This is what’s in the report that led to USU football coach Blake Anderson’s firing

Utah State football coach Blake Anderson put off suspending a player arrested for domestic violence — and instead reached out personally to the alleged victim in his own vigilante investigation to get a statement from her saying the athlete hadn’t done anything wrong, according to a new report from an independent review team.

The findings are the latest in the most recent scandal to rock the northern Utah school, which has repeatedly been the focus of mishandled sexual assault allegations over the past eight years, including previous concerns with Anderson. In this latest case, USU made the abrupt announcement earlier this month that it intended to fire Anderson for “significant violations” in his duties to report and respond to sexual misconduct that had occurred in spring 2023.

He was officially terminated Thursday ahead of what would’ve been his fourth season there.

[UPDATE: Here’s why ex-Utah State coach Blake Anderson says he shouldn’t have been fired, July 20, 2023]

Before now, the school in Logan had generally outlined concerns that Anderson failed to follow policy. But a new report — along with two termination letters sent to the coach — were provided to The Salt Lake Tribune on Friday in response to a public records request. The documents offer details for the first time on what happened with the domestic violence report that led to Anderson and two other athletics staffers being terminated.

In the seven-page independent review, conducted by Kansas City-based law firm Husch Blackwell — which also previously investigated allegations of abuse by former University of Utah gymnastics coach Tom Farden — every bullet point lists the missteps investigators say that Anderson made when he appeared to be trying to confirm the player’s innocence above adhering to protocol.

The biggest violations, according to the review, were that Anderson failed to report the arrest to USU’s Office of Equity, as required, and then tried to conduct his own investigation while keeping the player on the roster.

“Instead of following the department’s typical practice, Coach Anderson chose to initiate his own investigative efforts that focused on gathering student athlete’s explanation about what happened and then seeking witness statements supporting his defense,” the findings state.

The report does not name the football player who was arrested on April 5, 2023. The athlete was later charged with two misdemeanors, pleading no contest to assault in the presence of a child, while the count for domestic violence was dismissed. In a plea deal, the charges will be dismissed in six months if the player completes anger management classes and pays a $690 fine.

Because of the level of charges, The Tribune is also not identifying him at this time. But the newspaper has independently confirmed his identity through interviews, court documents and multiple police reports.

The April 2023 case and arrest prompted the investigation into Anderson. But the player had also been reported to police in northern Utah twice before for domestic violence, and once for trying to buy a gun as a restricted person (related to pleading guilty to a felony as a juvenile); however, he was not charged in those other three cases.

He has also since transferred from the school, which is noted in the independent review. He entered the portal two weeks after his arrest, according to the report. And, at that point, Anderson apparently told investigators that he “stopped further consideration of the issue” because the player was no longer a USU student.

For his part, Anderson has denied the allegations that he improperly responded to the case. He and his attorney Tom Mars submitted a 70-page rebuttal and appeal to his initial notice of termination.

Mars shared excerpts from that document Friday on social media that called the independent review a “sham” meant to get the school out of having to pay Anderson a $4.5 million buyout. He claims they “tried to fleece their once-adored head coach” and that the school owes him the full amount of his buyout and an apology for making false accusations; he said they’ll be looking at “all available legal remedies” to that end.

Utah State’s former deputy athletic director Jerry Bovee — who was the school’s interim athletic director at the time of the purported failed reporting — and Director of Player Development Austin Albrecht were also terminated. Bovee has similarly denied not following procedures, saying he reported the arrest within 24 hours of hearing about it from Anderson.

Amy Crosbie, who was the executive associate athletic director for internal affairs and senior woman administrator for nearly five years, was also fired by the university on July 8. No reason for her termination was given. She has since written an op-ed published by The Herald Journal in Logan that said she’s choosing gratitude despite the “confusion, heartache and tears.”

A Utah State spokesperson referred Friday to previous statements released by the school. USU has defended its decision, with both President Elizabeth Cantwell and Athletics Director Diana Sabau issuing statements.

The 2023 domestic violence case

She could hear a woman screaming somewhere in her apartment complex. “Get off of me,” the witness said she heard. “You are choking me.”

