Rutgers Suspends Kyle Flood Three Games for Trying to Strong-Arm Professor into Changing Grade for Nadir Barnwell

After an investigation into whether Rutgers head football coach Kyle Flood violated a university policy by contacting one of his player's professors, Rutgers has suspended Flood for three games effective this weekend. The investigation revealed that Flood reached out to a professor who had given top recruit Nadir Barnwell a failing grade in her class last spring, making him academically ineligible for football this fall. Barnwell made several attempts to have his grade changed, or work to increase his grade to a level that would allow him to be eligible—by contacting the professor directly, and through his academic advisors—but he was unsuccessful. Flood then emailed the professor directly from his personal email, so as to avoid "public vetting of the correspondence."

The professor responded and was amenable to working something out, but was unsure how. She would later tell the investigation that she felt uncomfortable saying "no" to a person with Flood's stature at the University. Players have also routinely taken her class, apparently. The professor and the coach continued to correspond via personal email and eventually set up a time to meet in front of Princeton's library—where Flood said he chose not to wear any Rutgers gear so as not to draw attention to himself—to hash out just how they were going to get Barnwell eligible. All the while Flood said all the right things: he expressed his thanks and support for the professor helping out, and said the choice to change the grade was all hers.

Before meeting with the professor, however, Flood called one of Barnwell's academic advisors (on her personal cellphone) to figure out how the professor could go about changing the grade; these conversations were in August, several months after the grade had been recorded. The advisor said that the professor simply needed to go into the computer system and change the grade, but once Flood told the advisor he already contacted Barnwell's professor, the advisor immediately informed him that he "can't have contact with the professor. You certainly can't have contact with faculty regarding grades or eligibility. This is going to be a big problem." The advisor later ended the conversation, saying "I want no part of this."

Amazingly, after all the precautions Flood took to avoid detection—not to mention the various other methods by which he had been made aware of this policy, including the Rutgers website, his contract, and annual compliance training—he told investigators that the advisor never told him he shouldn't be contacting faculty about grades. He basically pulled a Costanza.

When he met with the professor, Flood told her that she only needed to go into the system and change the grade, if that was the decision she chose to make. They decided on another assignment, a paper, that Barnwell would submit in hopes of getting a better grade. Flood took the news back to Barnwell and they crafted a thank you letter, which Flood helped edit, to the professor. When the assignment finally came and Barnwell completed it, Flood provided grammatical edits before sending it along.

In the interim, the academic advisor and another advisor discussed Flood's actions and the second advisor shared the first's concerns and they immediately informed a supervisor and opened an investigation into the matter. The professor would later say she was relieved to learn of the investigation and broke contact with Flood and Barnwell at that point, only responding again to say that she would not be changing the grade.

This is a bad look for Rutgers, and for Flood. He's got a program that is running away from him one violent crime at a time, and obviously tried to use his position as football coach to influence a professor. Every cautious step he made—and every one he didn't make—along the way points to a man who knows he's doing something he shouldn't.

You can read the whole report of the investigation below:

Final Report