Thursday Night Football Betting Guide: Jaguars-Bengals isn’t the best primetime game we’ve had this season, so why not place a few bets to make it more exciting? Jennifer Piacenti has picks for the spread, point total and player props. Place your bets over at SI Sportsbook.
Sam Greene via Imagn Content Services, LLC
NFL Week 4 Line Movement: Where is the public putting its money? Frankie Taddeo is following the games that are on the move ahead of the weekend.
Start ‘Em, Sit ‘Em: Michael Fabiano picked Justin Herbert as his quarterback Start of the Week a week ago, and the sophomore responded with a season-high in points. See who Fabiano likes this week at quarterback and beyond.
Weekly Player Rankings: Shawn Childs foresees a big week for a pair of Bills players in his weekly projections and rankings. Check out who else Childs is high on.
Composite CFB Picks: Richard Johnson's college football picks model had a bounce back week, and with conference play in full swing, he's confident in another good week ahead as we learn more and more about teams.
College Football Futures: Frankie Taddeo checks in on which teams' odds to win the College Football Playoff are rising and falling. The SEC is on top, and the ACC is virtually out of the picture; see how the rest of the contenders from the Power 5 stack up.
What’s Going on With Kickers?
Week 3 was a highlight reel for kickers with walk-off field goals from Atlanta’s Younghoe Koo, Las Vegas’ Daniel Carlson, Green Bay’s Mason Crosby and Baltimore’s Justin Tucker, who set an NFL record with a 66-yard boot. So what’s going on with kickers as it relates to fantasy football three weeks into the season?
Well, the highest-drafted kickers have largely been disappointments. Of the 12 highest kickers drafted, only five are currently in the top 12 in scoring at the position. Kicker, like defense, can be a fickle position for fantasy.
Top 12 Fantasy Kickers
(Data via ESPN.com)
Tucker, true to form, is the third-best kicker this season and was drafted the highest. I wouldn't call that a disappointment. The next kicker off the board was Harrison Butker of Kansas City. The Chiefs, though 1-2, are still one of the highest-scoring offenses in football. Their 30.7 points per game are fifth-best in the NFL. But Butker has only attempted and made three field goals compared with 11-of-11 extra points, which are worthless for fantasy.
The same goes for Ryan Succop of the Buccaneers. Tampa Bay is the second-highest scoring offense, but Succop has only made two of three field goals this season and 13 of 14 extra points. He was the fifth kicker drafted but is tied for 22nd in scoring. Matt Prater, who kicks for Arizona, the NFL's highest-scoring offense, is tied for 11th.
Kickers with Top-12 ADPs not in the Top 12
(Data via ESPN.com)
Being a good fantasy kicker isn’t necessarily directly correlated with your team having a good offense. The offense just needs to be good enough to make it into field goal range but not good enough to always score near the red zone. Take the Patriots’ Nick Folk. New England has the 26th-best scoring offense, but he’s tied for fourth at the position because he’s attempted and made nine field goals.
Picking a kicker can be a crapshoot, and as shown by Jason Sanders and Koo, 2020’s top kickers, the continuity from season to season isn’t super sticky, either. They’re both tied for 23rd at their position. And players like Emmanuel Sanders and Derek Carr went well after each of them. All this to say, in-season adjustments at kicker (and every position) are vital to success. The Buccaneers could go out and score seven touchdowns this Sunday, but if they never attempt a field goal, that’s still only seven points for Succop.
Play of the Day and Games I’m Watching
Play of the Day: Can I interest you in Ja’Marr Chase against the Jaguars' defense? The Joe Burrow to Chase connection has been more than everyone had hoped for, even early after the draft when expectations were high. In the preseason, Chase's stock dropped dramatically after his drops became a huge storyline. Now, all he's done is catch touchdown after touchdown. He's averaging 20 yards per catch, and it's easy to envision him getting behind the Jaguars' secondary and linking up with Burrow. Lock Chase into all of your DFS lineups. I still feel that his price hasn't caught up to his production. He's a bargain.