The witness ran to find the source while dialing 911. A few flights of stairs down, she told the operator, she found a woman who was injured, lying on the ground in one of the hallways. A man had jumped off of her and ran into one of the apartments when the witness appeared.

When officers arrived, the injured woman told them that she was having a custody battle with a man, who she identified as a USU football player, according to a report from the North Park Police Department, just outside of Logan.

The athlete had allegedly grabbed the victim by the neck of her sweatshirt. He then went inside and locked the door, with the child inside and the woman outside, she said.

The officer who talked to the woman wrote that she had bruises and small cuts around her neck. She told him that she didn’t want the player charged with a crime, but the officer said he had to because of her injuries. He took the player to Cache County jail and booked him.

Anderson told investigators that he first learned about that arrest from Albrecht (the director of player development) about a week after it happened; but the report indicates that another unnamed coach had also told Anderson before that, “within days of it occurring,” and it didn’t appear head coach hadn’t done anything initially.

The independent review doesn’t give specific dates for when those notices happened after the April 5, 2023, alleged assault. But the same day that the coach said Albrecht told him, he talked to the athlete. Anderson said the player told him about the arrest, insisting “he had not done anything wrong and that his girlfriend would support him.”

(The report notes that it’s not clear that the alleged victim was the player’s girlfriend at the time. The police filing seems to indicate they had broken up.)

The independent review says that after the player told Anderson that nothing happened, the coach decided not to take action against the athlete until he had more information. And that’s when, investigators say, he started conducting his own investigation.

The coach reportedly collected a witness statement from the player, and the player’s roommate who was there at the time and was also on the team; that roommate told him nothing violent happened, Anderson said.

According to the report, the coach then went to interview the alleged victim. Anderson reported she told him, as well, that it wasn’t violent. He asked her to write a witness statement saying that.

The review team suggested that the coach’s goal from the start was to back up what the player had told him about being innocent.

After he got those, the report says that Anderson went to talk to Bovee and shared with him the witness statements. Anderson said Bovee agreed with him that they should determine if the player was being “targeted” before they did anything.

“Coach Anderson did not want to suspend student athlete if he had not done anything wrong, so he and Mr. Bovee decided to investigate and obtain more facts before taking further action,” according to the report. But from there Anderson and Bovee diverge in their recollections.

Bovee recalled Anderson saying there were “differing viewpoints” in the situation and, “We are on a fact-finding mission here; we will act once we have information to act upon.” He thought the coach was going to gather additional information.

He also said Anderson insisted they should “go slow” and not be “quick to judge,” “given the statement from student athlete’s girlfriend.”

Meanwhile, Anderson said he thought Bovee was going to look into it more.

The report says that both of them violated policy in multiple ways with their flawed responses, but Sabau calls that improper investigation by the coach “far more egregious” than the other issues.

Not reporting the arrest

USU policy states all coaches and athletic directors are considered “reporting employees” and are required to file an incident report to USU’s Office of Equity, specifically the Title IX director, within 24 hours any time they have information about sexual misconduct involving a student or staff member. That expressly lists domestic violence among the types of cases to report.

Both Anderson and Bovee told investigators, according to the report, that was their standard approach.

But, in the case involving the player’s domestic violence arrest, the report says that neither of them did so.

For Bovee, the report states: “He planned to discuss the matter with the Office of Equity and in-house counsel. He confirmed, however, that he never had any such discussions.” Bovee has said he reported to the interim vice president of students affairs within 24 hours, and the report notes that; but it says that is not the same action as required by reporting to the Office of Equity.

Bovee also said he told Anderson they needed to file a report.

Anderson says Bovee never discussed it with him. The coach told investigators it was possible other athletics department staff filed a report “but didn’t recall anyone telling him they planned to do so.”

With Anderson, it adds, the coach said he didn’t file because “he was not aware he needed to do so given that the altercation occurred off campus and was ‘dealt with by the authorities.’” Anderson’s attorney has also repeated that reasoning, and he’s said that USU purposefully left out details and confused the timeline of events.

But the report says there is no caveat in the USU policy limiting where misconduct occurrs to only on campus. The investigators say that response from Anderson was “particularly troubling” given how many trainings he’d had — as well as his staff and his players — on how and where to report sexual misconduct.

