my eye due to an almost incapacitating migraine that wouldn't respond to any kind of migraine medicines. And one of our cats, a perfectly healthy eight-year old with no health issues, died for no apparent reason. Despite all this, I managed to get four articles and three press releases done on top of my normal, everyday workload.

Here's the thing. I know there are no coincidences when it comes to paranormal activity. For decades, authors working on the Bell Witch have reported losing their entire manuscripts. I know a writer who lost their entire book--back when writing a book required a typewriter and lots of Liquid Paper. Film crews would find their equipment malfunctioning inside the Bell Witch cave or the landing outside it--but it all worked perfectly on top of the cliff. This happened famously during the late 1980's when the show Unsolved Mysteries tried to film there. Also, when you're writing about the Bell Witch your source materials and research--particularly the Ingram book--disappear. So I know the history involved with writing about paranormal entities and resultant paranormal activity that interferes with that.

For the same thing to happen here makes me suspicious.



This weekend, Tim and his team along with Darren are investigating the house now infamously known as the Zozo house in Oklahoma City. Starting Friday night at 10 pm, they're going to live stream the investigation for the whole 72 hours. If you read my other articles, you'll see the history both Tim and Darren have with this entity. The chances of the entity not showing up for this investigation are practically non-existent. And it's fairly obvious to me that for some reason, I am being discouraged from writing about all this.

That never works.

So, I intend to live blog the investigation while it's ongoing with my thoughts, my observations, and how what occurs ties into the history I've uncovered and the theories currently percolating in my head. As you'll know from my blogs last October with those two aforementioned hokey 'reality' shows, my opinions will be unvarnished and blunt. If I think something is horseshit, I'll say so. If I think it's intriguing, I'll admit that too. And in the process, I'm hoping to create a unique narrative to accompany the investigation.

Plus I'm going to do a follow-up article to the interview piece I sent to Blogcritics.

I have to admit. This Zozo thing has me intrigued. Not in a "I want to play with a Ouija board!" kind of way, but in a "this history and entity makes me want to learn more" kind of way. So we'll see what happens. Check it out starting Friday night at 10 EST/9 CST, and join in what should be one of the craziest paranormal investigation events of the year. I'll be interested to hear what you think as well.

Author's note: Just as I hit send on the Twitter link to this post, Voodoo by Godsmack came on the radio. Think something's sending me a message? Timing is everything, isn't it?