Games I’m Watching: I don’t know about you, but I love some SEC football, and the game of the week is Saturday at noon ET between No. 8 Arkansas and No. 2 Georgia on ESPN. I don't know many people who could have predicted this would be a top-10 matchup before the season began, but the Razorbacks are legit, and they get another chance to prove their place among the SEC's elite when they travel to Athens to take on the Bulldogs.
Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports
I’ll also be watching Boston College at No. 25 Clemson closely on the ACC Network at 7:30 PM ET on Saturday. The Tigers have the second-longest-running streak in the AP Top 25. A loss to a good Eagles team would end that this weekend.
That's all for today. Enjoy your college football Saturday, and I'll talk to you Sunday morning.
pick every single NFL game and, sometimes, you finish a project like that feeling like the league may as well not play the season since you already cracked the code. This year, through three games, my expectation that many of the teams we’ll talk about below would struggle this year has me reeling. In my initial projections, I had the Raiders, Cardinals and Panthers all finishing last in their respective divisions. They are all currently 3–0.
But is this just a mirage?
That’s what we’re here to examine about each of the NFL’s five surprise teams so far. Are they for real? Are they riding a soft schedule? Have they benefited from some oddly fortuitous on-field occurrence? Are they, despite a soft schedule, going to maintain their grip on first place?
Join us on a spin through the proverbial desert, where we’ll discuss whether this crystal blue pool and fully stocked ice chest we’re seeing through the heat and haze is coming upon us, or if it’s destined to vanish, the product of some timely early-season mental trickery.
Isaiah J. Downing/USA TODAY Sports
Broncos (3–0)
Wins over: Giants (27–13), Jaguars (23–13), Jets (26–0) Are they for real?YES
Teddy Bridgewater is not only playing good enough football for the Broncos this year, he is playing like one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. He has the league’s third-best total quarterback rating and is sixth in expected points added per dropback.
Offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur’s career has been strange in that way. Both with Case Keenum and Bridgewater, he’s been able to find a quarterback who can stretch the outer limits of his system despite a lack of pedigree coming in (relatively speaking).
The real story here is obviously the defense, which hasn't truly been been tested but came into the season as one of the most talented units on paper. The Broncos are fifth in Football Outsiders’ latest DVOA rankings, and while they have faced Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson and Daniel Jones, Vic Fangio’s track record gives us more confidence that their ranking will hold. A win over the Ravens would shoot the Broncos into a far more legitimate stratosphere, but at the moment, they have not fallen into the pitfalls of recent past, losing games to inferior opponents because of a lack of punch on offense.
Raiders (3–0)
Wins over: Ravens (33–27, OT), Steelers (26–17), Dolphins (31–28) Are they for real?MAYBE
Derek Carr is certainly for real. It’s hard to overstate just how enjoyable it’s been watching him come into his own as a quarterback, which, as I’ve said before, is a strange thing to write about a 30-year-old. Carr took some massive shots against both the Ravens and the Steelers, with both coordinators’ assuming his penchant for grabbing at the safe throw was still true. In those games he began to resemble a more dependable veteran player who can rip teams apart with a well-timed deep shot.
Gus Bradley has been able to schematically cover up for some of the team’s glaring weaknesses in the secondary, and their pass rush has performed so far above expectation that both Yannick Ngakoue and Maxx Crosby are among the league leaders for pass rush and run stop win rate, respectively. Ironic, isn’t it, that the year Jon Gruden reportedly tried to get Khalil Mack back, he finally found a combination of edge rushers who make the defense tick?
Bengals (2–1)
Wins over: Vikings (27–24, OT), Steelers (24–10) Are they for real?NO
A Week 5 date with the Packers will be a measuring stick game for the Bengals, but there’s a good chance they'll go into that one 3–1 with the Jaguars coming to town Thursday night. Now that the Bengals have flashed some competency, the beginning of their schedule looks far different than it did back in July, when I picked this team to finish dead last in its division (a trend that will continue throughout the early season, by the way, with games against the Lions and the Jets still lingering before the bye week). While I tried to be clear in some preseason writing that the “Ja’Marr Chase can’t catch” narrative seemed silly, the Joe-Burrow-is-hesitant-in-the-pocket narrative was worth keeping an eye on, mainly because the Bengals didn’t do much to upgrade their offensive line.
