Bob Davie has spoken.
Late Thursday afternoon, New Mexico confirmed that it had suspended its head football coach for 30 days without pay. The suspension stemmed from a trio of investigations into allegations against Davie and the football program, with one of those probes encouraging UNM leadership to “take strong action to ensure that the University does not and will not — in any aspect of the University’s program, including athletics — tolerate sexual harassment, sexual assault, physical abuse or other prohibited misconduct against its students.”
One of the most damning allegations involved a female student reporting to university police that she was raped by a Lobos football player. After Davie caught wind of the alleged attack, the coach allegedly “held an all-team meeting in which he told the players to ‘get some dirt on this whore.’”
It was also alleged that Davie “used racist slurs during practice, and physically abused an injured athlete.”
In response to the suspension and allegations, Davie released the following statement:Over the past nine months the University has conducted three investigations involving the football program dating back to 2012. None of these three investigations determined that I had violated any University policy. I have appealed the suspension imposed by Interim President Abdallah to the Board of Regents.
I fully cooperated in every respect and met multiple times with the investigators, but was never asked to meet with or provide information to Hogan. In fact, the Hogan Report reads “Given the lack of specific evidence that he or his staff engaged in criminal obstruction or retaliation with respect to these three incidences, we also determined that it was not necessary to interview Coach Davie or conduct a further review of additional police, OEO and medical records.”
While I do not think it is appropriate to discuss specifics of the investigation at this time, I will respond to one of several troubling allegations. Apparently some unnamed person has claimed that during a team meeting I told the players to “get some dirt on this [victim]”. None of the investigators told me about this claim or asked me if I ever made this remark. So there is no misunderstanding, never did I make that or any similar comment.