Kansas has placed head football coach Les Miles on administrative leave and the university will conduct a full review to determine the appropriate next steps on his future, Jayhawks athletic director Jeff Long said in a statement Friday night.
The decision came after reports of Miles' conduct while he coached at LSU in 2013 were made public this week.
"Even though the allegations against him occurred at LSU, we take these matters very seriously at KU," Long said in the statement. "Now that we have access to this information, we will take the coming days to fully review the material and to see if any additional information is available. I do not want to speculate on a timeline for our review because it is imperative we do our due diligence."
On Saturday, Miles' attorney Peter Ginsberg described Kansas' decision to put Miles on leave as being based on "media blowback" and categorized it as being "disturbing and unfair."
"Bending to the winds of media blowback, Kansas has now decided to put Coach Miles on administrative leave," Ginsberg said in a statement. "Before the release of the reports this week, Kansas had been provided with significant information supporting Taylor Porter's conclusions. KU also had performed thorough due diligence before hiring Coach Miles. Kansas' decision to put Les Miles on administrative leave is both disturbing and unfair. To fail to recognize that a person's career should not be compromised by unsubstantiated allegations hardly is consistent with the example an institution of higher learning should champion."
On Thursday, a report released on behalf of LSU showed that a 2013 internal investigation at the school accused Miles of inappropriate behavior toward female students, including allegations that he contacted some via Facebook and text, met them off campus alone and kissed at least one of them. The report did not find that he had sexual relationships with any of the women, and Miles strongly denied kissing the student, saying he didn't do anything wrong and that he was mentoring young women at the university.
The law firm Taylor Porter conducted the investigation on behalf of LSU. Ginsberg, told ESPN on Thursday that the results of it "should put an end to the baseless, inaccurate media reports that Coach Les Miles engaged in an inappropriate touching of an Athletic Department student volunteer eight years ago."
On Friday, a second report, this one conducted by the law firm Husch Blackwell, detailed systemic failures by LSU to appropriately report incidents of athletic-related sexual misconduct and abuse. Part of that report showed that former LSU athletic director Joe Alleva recommended in 2013 that Miles be fired as coach because of the above-mentioned accusations of inappropriate behavior with female students.
Miles was not in the KU football offices Friday. The Jayhawks hired him in November 2018, signing him to a five-year contract at the time.
The 67-year-old Miles is 3-18 in his first two seasons at Kansas, including 0-9 in 2020. The Jayhawks' only Big 12 win during those two seasons came over Texas Tech in 2019. Kansas last won more than three games in a season in 2009.
Long and Miles worked together at Michigan in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Before Long hired him at KU, Miles had been out of coaching for parts of three seasons after being fired by LSU in 2016.
Mike DeBord, who was hired last month as Kansas' offensive coordinator, will oversee the program with Miles on leave, sources told ESPN.