What’s giving me pause and should prevent anyone from shifting the Bengals from no to maybe is that Burrow is still being pressured at an identical rate to where he finished the 2020 season (24%). At the moment, the Bengals are a respectable 12th in pass block win rate, and Burrow has been in the upper-middle-tier of quarterback efficiency. But their wins are against a Vikings team that missed a field goal in overtime and a Steelers team that looks completely punchless offensively. Further down we will get more excited about some teams that have beaten opponents with less than sparkling résumés, but Cincinnati’s roster doesn’t yet get the benefit of the doubt. This is especially true on defense.
The Bengals are currently fourth in DVOA, which feels like an early season anomaly. If it holds, Zac Taylor and defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo deserve some Coach of the Year love. But, with a second half of the season that includes dates with the Chargers, 49ers, Broncos, Ravens, Chiefs and Browns, do we think it will?
Michael Chow/USA TODAY Network
Cardinals (3–0)
Wins over: Titans (38–13), Vikings (34–33), Jaguars (31–19) Are they for real?MAYBE
Kyler Murray is playing lights out football right now, with the third-highest completion percentage above expectation in the NFL, behind only Bridgewater and Dak Prescott. Because of the presence of Murray, the Cardinals are never not going to be considered for real. While he is not yet on the level of Lamar Jackson as a singular game plan destroyer, Murray is good enough that you should never discount his team against any opponent, which is a heady thing to say about a third-year player.
My concerns with their record thus far are as follows: Their game management skills are still wonky. They nearly lost that game to the Vikings. And like a few other teams that got the first crack at last year’s unstoppable outside zone offenses, the Cardinals guessed right and walked into that matchup against the Titans with a bulletproof game plan, giving them the kind of single-game, non-replicable edge that we may have otherwise tabbed as an offseason evolution for the unit as a whole.
Let’s see how Arizona does with back-to-back games against divisional opponents. The NFC West is the best division in football, and it would still seem the Cardinals lack the overall heft to hang with the Rams or 49ers for four quarters. If we’re wrong about this too? Look out.
Panthers (3–0)
Wins over: Jets (19–14), Saints (26–7), Texans (24–9) Are they for real:YES
The C.J. Henderson trade may end up being a stroke of genius that shows how committed the Panthers are to racking up wins while the schedule allows. The Panthers are currently the league’s No. 1 defense, and Sam Darnold, while not playing nearly as well as his predecessor in Carolina, is still an upper-middle-tier player with arguably as good a showing this year as Justin Herbert and Joe Burrow.
Here’s why I feel safe with a yes call right now. The Panthers’ schedule is breaking incredibly favorably. The Falcons are going to be a nonfactor in 2021, and before their Week 13 bye week they only have two games against opponents with winning records (the Cowboys and Cardinals). The only hesitancy here is wondering if offensive coordinators can finally figure out Panthers’ defensive coordinator Phil Snow, who has emerged as an early darling of the 2021 season thanks to his Rolodex of pressure packages and fronts (a nice primer here). Joe Brady is also continuing his rapid ascent up the NFL coaching ladder, with a notable performance against a superior Saints defense in Week 2.
A pair of huge SEC matchups pace Week 5, featuring upstart programs traveling to yearly juggernauts: No. 1 Alabama hosts No. 12 Ole Miss, and No. 2 Georgia hosts No. 8 Arkansas. Elsewhere, No. 7 Cincinnati will look to beef up its playoff résumé when meets No. 9 Notre Dame in South Bend, and No. 19 Oklahoma State greets No. 21 Baylor in a battle of Big 12 unbeatens.
