Feds say ‘sexually hostile culture’ persists in USU football program

SALT LAKE CITY – For years, Utah State University has promised to do better.  

Its failures to properly investigate when football players and other male students assault women were first documented by journalists, then the U.S. Department of Justice . In 2020, the school struck an agreement with DOJ outlining how it would improve.  

But four years later, “there continues to be alarming evidence of a pervasive, sexually hostile culture and climate within the football program,” DOJ officers said in damning findings made public late Tuesday.   

“This environment has been allowed to grow and fester due to repeated ineffective, inequitable, and untimely responses by the University, including the OOE (office of equity) and the athletics department,” states a DOJ letter notifying the university of its “substantial noncompliance.”   

In the letter dated Aug. 21, the Justice Department gave the school 45 days to show it’s correcting the problems.  

In a written response to DOJ, Utah State acknowledged issues have persisted in the football program but said “USU remains committed to proactively addressing these issues,” in part by bringing on outside counsel to develop new protocol.  

One focal point in DOJ’s findings: the former head football coach and athletic department’s handling of a player’s arrest for assault in 2023. Their responses to the report of relationship violence resulted in the July firings of coach Blake Anderson and three other athletic department employees.  

DOJ acknowledged the four firings and noted the university brought on an outside trainer to help develop smaller, targeted trainings for USU student athletes and staff, but said problems have remained.  

The Justice Department’s letter echoed conclusions from an outside review commissioned by the university, saying Anderson investigated for himself after his player was arrested on suspicion of assault and that the coach and then-acting athletic director Jerry Bovee didn’t file reports with the university’s Title IX office. Athletic department employees Austin Albrecht and Amy Crosbie also were fired over their responses.  

Those actions “show a gross lack of professional judgment and blatant disregard for USU’s Title IX policies and procedures, on which they were trained annually,” the DOJ letter states.  

The federal agency also took the university to task, suggesting the school’s own investigation of what happened in the athletic department was slow and incomplete. Employees in the university’s Office of Equity did not directly question Anderson or Bovee and the school did not address their behavior until after the outside report came out roughly a year later, the DOJ said in its letter.  

“The university’s delayed response also left a team of football players with the sense that they were special, subject to a different, more favorable set of rules,” the letter states.  

Anderson has denied wrongdoing and insisted in a prior written response to the university that he “handled this matter by the book.”  His attorney did not respond to KSL’s request for comment to this report.   

Bovee maintains he did not do anything wrong and told KSL that he believes the school will reinstate him. In a statement, Bovee told KSL that the issues went beyond his department, but “only the athletic department employees were singled out for termination and public degradation.” 

The letter out this week wasn’t DOJ’s first warning to Utah State. The Justice Department previously notified the university of its noncompliance in February 2023, citing “an ongoing sexually hostile environment within its athletics department, particularly within the football program.”  

Also in the letter:  

• The Justice Department confirmed that the termination of another deputy athletic director, Amy Crosbie, also was tied to the player’s arrest. The letter states Crosbie, like Bovee, knew Anderson “spoke with the alleged victim” in the case but failed to report that information to the school’s Title IX office. Crosbie did not return a message seeking comment. 

• While investigating the 2023 report of misconduct by a student athlete, the university received a police report detailing “yet another set of very serious and disturbing allegations of criminal sexual misconduct” by the same player. But more than a year after receiving the report, employees told DOJ “they had not taken any steps to investigate the earlier allegations.”  

USU said in its written response that it opened a separate file and “attempted to investigate these allegations, starting by reaching out to the alleged victim,” but did not say when that happened. 

• Football players’ behavior in an October 2023 training on sexual misconduct was “yet another indication of a toxic culture,” according to the Justice Department. 

The university employee who conducted the training reported players “joked and laughed, engaging in numerous inappropriate side conversations. These conversations suggested the football players normalized the treatment of women as sexual objects, the engaging in sexual contact without consent, and the idea that Title IX did not apply to them.”   

• Utah State agreed in 2021 that it would work on developing policies for how its Title IX office coordinates with the athletics department but hadn’t done so.  

---

Contributing: Garna Mejia   

Have you experienced something you think just isn’t right? The KSL investigators want to help. Submit your tip at investigates@ksl.com or 385-707-6153 so we can get working for you.