UT's coaches unite in seeking to dispel cloud created by Title IX lawsuit

Tennessee head football coach Butch Jones, second from left, speaks during a news conference Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016, in Knoxville.
Tennessee head football coach Butch Jones, second from left, speaks during a news conference Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016, in Knoxville.

KNOXVILLE -- One by one, the head coach of each varsity sport at the University of Tennessee entered the Hand Digital Studio on Tuesday morning for what became an hour-long sign of solidarity.

It was an unusual setting, but the 16 coaches believed the joint news conference was something the Volunteers' athletic department needed with its perception becoming tarnished by one negative headline after another.

The cloud now sitting over the university is the federal lawsuit filed earlier this month that targets how Tennessee handles allegations of rape and sexual assault involving male athletes. It claims there's a "hostile sexual environment" on campus for women.

The lawsuit, filed Feb. 9 in Nashville by six unidentified women, states Tennessee violated Title IX regulations and created the "hostile" environment through a policy of indifference toward assaults by athletes. The suit also states the university interfered with the disciplinary process to favor male athletes.

That was only part of the discussion Tuesday, however.

"We know that we don't want the stereotype that there's something out there that's not true," men's basketball coach Rick Barnes said to open the news conference. "It's not perfect now and it's never going to be perfect, but the fact is, and I can tell you this: The University of Tennessee's athletic department is as good as I've ever seen anywhere that I've ever been.

"When you look at what's going on, we have to stand up as a group and tell you all the good side of it, too. We have to do that. It's not fair to our current student-athletes, our former student-athletes and our future student-athletes that they don't understand there are great things going on in this campus."

Multiple coaches of the school's men's and women's teams defended Tennessee's culture. They cited the sharing of facilities and reiterated the support they show each other and the camaraderie they share. Many of them echoed one another.

"If you want to go back 20 years and accumulate incidents," softball co-head coach Karen Weekly said, "I would imagine you could look at a lot of schools like Tennessee and come up with a similar story.

"That's what's happened here. That's the part I feel is unfair. If you look at today, the culture here now I think [our players] are probably surprised at what's being said about Tennessee in the national media.

"That's not the Tennessee they live and breathe and feel and love on a daily basis."

What the coaches, from football coach Butch Jones to rowing coach Linda Glenn, seem to share is a common belief that everything is fine with Tennessee athletics.

They also share a boss, but athletic director Dave Hart and other top administrators weren't at the news conference.

Neither was UT chancellor Jimmy Cheek.

Spokesman Ryan Robinson said Hart and other administrators were out of town and that Tuesday morning was the time that worked best for all the coaches. The joint conference was something the coaches wanted to do and not a directive from above, he said.

"In some ways, we're speaking on their behalf," said women's soccer coach Brian Pensky, Hart's first hire at Tennessee in January 2012. "I've never been around a leader like Dave Hart. He bleeds the University of Tennessee.

"He has an expectation of comprehensive excellence, and that excellence starts with the kids. His agenda, first and foremost, is for every student-athlete to have whatever they need to be incredibly successful."

Multiple coaches of women's sports praised the administration for their support of those programs, seemingly in response to the notion that Tennessee, which merged separate men's and women's programs to a single department under Hart's watch, favors its men's sports.

That perception was fed by a couple of recent lawsuits involving former employees and the Lady Vols branding fiasco.

The federal lawsuit focuses on five cases reported from 2013 to 2015, but one paragraph in the 64-page document refers to a sexual harassment complaint made by a Tennessee trainer in 1996 involving an incident with Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, who was then the Volunteers' quarterback.

David Randolph Smith, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, has emphasized the focus of the lawsuit is on the university itself and that Manning's situation was referenced only to show how Tennessee has handled reports of player misconduct dating to 1995.

The school filed a motion Tuesday to strike the Manning reference from the lawsuit. Bill Ramsey, the lawyer representing Tennessee, said in his motion the paragraph should be removed "because of the utter lack of relevance the decades-old allegation against Peyton Manning has to this lawsuit."

"To think that the university is not treating women fairly, it is totally not true," women's basketball coach Holly Warlick said. "I've never felt more support from an administrator as Dave Hart. I've said this: Dave Hart took a chance on me."

Jones twice conveyed a message of empathy toward the alleged victims in the lawsuit and again defended his program against the perception that sexual assault is a rampant problem in his program, while multiple women's coaches disputed the notion the campus is unsafe for females.

"If I had a daughter, I would not hesitate one bit for her to come on campus," said Warlick, who joined the coaching staff in 1985 after playing for the Lady Vols.

"We've got to be doing something right, or I would not have bought in and said this is a great place."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Contact staff writer Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.

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