Other intrigue includes No. 25 Clemson looking to bounce back against Boston College, No. 14 Michigan visiting Wisconsin in Camp Randall, No. 5 Iowa traveling to Maryland Friday night and Texas trying to survive a trip to TCU, which has given the Longhorns plenty of trouble in the past.
cura personalis, which translates to English as “care for the whole person” and the university says “describes the respect we have for every individual’s intellectual, physical, and spiritual health and autonomy.”
The university’s picture-perfect exterior, though, was shattered in July 2020. It began when Will Midence, a 23-year-old Florida native who graduated the year before, was catching up with a former classmate amid the isolation of the pandemic. The classmate mentioned the reputation of their alma mater’s men’s soccer team, which prompted Midence to create and post an Instagram meme. “There were always rumors on campus about these guys. I posted it out of boredom, to be honest. I just thought my friends would see it,” he says. Above a freeze frame of the Glee character Sue Sylvester saying, “I am going to create an environment that is so toxic,” Midence typed, “The @usfca athletic department when choosing which student athletes will join the men’s soccer team.”
The post blew up, and he began receiving messages from past and present USF students with personal stories. Some were friends who had never before shared with him their account of being assaulted by a USF men’s soccer player. Others he had never met, including RAs who had warned younger students not to attend soccer parties and students who attended USF years before he enrolled. In response, Midence created a Change.org petition that listed several people’s anonymously told stories, including Ashley’s, and called upon the university to address a “culture of rape and terror perpetuated by the men’s soccer team.” It quickly picked up more than 5,000 signatures.
Midence’s post turned online campaign resonated with members of the USF community dissatisfied in general with the school’s handling of Title IX cases—complaints of gender-based discrimination, including sexual harassment or sexual violence, at an educational institution that receives federal funding—as well as a wider campus culture that many say deterred reporting, particularly for claims against athletes.
In response, the university hired an outside firm, Hulst & Handler, to conduct an investigation into the men’s soccer team and the university’s policing of it. The resulting 50-page report, released in January, chronicled, in at times stomach-churning detail, allegations against players over the last decade. And yet, the report concluded overall that it was more likely than not that sexual misconduct and disrespectful behavior toward women and queer individuals “was not pervasive among members of the USF men’s soccer team” and that the university acted “diligently” in response to reported allegations. Many members of the USF community struggled to square these conclusions with the report’s findings.
“I felt that the report was serving the purpose of absolving the university of blame,” says Aaron McNelis, who played for the team from 2018 to ’19 and says the behavior around him often made him uncomfortable.
Hulst & Handler declined an interview request from SI. In a statement, the firm said they “recognize that some of our findings counter widely held perceptions within the USF student community,” but that they are “confident” their conclusions are “supported by the facts.”
USF also declined SI’s requests for interviews with school administrators, including president Rev. Paul Fitzgerald. (Stephen Privett, president from 2000-14, also declined to comment.) Instead, a university spokesperson agreed to respond to questions over email. “USF takes all allegations of sexual assault very seriously, including the deeply troubling stories shared by survivors,” a statement from the school to SI read. “We thank the individuals who have courageously come forward and shared information with USF’s Title IX team and with the independent investigators. We also understand and respect the decision of those who opt not to share their stories with investigators.”
That sentiment was repeated frequently throughout USF’s 15 pages of replies. But there was also a note of defiance.
“We remain committed to hearing from survivors who choose to come forward with information on incidents, whether those occurred last week or a decade ago,” the statement said in one spot, before adding: “It is also important to emphasize, as noted on page 14 (and in footnote 20) of the [Hulst & Handler] report, how the number of sexual misconduct incidents within the men’s soccer program over a decade does not represent a pervasive culture.”
Fitzgerald, the USF president, has come under fire for his comments on sexual assault—and what his critics say has been a lack of action in addressing problems on campus.
Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images
Nicola McLaughlin first heard about the reputation of the men’s soccer team even before she was a student at USF. In the fall of 2009, she was visiting her then boyfriend, who was living in the freshman dorms. McLaughlin would later testify in court that she recalled five students and a residential adviser openly discussing an alleged gang rape involving a group of men’s soccer players that they heard had happened the night before.
