Chancellor Brady J. Deaton issued a statement to clarify remarks he made in an Aug. 19 conference call regarding the hiring of Frank Haith as MU’s basketball coach.
Newspaper reports over the weekend suggested Deaton had acknowledged that, prior to hiring the former University of Miami coach, MU knew of alleged improprieties centered around the football program at Miami.
Here is Deaton’s statement:
“After reading a few accounts this morning, I felt it necessary to provide clarification to my statements following the Aug. 19, 2011, University of Missouri Board of Curators meeting. At no time were we aware of any allegations at the University of Miami, football, basketball, or otherwise, until Tuesday’s Yahoo! Sports report. In the days leading up to the report we, as many of you, heard about the allegations of improprieties at Miami, but that early media information centered around football. That was my contention in the comment below, and the insinuation that we knew about a potential investigation during our hiring process is an incorrect interpretation of my remarks yesterday. As I stated, no evidence of an investigation came up during our vetting process.
“With regard to the search process that resulted in the University of Missouri hiring Frank Haith, we had a very thorough search process in which all candidates were vetted very thoroughly. In the case of Mr. Haith, we’ve documented more than 20 specific reference points, with the NCAA, the Atlantic Coast Conference, administrators at the University of Miami as well as, of course, the former athletic director, and many others in the field, and everything came back very, very clear, very positive and left us reassured that this was an individual that would provide the leadership that we desired at the University of Missouri, so we feel good about the vetting process. The investigation that had begun at some point, was an investigation, as I understand, perhaps of football, and had not reached over into this side at all. No evidence of this came up during the vetting process.”