Baylor fired its associate director of football operations Monday night, less than a month after he was hired by the scandal-rocked school, reportedly for sending inappropriate text messages.
DeMarcko Butler was dismissed, Waco’s CBS affiliate KWTX reported, for sending the text messages to a teenager; a school official told the station that the recipient was an adult under Texas law.
David Kaye, Baylor’s director of athletics communications, confirmed the firing to KWTZ, saying, “DeMarcko Butler is no longer employed by Baylor University. As a personnel matter, we have no further comment.”
This is the second Baylor staff member hired and fired by Matt Rhule, who took the head coaching job in December. Strength coach Brandon Washington was fired in early February after his arrest in a prostitution sting at a Waco hotel.
Butler, 28, previously was the director of football operations at Western Illinois and played for Monmouth College. He was hired Feb. 15 by Rhule, who was brought in to rehabilitate a football program accused of turning a blind eye to sexual assaults committed by players over a multiyear period under former coach Art Briles, who was fired in May along with the school’s athletic director and president. A lawsuit filed late last month alleges that at least 31 football players committed at least 52 “acts of rape” over four years.
Restoring the school’s reputation has been an emotional task for employees, such as women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey, who was criticized for a remark that was deemed tone-deaf. After she won her 500th game as a head coach, and while standing at the center of the basketball arena, Mulkey told fans: “If somebody’s around you and they ever say, ‘I will never send my daughter to Baylor,’ you knock them right in the face.”
Mulkey was still visibly upset a few days later when she explained her comment in a news conference.
“I would say it got the best of me because I really do love this place,” she said. “You know awful things happened here, guys. We failed victims here. But I’m encouraged every day because I see what’s taken place to fix it, and I just think we’ve responded the way that we can – aggressively, financially. We’ve admitted our mistakes. . . .
“My heart goes out to victims. . . . In fact I’m angry that we failed those women,” she continued. “One crime against anybody is too many in my world and it should be in the entire world. But I’ve had a wonderful experience as a mother of a child at this university – a daughter – and the parents that send me their daughters, those kids and those parents can tell you the same.”
(c) 2017, The Washington Post ยท Cindy Boren