It was already a tense time on campus: Months earlier a USF senior and ROTC cadet, Ryan Caskey, had been charged with the rape of four female classmates. Prosecutors said he plied the women with alcohol during parties and then raped them when they were unconscious. (Caskey pleaded guilty, according to court records.) In response, female students had begun calling attention to the lack of sexual assault education at USF, particularly as it related to consent, and the university promised to increase its efforts.
McLaughlin transferred to the school a year later and quickly signed on as a news producer for USFtv, the university’s student-run television station. Initially she didn’t seek out sexual assault stories, but as a journalism student she instinctively began to document what she heard. McLaughlin, 31, now a lawyer in her native Australia, still vividly remembers being told about the men’s soccer team holding a “fresh meat party” at the same time as the freshman dance during move-in weekend, with the goal of steering the new and often inebriated students to “the soccer house.” (She has also testified to this under oath.) While the physical location of “the soccer house” shifted through different eras, an off-campus residence where multiple men’s soccer players lived and threw parties was a constant—as were warnings to new students from upperclassmen and RAs to avoid it.
McLaughlin thought she had enough leads to produce an investigative piece for USFtv, but says women were hesitant to go on camera. Many wanted to forget and move on, and some were afraid of the backlash from not only the soccer players but the rest of the student body. Big Friday-night matches at USF can sell out the on-campus stadium with close to 2,000 fans.
“If I think back, the men's soccer team had a lot of power on campus,” she says. “I was very aware that if I did a story, or looked into this, you just never knew who would tip off the university, and the university would get pissed off.”
Out of precaution, and to the objection of McLaughlin, her executive producer did tip off the university, emailing the school’s vice provost, Peter Novak, in early 2012 to tell him they were in preproduction on a story about “sexual hazing” by USF athletes. (SI reviewed the email.) The school began an investigation into the potential misconduct, and in a meeting with administrators, including then dean of students and current vice provost Julie Orio, McLaughlin says she was asked to hand over her notes and any information she had, including the names of the women she was planning on reporting about. McLaughlin, who was on a soon-to-expire student visa, felt she had little choice. “No one forced me to give them names,” she says now, “but when you are asked to an official meeting with the dean of students—I mean, it was the dean of students, you know?” (Per a USF spokesperson, “the university requested all of the information needed in order to pursue the investigation.”)
The school soon began contacting the women in McLaughlin’s reporting notes. As the investigation unfolded, her executive producer received harassing messages from a student defending the soccer players: “u gotta tell people to watch what they say,” one read, and in a reply, “someone on USFtv messed up big time.” In late February 2012, the producer sent an email, also reviewed by SI, to school administrators quoting the texts and saying that she and McLaughlin were both “very concerned.” McLaughlin especially feared retaliation since it had become known on campus that she was reporting the story, the producer wrote. In reply, McLaughlin and the executive producer were advised to contact Public Safety if they felt threatened; the school also issued a no-contact order to the student who sent the texts.
Looking back, McLaughlin says she realizes she had nowhere near the resources to publish a story of this scope. While she was never formally asked to kill the story, ultimately she decided to walk away.
But the university’s investigation, spurred by her reporting, continued. When Janet received an email from the Office of Student Conduct, Rights & Responsibilities requesting a meeting in February 2012, she immediately knew what it was about. In October 2010, her freshman year at USF, Janet attended an off-campus party hosted by a former member of the men’s soccer team. It was a Thursday night, and she remembers that many of the men’s soccer players at the party were not really drinking. They all had practice the next morning, but the party was full of alcohol, and Janet says they made sure her cup never remained empty. (Janet is a pseudonym; SI agreed to her request for anonymity to protect her privacy. Her case was documented in the Hulst & Handler report and, though the report did not name any of the women or accused players, in many cases, the details of a particular case made their identities clear.)
“The night unfolds, and I know that I can barely stand.” Janet tells SI. “I mean, it's obvious that I am incapacitated, inebriated beyond belief.”
