College coach cancelations have shifted from Title IX courts to other avenues: universities commissioning law firms to perform “independent” investigations, Congress chartering the U.S. Center for SafeSport, and direct-to-media accusations, ranging from student newspapers to the host of Spotify’s #2 podcast.

Podcaster Alex Cooper accused her college soccer coach of persistent sexual harassment in a Hulu documentary, “Call Her Alex,” that premiered earlier this month. Cooper alleges that from 2013 to 2015, former Boston University coach Nancy Feldman made inappropriate comments about Cooper’s sex life and physical appearance, would put her hand on Cooper’s thigh, and would “make me aware of her physical power, like [by] putting her hand on my neck after practice, and like squeezing my neck and saying, ‘We need to have a one-on-one talk.'”

Cooper says she endured years of sexual harassment because she feared retaliation by Feldman and the university, specifically, losing her athletic scholarship.

Cooper Goes Directly to Media

Cooper did not avail herself of the Title IX process while a student-athlete, despite those being peak years for the Title IX courts created by the Obama administration.

Instead, ahead of her senior year in 2016, she and her parents met with Boston University’s athletic director and senior associate director of athletics, who was also one of the school’s deputy Title IX coordinators. Cooper says she and her parents presented them with a notebook in which her mother chronicled Cooper’s complaints about Feldman.

According to Cooper, the administrators did not look at the notebook even once during the meeting.

At this point, the university was over two years into a Department of Education Office of Civil Rights investigation “for mishandling sexual violence and harassment complaints on campus” under Title IX. For two senior university administrators — including a deputy Title IX coordinator — to casually dismiss a student’s allegation of sexual harassment by a coach against the backdrop of a federal investigation would be a brazen and reckless move if there was any substance to what Cooper presented at that meeting.

Cooper subsequently quit the team. The university allowed her to keep her scholarship for her senior year.

Nine years later, Cooper is using her immense platform and resources to attack Feldman and Boston University. It’s a bit of overkill: much less is sufficient to destroy a coach.

Accused Coach Countersues for Defamation

After President Donald Trump took office but before Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos could formally change Title IX policy, Quincy University in Illinois convened a Title IX investigation in response to a student-athlete’s accusation against a coach.

Daniel Lozier, a male tennis player at Quincy, accused tennis coach Brian Holzgrafe of having a sexual relationship with a female player on the tennis team. The school conducted a Title IX investigation and found Lozier’s claim to be entirely baseless.

Lozier proceeded to sue the school, several administrators, and Holzgrafe for retaliation (under Title IX) and other claims. All were either dismissed or settled with the university.

Holzgrafe countersued for defamation and false light. Last month, his seven-year legal battle ended with a federal judge upholding a jury’s verdict and awarding him $2 million in damages.

U.S. District Court Judge Sue Myerscough skewered Lozier’s claim that there was an “innocent construction” to the rumor he spread about Holzgrafe. By alleging fornication or adultery, Lozier’s rumor was defamation per se. But the identities of the people involved are more important to Myerscough’s analysis. The defamatory statements concerned a coach and a collegiate student-athlete. There is no neutral interpretation of such a rumor’s intent or implication.

The judge also affirmed that the harm Lozier caused was severe and near permanent.

“Defendant’s actions were indeed reprehensible in light of the specific factors in this matter and did indeed cause significant harm to Plaintiff’s mental health and reputation,” Judge Myerscough wrote. She confirms the depression, humiliation, loss of reputation “in a close-knit community,” ongoing financial damage, and loss of both tennis and coaching that Holzgrafe suffered.

Center for SafeSport’s Loophole

As Holzgrafe was beginning his legal battle, Congress was chartering the U.S. Center for SafeSport to investigate claims of sexual abuse in youth sport. Over the next few years, its mandate would expand to include all forms of abuse at all levels of amateur sport.

The Center for SafeSport does not have jurisdiction over collegiate sports. But any college coach who is affiliated with the Olympic movement — such as by coaching a national team, separate from their collegiate duties — falls under the center’s jurisdiction, even for offenses alleged by college student-athletes.

This loophole created the double jeopardy that ended former University of California swimming coach Teri McKeever’s career.

The University of California retained the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olsen in 2022 to investigate “abusive and/or discriminatory conduct” by McKeever. The nearly 500-page report concluded “by a preponderance of the evidence” that McKeever discriminated against some athletes on the basis of race, national origin, and disability; and that her conduct “toward some, but not all, student-athletes in some instances was abusive.”

For this, she was not only fired but placed on the Center for SafeSport’s Centralized Disciplinary Database, alongside convicted criminals such as Larry Nassar.

Investigations like these wrote the playbook, creating a mechanism for turnkey cancelations so simple, even a student newspaper can do it. Last year, even more specious accusations were sufficient to take out one of Nancy Feldman’s former colleagues.

College Paper’s Weak Sourcing on BU Coach

Boston University’s student newspaper reported a coach had recently stepped down in response to accusations made against him by multiple student-athletes.

The original source of the accusations, though, was a post on an anonymous message board. There were no accusations of any physical contact. The paper relied on “a current athlete on the team” for corroboration. That athlete merely said that the coach threatened an athlete “in the presence of two other teammates and an athletic trainer.” The article proceeded apace with quotes about the coach’s “mood swings,” “body shaming,” and apparent tendency to be “very unpredictable and very emotional.”

Neither that article nor the law firm’s investigation into McKeever mentioned Title IX even once. Nor have most of the other college coach cancellations of the last eight years.

The #MeToo moral panic of 2017 worsened campus cancellations, helping dispense with the veneer of due process and replace it with the mob in the town square. The shift also illustrates how routinely the Title IX courts were a mechanism for settling scores rather than enforcing rights.

Alex Cooper deploying her multimillion-dollar media company against a single retired coach is excessive. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere close to being the endpoint.