This story appears in the Feb. 29, 2016, issue of Sports Illustrated. It includes a few editorial notes to reflect updates to a Title IX lawsuit against the University of Tennessee alleging that the school has created a culture enabling sexual assaults by student-athletes. These updates were first reported by The Tennessean.
In the spring of 2013 a vice chancellor at Tennessee wrote an internal memo that skewered the university’s athletic department. His complaints read like a CliffsNotes version of the what’s-wrong-with-major-college-sports guidebook. The department, the vice chancellor said, refused to address an “inordinate number of disciplinary cases involving athletes” and wielded “undue influence and diminishes or eliminates the independence of thought and action necessary for unbiased review.