Janet says she went into a bedroom with one of the players, and they began having vaginal sex. At one point, though, she realized there was “an audience of men” in the room with her. She says the player she came into the room with coerced her into engaging in oral intercourse with one of his teammates, but she was too intoxicated to give consent. According to the account Janet would later give police, the first player asked her to “help my friend out” and she said no; he asked again and she “reluctantly agreed.” Per the school’s interview file, Janet was “uncomfortable and hesitant but she did not stop because she was very intoxicated.” Janet recalls fading in and out and says when she came to, the player that brought her into the room was vaginally penetrating her, while another player’s penis was in her mouth. She has flashes of a third man touching her and says she finally jolted awake when the first player attempted to penetrate her anally.
“That's kind of when I snapped out of it and was able to say no,” she says. Janet remembers stumbling out of the room using her right hand to support herself against the wall as she tried to walk in her favorite pair of cowboy boots. The next day she left for fall break and pushed everything out of her head.
The first player declined an interview request with SI but replied to a list of detailed questions through his lawyers via email. “I understand this report reads terrible and I am in no way trying to degrade her or ever suggest forcing things on a girl is ever okay,” he wrote. “I can only speak for my conduct. I just maintain I did not violate her.” The player says he did participate in group sex at USF but that it was consensual. He added that it was common for members of the soccer team and other athletes to engage in group sex. In this case, he says he asked if his friend could join in but did not direct Janet to put her mouth on his friend’s penis; he also denies penetrating Janet anally and says he had no reason to believe she was incapacitated from drinking. The second player did not respond to messages from SI seeking comment.
Sixteen months later Janet had to relive the experience all over again. She says she was told in her interview with school administrators that no other woman with a complaint against a soccer player was willing to name their assailants, so the university couldn’t move forward. Feeling pressured, she finally wrote down two names. USF contacted the San Francisco Police Department, which sent two officers to take a police report. The meeting concluded with Janet’s bringing the school officials and the police to the house on Golden Gate Avenue where the incident occurred. (SI reviewed the police report, which aligns with the account Janet gave SI and the one that is documented in USF’s investigation file. That file included an interview from Janet’s roommate, who had been at the party with her and saw her rush out of the bedroom crying, and who Janet later confided in about what happened. A different friend whom Janet contemporaneously told about the incident also corroborated the account’s details to SI.)
All told, the school investigation prompted by McLaughlin’s reporting included interviews with 11 women and five past or present men’s soccer players, according to reports—reviewed by SI—written by USF officials at the time. These reports describe students telling the university about instances of group sex between women USF students and multiple men’s soccer players. The players involved largely did not see any problem with these interactions. But in addition to Janet, the school files documented one woman saying that she engaged in intercourse with multiple men present or participating on three separate occasions, and, each time, while she did not say no, “that was not something she wanted to do”; another woman’s interview file says she told the school a player came into the room and joined a sexual interaction she was having with another student and, though she assented in the moment to him staying, she "felt violated but I rationalized it as my fault because I was drunk.” Per these records, a former men’s soccer player also told the school that a teammate once referred to group sex as “team bonding.”
Janet’s interview file with the school says she did not want to pursue criminal charges and was “comfortable with the University taking action against her perpetrators but does not wish to take an active role within this process.” Because of this, the school said it could not go through the formal process for a sexual misconduct allegation. Ultimately, four players were found in violation of general university student conduct policies and required to write a “reflective paper” and perform five hours of community service. The athletic department also issued its own sanctions, removing three of the players from the team, including the one Janet says initiated her assault, and suspending one. All were allowed to remain at the school.
In response to questions about the investigation, USF said that in 2012 its Title IX program was in the early stages of development and pointed to the charges the players received under the conduct code.
Janet says she was not informed about the outcome of the school’s investigation. She tried to move on and poured herself into her academics, explaining that she needed to focus on something she had control over. But 11 months later, her experience became top of mind once again, when she came face to face with one of the men she says assaulted her. He was still on campus. “But that wasn't the real catalyst,” she says. “The catalyst was that I was starting to be approached by people who had heard that I was the one that gave names somehow.”
