The announcement Sunday that Texas Tech has suspended head men’s basketball coach Mark Adams for racial insensitivity, provides just the latest testable question in an ongoing higher ed experiment: How many coach-abuse scandals can a single college athletic director endure while keeping his job?
L’Affaire Adams marks the fifth occasion (and fourth in three years) in which Texas Tech AD Kirby Hocutt has been forced to address alleged inappropriate and demeaning behavior by one of his coaches towards their players. It follows, in short succession, from scandals involving the school’s women’s tennis, softball and women’s basketball head coaches, all ending in firings or resignations.
In its statement Sunday, Texas Tech said that Adams had invoked biblical allusions to slaves serving their masters while “encouraging (a) student-athlete to be more receptive to coaching.”
Adams “immediately addressed this with the team and apologized,” the statement continued. Hocutt was said to have initially issued Adams a verbal reprimand on Friday, before deciding two days later to suspend the coach pending an investigation.
Stadium reported that Texas Tech is also investigating a separate incident in which Adams was accused of spitting on the same player, then telling him, “I can spit on you whenever I want.” Adams, who is in the second year of a five-year, $15.5 million contract, told the publication he didn’t recall making such a comment and blamed the unwanted sputter on a bad cough.
According to the school’s statement, Hocutt is the one leading the oral inquiry; he has no shortage of experience.
One of the country’s highest-paid athletic directors, Hocutt signed an eight-year contract extension last summer, which increased his base salary to $1.64 million this year, plus $500,000 in annual deferred compensation and numerous performance-bonus opportunities. Hocutt’s employment agreement also includes what multiple industry experts tell Sportico is some of the most exacting and extensive job performance and termination-for-cause language of any in the industry.
“Hocutt understands that he is presumed to be responsible for the actions of all department staff who report directly or indirectly to him when Hocutt knows or should have known of such actions,” the AD’s contract states. (Hocutt and a university spokesperson did not respond to Sportico‘s requests for comment.)
Hocutt came to Texas Tech in 2011, after leaving the AD post at Miami, which was then in the midst of a pay-to-play scandal involving convicted Ponzi schemer Nevin Shapiro.
In March 2011, shortly after taking the job, Hocutt hired Billy Gillispie as Texas Tech’s head men’s basketball coach. Gillispie was later accused of mistreatment by multiple former players, allegations that Hocutt called “very troubling.” In September 2012, a month after the school commenced an internal investigation, Gillispie resigned, citing health reasons, and was paid the remainder of his contract for that year.
“Billy’s decision allows him to concentrate on his well-being and allows us to turn our attention to preparations for the upcoming season,” Hocutt said at the time.
In 2016, Hocutt tapped Chris Beard as men’s basketball coach, which commenced an on-court renaissance of the program. Beard led the Red Raiders to four straight NCAA Tournaments, including an Elite Eight berth in 2018, before departing for cross-state rival Texas in 2021. He was fired earlier this year after an arrest for allegedly strangling his fiancé, a charge both later denied.
Though Beard’s implosion didn’t happen on Hocutt’s watch, he’s seen more than the average share of coaching hires turned inside out. Indeed, the athletic director inked his contract extension last summer just a week after a USA Today report detailed allegations of abuse against tennis coach Todd Petty, who later resigned.
That same month, Texas Tech paid $740,000 to settle a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed by former women’s basketball coach Marlene Stollings, who was fired in 2020 following a joint investigation by The Intercollegiate and USA Today. The reporting uncovered, through public records requests, a trove of athlete exit interview surveys in the school’s possession, with claims of abuse made against Stollings by at least a dozen athletes over two years. Nevertheless, Texas Tech didn’t so much as suspended the coach until firing her the day after the story was published, though TTU had initiated an internal investigation several months before.
In her lawsuit filed against the school and Hocutt, Stollings accused her former boss of terminating her to “deflect blame” after realizing that his “own position was at risk.”
While denying the merit of Stollings’ “inflammatory” allegations, Hocutt and the university filed motions to dismiss on account of Texas’ qualified immunity law, which shields public officials from liability “when they are acting within their discretionary authority and their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional law.” It’s the same regulation that allowed Texas Tech to ward off an employment lawsuit filed by former football coach Mike Leach.
In September 2020, a month after Stollings was fired, softball coach Adrian Gregory resigned under pressure following multiple allegations of player abuse, just a year after she signed a new, five-year extension. (Gregory is now a volunteer assistant coach at Texas A&M, her alma mater.)
“When we see these types of concerns that keep rising up I think the biggest thing we have to appreciate is student-athlete welfare,” said Jen Fry, a former college volleyball coach who consults on sensitivity training for college athletic departments. Fry was hired by Texas Tech in early 2021 to do two virtual training sessions with coaches in partnership with Texas Tech’s Black Student Athlete Alliance, formed in the wake of the coaching abuse fallout.
“This is the fourth incident in three years,” Fry said of the investigation into Adams. “And so, right now we have a student-athlete welfare issue. What is it going to take? What type of harm to the athlete is the breaking point?”
In his dozen years at Texas Tech, Hocutt, 52, has proven to be a successful money raiser, which is reflected in his contract’s lengthy list of incentive clauses: He gets a bonus equaling 5% of his base salary if the school’s athletic booster organization raises at least $15 million in a given year–a near certainty these days. In its annual financial reporting to the NCAA, Texas Tech athletics claimed to have received $28.7 million in donations for 2021-22, up from $15.9 million the previous academic year.
Donna Lopiano, a former longtime senior athletics administrator at Texas, said that university leaders like Hocutt should only get so many chances to show they can maintain a “safe educational environment.”
“I can see an athletic director facing a situation, recognizing they don’t have a strong enough policy in place, then getting a policy in place, reading the riot act (to coaches),” Lopiano said. “That is the one shot I think that most employees have.”
Marty Greenberg, an adjunct law professor at Marquette and longtime sports lawyer, argues that Texas Tech should now be under scrutiny for not only how it handles the employment Adams, but his direct superior. Given Hocutt’s popularity among boosters and alumni, and its financial fruits, Greenberg says the safe bet is the athletic director survives, even if another one of his hires does not.
“I am predicting the money and success of the program will win out,” Greenberg said.
Then again, this week has already offered a precedent.
On Monday, the Des Moines Register reported that a $4 million settlement had been reached between the University of Iowa and a group of black Hawkeyes football players who accused head coach Kirk Ferentz of racial discrimination. Citing a number of recent scandals in the school’s athletic department, Iowa state Auditor Rob Sand—one of three members of a state appeal board charged with approving the settlement—says he would only give his consent if Iowa’s 16-year athletic director Gary Barta was let go.
“Enough is enough,” Sand said. “Clear personal accountability is necessary.”
