For years, the University of Minnesota Athletic Department allowed coaches to interfere with athletes’ medical treatment, and retaliated against medical and training staff who raised concerns about their lack of independence, according to allegations made by the university’s former director of athletic medicine in a 2018 letter.
Moira Novak, who oversaw the athletic department’s trainers and team physicians for nearly 20 years, repeatedly brought her concerns to athletic department administrators and the medical director. A pair of coaches had been allowed to handpick the head athletic trainers for their sports, bypassing Novak’s authority as the hiring manager and violating rules around medical staff independence.
In college sports, medical staff and athletic trainers are supposed to maintain independence from coaches, working in the best interest of the athlete — not the team’s performance.
Some trainers and strength coaches used dangerous techniques outside their scope of practice — including invasive, painful massages — and gave athletes inaccurate medical and nutritional advice outside their expertise, Novak wrote in a March 2018 letter to the University of Minnesota Board of Regents, which was first reported on last week by Bloomberg.
After Novak spent months escalating her concerns, she learned that her employment contract would not be renewed.
“I believe my dismissal was motivated by my advocacy for student-athlete health and safety,” Novak wrote in the letter.
Novak’s dismissal occurred during the tenure of Athletic Director Mark Coyle, and some of the staff she raised concerns about six years ago are still employed by the university.
Jake Ricker, a spokesman for the University of Minnesota, said in a statement to the Reformer that the university has investigated all of the claims and that some are “demonstrably false.”
“Claims related to care for the physical wellbeing of student-athletes are simply not true,” Ricker wrote. Privacy laws prevent the university from sharing information about individual students and employees, Ricker said.
Novak’s 2018 letter to the Regents arrived as the athletic department was rebuilding from a series of scandals in 2016.
That year, Coyle took over the department after his predecessor Norwood Teague resigned amid accusations that he sexually harassed employees. The university fired longtime wrestling coach J Robinson after he failed to report illegal drug use by his team. A woman accused several University of Minnesota football players of rape; four were expelled, and the university settled with the woman for $500,000. And basketball player Reggie Lynch was also expelled following multiple sexual assault allegations.
University investigated claims of coach interference, bogus advice, dangerous workouts
In her letter, Novak said that two head coaches — former basketball coach Richard Pitino and football coach P.J. Fleck — were allowed to handpick the head athletic trainers for their respective sports, bypassing her authority as the hiring manager. NCAA “best practices” recommend that hiring decisions for training and medical staff be made primarily by administrators with health care expertise, and that athletic departments should avoid conflicts of interest that could adversely affect athletes.
Some coaches pressured medical staff to share protected information about athletes, such as their mental health issues, Novak wrote. Others interfered with medical staff decisions; on one occasion, a coach played a medically disqualified player during an away game where an athletic trainer was not present.
Among other allegations, Novak said that:
A strength coach, who is still employed by the athletic department, routinely performed a non-evidence based technique called “activation” in which he massaged athletes’ bodies, causing athletes to cry and scream in pain and bruising. Some female athletes reported feeling pressured to submit to the treatment, and one reported bruises on the inside of her thigh after treatment, according to Novak.
The same coach performed other techniques on athletes that were outside his scope of practice or were “just bogus,” Novak wrote. That coach recommended a student use a banned supplement to treat migraines; suggested male athletes avoid eating peanut butter because it “lowers testosterone”; advised against wearing sunscreen; sent emails telling athletes to ice their testicles; and advised male students when to masturbate to best enhance their athletic performance.
The same coach had athletes run up and down the steps around the 3M Arena at Mariucci with snorkels in their mouths and clips on their noses to limit oxygen intake.
One strength coach screamed at a nutrition student to give a football player sugar while the athlete was struggling with a workout; the head athletic trainer stepped in and found that the player’s blood glucose was elevated.
One coach conspired with an athlete to withhold information about a concussion; that player later fainted while boarding a plane and had to be transported to a hospital.
After Novak outlined her concerns to the Board of Regents, the university hired an outside law firm to investigate the allegations.
That law firm tapped a consulting firm called U.S. Council for Athletes’ Health to compile a report on the University of Minnesota’s compliance with standards of care for athletes. The consulting firm is run by James Borchers, the Big Ten’s chief medical officer.
The consultants visited campus three times between June and September 2018 and conducted group interviews with “focus groups” — six athletes, six coaches, nine members of the athletic medicine and performance staff, and three athletic administrators, including Coyle. The report doesn’t describe how the athletes and staff in the focus groups were selected.
“Independent Medical Care is recognized as the standard of care that must be and is provided to and for the student athletes,” the consultants found.
Jason Stahl, a former University of Minnesota professor, said he was demoted after he raised concerns about the treatment of athletes, many of whom he taught.
Stahl detailed his experience in a Substack post in 2020, shortly after he resigned from his position at the university. He later founded the College Football Players Association, which is working towards the unionization of college football players. He’s also written critically of Coyle and football coach Fleck.
The U.S. Council for Athletes’ Health report is “the performance of an investigation,” Stahl said — not an actual investigation. He alleges a conflict of interest because the president and CEO of the council is also the Big Ten chief medical officer. He doesn’t claim to know the internal workings of the athletic department: “It’s like a black box,” Stahl said.
In 2021, WCCO reported that unnecessarily tough football practices injured several players, leading to medical retirements.
In 2023, Front Office Sports published an article detailing allegations of a toxic culture in the University of Minnesota football program based on interviews with former players and coaches. Players who earned enough “coins” from the “Fleck bank” — credits granted to players who participated in community service events — earned the right to get away with positive drug tests and other violations of team rules, according to Front Office Sports reporting.
Fleck called those allegations “baseless.”
The University of Minnesota has an athletic compliance office that reports to the university general counsel and regularly attends practices.
“The University’s Office of Internal Audit reviewed the football program specifically and found strong controls and compliance across the board,” Ricker said.
In recent years, the landscape of college athletics has been transformed, giving athletes more power than ever. College athletes can now legally profit off of their name, image and likeness, which has translated to a roundabout pay-for-play model in which the top athletes in the most popular sports can command six- and seven-figure deals, paid for by boosters and corporate sponsors.
Women’s and Olympic sports, which lag men’s basketball and football in TV viewership, attract only a fraction of the sponsorship money as men’s football and basketball.
A pending settlement in a lawsuit between college athletes and the NCAA would create revenue-sharing agreements between schools and athletes, giving athletes in revenue-generating a cut of the TV money their schools bring in, and ushering in another new era of college sports.