She panicked and emailed the Office of Student Conduct, Rights & Responsibilities. Two weeks later, she received an email with a list of hotlines she could call. There were campus counseling options, which she immediately ruled out. She no longer trusted any of the university employees. (SI reviewed this email exchange.)
“Their motto is so disingenuous. You think the Jesuit university thing would really be something that holds true,” she says. “I really believed in those values as a baby freshman. In the end, it was apparent that just wasn’t the case.”
As Janet tried to forge ahead, she was again pulled back into that night with the soccer players. She got word that the first player from her alleged assault had sued USF and Sidwell, the athletic director. A New Orleans native, Sidwell had played baseball at Tulane before graduating and starting his career in collegiate athletics as a coach there. He’d bounce among jobs in New Orleans—with Tulane and then the Saints and the AAA Zephyrs—and then at Syracuse, where he was an executive senior associate AD, before landing the top job at USF in 2011. Now Sidwell found himself on the hot seat.
The player alleged in his lawsuit that the AD had defamed him by giving his teammates the impression that he and the other players were kicked off the team because they had raped other USF students. The day they were removed from the team, Sidwell held a meeting with the men’s soccer team, in which he held up a Facebook meme that had been shared around campus: “Went to soccer house party, didn’t get raped.” Sidwell would testify that he told the team, “This is a reputation that’s been presented to me about you on our campus.”
In a three-week jury trial in June 2014, Sidwell defended himself by saying that his comments were based on the team’s reputation on campus and he was not making specific allegations against any individual player. In fact, as part of his response to SI’s questions, the player sent a letter from Sidwell dated April 2012 that states “neither the Athletic Department nor the University has accused you of rape or sexual misconduct.”
In court, Sidwell testified that he took disciplinary measures against members of the team because he had been informed about instances of “disrespect” toward women that violated USF’s student-athlete code of conduct, including “a pattern of behavior that had developed over a couple of years with similar like incidences where female students were targeted to have sexual relationships with, and then other members of the soccer team were invited to participate unknowing to the female students that were involved.”
It was during this trial that McLaughlin offered her testimony, sharing what she knew of the men’s soccer team’s reputation.
Sidwell’s strategy—saying that he was made aware that women at USF were being targeted for unwanted group sex, but that he was not accusing anyone of assault—may seem logically tenuous, but it was legally effective. The trial concluded in his and USF’s favor, and the player was ordered to pay the school more than $69,000 in legal fees. But little was done to address the root causes of the team’s cultural problems.
“In hindsight, I think they should have suspended the soccer program,” McLaughlin says. “I don't think just kicking a player off the team is going to stop an institutionalized problem.”
What’s more, questions would soon emerge over whether the case affected how the school handled the next set of allegations against a men’s soccer player.
Former USF star Manny Padilla would go on to play professionally, including, as shown here, for New Mexico United.
Sam Wasson/Getty Images
USF did take some positive steps. In 2013, it launched “Think About It,” an online sexual violence and substance use prevention course for incoming freshmen. But in what became something of a pattern, the university seemingly undermined its own measures. Asked about this program, USF’s president, Fitzgerald, opined on the nature of sexual assault in a February 2015 interview with the school newspaper, saying, “manipulation often comes out of a desire for love. It’s really hard to find someone who’s malicious.” He added, “and again, alcohol clouds this stuff, we make bad judgments, we make bad choices.” Fitzgerald apologized for his comments at the time; the USF spokesperson wrote in response to SI’s questions that, “when he was referencing alcohol and ‘bad judgments,’ he was talking about the choices young men make under the influence of alcohol.”
A few months later, amid a nationwide reckoning with on-campus sexual assault, USF would institute a sexual misconduct policy that claimed zero tolerance. That policy was tested almost immediately, when allegations emerged against one of the most prominent players on the USF men’s soccer team from the last decade: Manny Padilla. A stout defender, he’d burst onto the scene in his first season, 2014, being named to the West Coast Conference’s all-freshman team and earning honorable mention for its all-conference squad. Eventually, he’d wear the captain’s armband for the Dons.
