ASU Coach Bobby Hurley Went Off On His AD For The Standoffish Way They Handled Alleged Sexual Harassment From A Booster

ESPN – Arizona State basketball coach Bobby Hurley accused athletic director Ray Anderson of “disturbing” actions when dealing with harassment allegations against a prominent athletic booster in a December email.

According to documents obtained by Yahoo Sports, Hurley emailed Anderson on Dec. 8 to express his displeasure with the way the athletic director handled sexual harassment allegations by three women — including Hurley’s wife, Leslie — against booster Bart Wear.

“I thought there would be more sensitivity and consideration to all victims involved relative to [redacted]’s attendance at our basketball game. … You had prior knowledge that he was going to be in attendance and that was very disappointing,” Hurley wrote to Anderson in an email. “Mainly because you made no effort to make me aware of that, especially after you came to practice on Thursday and assured me that [redacted] would no longer be around men’s basketball. This was very misleading and I feel I have been lied to.”

“You have disregarded the safety and shown no sensitivity towards the women that have experienced sexual assault,” Hurley wrote. “You have chosen to create your own numeric scale on what sexual assault mean[s] which is disturbing.”

“Clearly, you have made judgements and conclusions, not to mention false and baseless allegations,” Anderson wrote. “Your approach here is puzzling. This matter should now be firmly put in the hands of the lawyers. I will not engage with you directly on the [redacted] matters.”

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Good for Bobby Hurley here. He may be more motivated to stand up against whatever weird things allegedly occurred with the Arizona State booster Bart Wear since his wife was one of the women who had issues. But the right move is the right move, no matter who’s involved or how much money ASU’s grabby-handed boosters may put into the school’s bank account.

And honestly, that’s the issue with the NCAA overall. It’s a league where every sport has some sort of “they play for the love of the game!” type of world view, but these schools make bank off of it (in addition to all of our sometimes crippling student loan debt). They’ve run a cartel for decades that profits off of the backs of kids who frequently don’t know better. They’ve turned a blind eye to some teams vigorously working around their archaic “a college education is the payment” ethos while overly penalizing others for getting caught doing the same (fight on, USC).

And that’s just the NCAA overall, not even getting into the weeds on the schools themselves and the things they do. Many schools have willingly turned a blind eye to many situations in the sexual harassment or assault vein. They’ve also given unbelievable access to boosters and covered their eyes when things go wrong with these people because they keep everyone at the school in the finer things (except for the athletes who actually live by the letter of the NCAA law).

So go off, Bobby Hurley. Even though you’re inherently unlikable because of being a Duke alum, you’ve taken a major step on my personal power rankings today. Not enough to avoid posting this famous video of Hurley getting carved up by Kenny Anderson, but still. Every journey begins with a footstep:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr-2SofYkcU