In his initial notice of termination letter, the school specifically listed seven separate trainings that Anderson had since April 2022. All of those came after Anderson had previously come under fire in December 2021 when audio of him was shared telling football players it has “never been more glamorized to be a victim” of sexual assault.

That became part of a lawsuit filed by student Kaytriauna Flint, who alleged she was raped by a football player and the school had created an atmosphere where that wasn’t taken seriously. A separate football player, Patrick Maddox, later confirmed he made the recordings. He also sued saying afterward he was retaliated against by Anderson for doing so.

Both Flint and Maddox agreed to settlements with USU to end their cases. And Anderson issued a public apology.

Utah doesn’t mention those in its recent statements about the coach, but it does say he should’ve known the policy for reporting when the domestic violence case occurred.

“While you excused your failure by asserting that you were not aware that you needed to do so, this is not a legitimate defense,” Sabau wrote in the first letter to the coach.

The report notes that both Bovee and Anderson also had opportunities to bring up and report the domestic violence case during meetings they had with USU leaders in the weeks after the situation — but before administrators knew about it — that were focused on the climate of the football team, respect and consent after the flurry of news about sexual misconduct surrounding the athletics program. Neither said anything at those, according to investigators.

The review said that not addressing the case “when similar climate concerns were squarely addressed” raises red flags about transparency throughout the athletics department.

A report was finally filed after Bovee mentioned the situation to the interim vice president for student affairs during a separate meeting. It was the vice president who put in the formal filing.

Sabau wrote about that: “These violations fly in the face of USU’s substantial efforts to address concerns that the USU football program has a hostile climate towards individuals who report sexual misconduct and concerns that the football program fails to hold student-athletes and others accountable for sexual misconduct.”

‘Contempt and ridicule upon USU’

Bovee told investigators that it was “fairly standard” that any time an athlete was arrested for sexual assault or a felony, they would be immediately suspended from the team.

Anderson, though, said it was more of a “collaborative conversation” with the athletic director to come to the best decision in individual cases. Meanwhile, others in athletics said it was solely up to the coach. And a few said they didn’t know of a set procedure.

The review team said Bovee’s response was what should have happened — the typical way those cases are handled in collegiate sports. But when investigators asked him why he didn’t carry that out with the domestic violence case, Bovee said it was because spring practice had ended “so there was no reason to suspend.” The report notes, based on the timing, that wasn’t accurate.

Bovee also said that he’d determined there was “nothing imminent to worry about” with the player. That also wasn’t true.

Two weeks after he was arrested, the player entered the transfer portal and moved to a different school.

Because he wasn’t reported to USU’s Office of Equity, there was no note in his file and no chance for Utah State to inform the receiving school about an open misconduct investigation, as required by the rules for the National Collegiate Athletics Association, or NCAA.

Additionally, it set a bad precedent, investigators said.

“Allowing [the] student athlete to continue being part of the team despite being arrested for domestic violence, could have indirectly communicated to other members of the team that such issues were not always taken seriously,” the report states.

Sabau said the mishandling of the allegations “has and is likely to result in a loss of trust in the USU athletic department and the football program and to bring further public disrepute, contempt and ridicule upon USU.”

What about football players’ academics?

On Thursday, USU brought up another allegation publicly for the first time when it moved forward with formally firing Anderson: academics.

The termination letter to the coach provides specifics on that. It states that since Anderson took over as coach the performance measure used to gauge how the team’s players are doing in their school work has “deteriorated.”

It’s called the “academic performance rate,” and when Anderson started in 2020 it was at 965.

The following year, it went down to 944. Then in 2023 to 899, where it’s stayed this spring.

Sabau says the average rate for football in the NCAA is 963.

“The APR of 899 assessed to USU football during the last two years of your tenure as head coach put USU football in a small group of only 12 Division I football programs (out of 257 teams) with an APR below 930,” she wrote.

She wrote that she had talked to Anderson about it before, noting it “has put your student-athletes and the athletics department at risk of both ineligibility and public embarrassment and disrepute. The poor academic performance of the USU football program is unacceptable and provides a separate basis for termination under the agreement.”