Respected AD resigns amid fallout
Michigan State University was pushed further into disarray Friday when the university’s athletic director, Mark Hollis, announced his resignation just two days after the university president resigned amid widespread outrage over Larry Nassar, who is accused of serially abusing more than 150 young women while he was a doctor at Michigan State and for the national women’s gymnastics team.
“This was not an easy decision for my family, and you should not jump to any conclusions,” Hollis said in a statement in which he also declared, “I am not running away from anything.”
His resignation appeared also to be prompted by an ESPN investigation that described a pattern in which sexual assault complaints involving prominent athletes,
including more than a dozen on the football team and a few in the celebrated men’s basketball program, were handled by the athletic department rather than regular university channels.
Michigan State insufficiently complied with federal officials monitoring the university under Title IX, the gender-equity law, the report found.
ESPN reported that on Wednesday it had shared the main findings of its reporting and requested interviews with multiple administrators and athletic officials, including Hollis.
Pitt football coach Pat Narduzzi was an assistant at Michigan State from 2007-2015, both as defensive coordinator and for the final two years associate head coach. The ESPN report doesn’t name Narduzzi or include any allegations against him. The only Michigan State football staff member mentioned is Mark Dantonio, and none of his assistants are alluded to in the report.
Hollis had been Michigan State’s athletic director since 2008 and had been considered one of the best in the country. Michigan State’s president, Lou Anna K. Simon, resigned earlier this week amid escalating scrutiny and criticism.
Several women have said Nassar molested them while they were athletes at Michigan State, where he was the physician for two women’s teams, and a former gymnastics coach has been accused of covering up allegations. A lawyer for the school said that an inquiry found no evidence that high-ranking administrators knew about Nassar’s conduct before 2016.
But that inquiry has not been made public in full, and The Detroit News reported that more than a dozen university staff members had heard of reports before then. Michigan State investigated Nassar after a recent graduate made a Title IX complaint against him in 2014, and cleared him.
Nassar was sentenced Wednesday to decades in jail, on top of decades more he received on federal child pornography charges, for sexually abusing seven girls. His sentencing hearing over the past week included statements from more than 150 of his accusers and family members.
Nassar was a member of the faculty at Michigan State for years and was the team physician for the gymnastics and women’s crew teams.
“Our campus, and beyond, has been attacked by evil, an individual who broke trust and so much more,” Hollis said in his statement, in which he pledged to cooperate with any investigations, including one the state attorney general is planning and another that the NCAA has opened. “As a campus community, we must do everything we can to ensure this never happens again; to make sure any sexual assault never occurs. But to do so, we must listen and learn lessons. Only then can we truly begin the process of healing.”
Hollis received his undergraduate degree from Michigan State in 1985 and worked in its athletic department since 1995. Since ascending to his current position, Hollis came to be regarded as one of the most successful athletic directors in college sports.