A group of Colorado State players released a statement on behalf of the team on Saturday, alleging allegations of intimidation and racism against head coach Steve Addazio and his staff.
The statement comes a day after the university ceased all team activities and expanded the scope of an ongoing investigation into intimidation surrounding COVID-19 protocols to address racism and verbal abuse within the athletics department and football program.
The school had hired law firm Husch Blackwell to investigate the program after several coaches, players and sports medicine staff told ESPN and the Colorado that players were hired to mask COVID-19 symptoms because they could lose playing time if they the virus contracted, while staff at the school said inconsistencies, misinformation and negligence surrounding COVID-19 protocols endangered the safety of student-athletes.
On Friday, the Colorado said an upcoming story would detail allegations of “racial insensitivity and emotional and verbal abuse among coaches and athletic managers,” prompting the expansion of CSU’s investigation.
On Saturday, however, a group calling itself CSU United (#CSUunited) said the allegations were false. It claims to be a group led by seniors, but with “the support of the entire team.”
The letter says the allegations have created “an unjust and unstable environment” within the team. It also claimed that all allegations of racism or verbal abuse by the coaching staff were false.
“On the contrary, our experience since Coach Addazio’s first day has been positive, welcoming and focused on our development as student athletes,” it states. “To be absolutely clear, we did not experience any racially sensitive comments from our teammates from the athletics department or coaching staff.”
The letter also claims that the team under Addazio “flourished” and did not practice under a “harmful culture.”
Brian White, an assistant at Colorado State, too tweeted a statement of support with the words “the truth will set you free.”
Several sources within the CSU football program told ESPN on Saturday the #CSUunited letter did not have the full support of the team.
Last week, 27 Colorado State football players missed the team’s most recent exercise with COVID-19 symptoms as potential exposure. After team activities were halted after eight players tested positive, some players and coaches told ESPN that they saw Addazio’s plan to return ‘early’ from a planned 14-day quarantine as poorly advised and unsafe. By Sunday, the team had 11 positive cases. The results of Monday’s re-tests for the entire team have not been released.
McConnell said the school’s initial investigation, which began on Thursday before expanding Friday, followed concerns about protocols surrounding COVID-19. The school hired the same company, Husch Blackwell of Kansas City, Missouri, that Iowa used for its research into racial bias within the program last month.
“I am very excited to hear of these new allegations, and I have already expanded the scope of the investigation,” McConnell said in a statement on Friday after concerns about racism and verbal abuse were revealed. “Colorado State University is an approachable anti-racist university and an intensified anti-racist community. We will not tolerate a climate in which every member of this university community feels unwelcome or unappreciated. On the contrary, we will expose it and end it immediately.”
McConnell also pointed to an earlier statement that promised that any player, coach or staff member who comes forward is not a victim of revenge in the investigation.
Anthoney Hill, the school’s former player development coach and its starting quarterback in the early 1990s, said he was sacked following Addazio as head coach in December because he was worried about him and his son’s hire, Louie Addazio, and Urban Meyer’s son-in-law, Corey Dennis. Meyer helped report CSU with her search, which led to the hiring of Addazio, Meyer’s friend and one of his former assistants.
Hill arrived in 2015 under former coach Mike Bobo and retained his position about a month after the arrival of Addazio.
In his response to the university’s letter of resignation, Hill also told Parker that he was concerned about the salaries of African-American coaches on the staff compared to white coaches.
Hill’s letter described a harmful culture and suggested that he witnessed racially insensitive remarks among Bobo and was concerned about a similar environment under Addazio.
In a January letter sent to ESPN, athletic director Joe Parker responded to Hill’s letter by saying that his accusations involved former members of staff under Bobo. Parker also said in a March letter to Hill that he was working to keep him on staff by offering to hire him as an academic advisor at $ 48,000 a year, with the option to secure the $ 53,000 salary he was on Bobo’s staff had deserved it. That letter also said Addazio eventually met with Hill and promised to keep him in the role of game development with the $ 53,000 salary before the school withdrew the offer when Hill sought more money.
Parker claims in the March letter that Hill told him that the program would “have to accept the consequences” of speaking out about his experiences if his salary requirements were not met.
“I’m more concerned about your behavior and behavior in allowing CSU Athletics to become an environment where coaches can expose toxic masculinity, and give racist nonsense comments to black players on your watch,” Hill wrote to Parker after he in January was ended. “Also introducing a new head football coach who tells the graduate assistants within days of letting them know that he ‘gives no f — about their feelings’ is contrary to ‘committed to the holistic development of student-athletes’ .. . and creating a culture where students thrive. ‘”
Another source who works closely with Addazio confirmed to ESPN the language used in a meeting with graduate assistants.
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