MINNEAPOLIS ― The University of Minnesota athletics department generally doesn’t condone or tolerate sexual harassment and the school had no knowledge of inappropriate conduct by former athletic director Norwood Teague before the allegations that led to his resignation surfaced, according to an external review released Tuesday.
Teague stepped down abruptly in August after two high-ranking university administrators reported he sexually harassed them at a senior leadership retreat weeks earlier. His deputy, Mike Ellis, resigned in November after being placed on leave in September when complaints against him surfaced.
The review ― conducted by an employment law attorney and a former federal prosecutor ― found no fault with the university’s vetting of Teague before he was hired. The university had been criticized for missing a gender discrimination complaint against Teague when he worked at Virginia Commonwealth University.
It did, however, find that some Minnesota athletes lied to investigators trying to follow up on a sexual harassment complaint. While the university’s equal opportunity office didn’t find enough evidence to substantiate the harassment allegation, the review determined otherwise, saying there was sufficient evidence “to conclude that at least some of the student athletes” violated the university’s sexual harassment policy.
The report didn’t identify the sport, but the school’s director of equal opportunity reported in July that her office had received complaints about football players.
Bill O’Brien, an attorney for Teague, said the release of the report marks the end of “an extended feeding frenzy” involving Teague, but that they needed time to review its more than 700 pages before commenting.
The outside investigators interviewed more than 100 people and reviewed 250,000 pages of documents, texts and emails for the report. The estimated cost of the external review through Nov. 30 was $690,000.