Early in the afternoon of Oct. 1, 2015, Julia Casciano, a sophomore chemistry student, was in her dorm room when Padilla asked to meet up. They lived in the same residence hall, one floor apart, and before that had engaged in a casual, consensual romantic relationship. But Casciano had broken things off after a few weeks when she learned Padilla had a girlfriend. Casciano went upstairs to Padilla’s room, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, under the impression they were just going to talk.
After a brief conversation, though, Casciano says Padilla “tried to coerce me into having sex with him.” She says she told him no, but he got on top of her and held her down, continuing to push her to have intercourse. She recalls telling him to stop “at least 10 to 15 times,” while his body weight was holding her down. Casciano froze. She says Padilla stuck his hand up her shirt and down her pants, “feeling me up.” Eventually, he stopped, and she got up and left. When Casciano returned to her dorm room, she says she told her roommate, who encouraged her to report what had happened.
Casciano did. She secured a no-contact order between her and Padilla, and the school began a Title IX investigation. In December 2015, the school informed her, via a letter reviewed by SI, that Padilla was found to be in violation of the school’s sexual misconduct policy as a result of touching her without consent. But Padilla was allowed to remain at the school, on campus and on the team. He was placed on university probation until May 2017 and given a deferred suspension until May 2016, meaning it would go into effect only if he committed another offense.
Through his agent, Padilla declined an interview request or to respond to specific questions. Instead, he sent a statement, which read in part: “As a young student-athlete at the University of San Francisco, I made poor decisions and engaged in irresponsible behavior towards others. I acknowledge those selfish actions and I take responsibility for them.” He added, “I am truly sorry for my actions and I regret that my actions hurt other people.”
While Padilla’s college soccer career continued uninterrupted, Casciano’s life was upended. Casciano was a strong student, earning mostly A’s as a freshman. But right after the incident with Padilla, she failed a physics midterm, forcing her to withdraw from the class. The course was offered only in the fall and was a prerequisite for other classes in her major, so she feared she would not be able to graduate in four years. She’d always loved to perform, but her role on USF’s Spirit Squad quickly became a source of stress. She was required to cheer at Padilla’s soccer games, and she says he would also show up to basketball games and make her uncomfortable by staring her down. On one occasion, she says the captain of her squad approached Sidwell, the athletic director, and asked him to remove Padilla from the gym, which he declined to do. Sidwell did not respond to questions from SI about this account; the Hulst & Handler report says he has “no memory” of this conversation.
During the two months while the investigation was ongoing, Casciano still lived one floor below the man she said assaulted her—even after the school knew, as documented in the Hulst & Handler report, that he violated his no-contact order by asking his roommate to prod her to drop her complaint. Casciano says she was told Padilla could not be moved until the investigation was complete. The Hulst & Handler report says she declined an offer for her to be moved to alternate housing, but Casciano explains she did not believe she should have to change dorms. “I was the one walking on eggshells around campus,” she says, “not him.”
Padilla was moved in January 2016, but later that semester, Casciano was frustrated again when she sought housing for her junior year. In an email reviewed by SI, the Title IX coordinator told Casciano they could accommodate her request to live in the Loyola Village on-campus apartments, but asked if it would be “satisfactory” if Padilla was placed in another building within the same complex.
USF says it took “all steps” to respond to Casciano’s requests. “The university is very sorry this survivor was not satisfied with the accommodations and response to her concerns,” wrote the USF spokesperson.
Casciano decided to transfer—a direct result, she says, of the lack of support she felt from USF to complete her degree on time while feeling safe on campus. She moved home to Carlsbad, Calif., gave up her cheerleading career and says she incurred several thousand more dollars in student debt as a result of lost aid and scholarships. Meanwhile, Padilla did not miss any soccer practices or games.
At the same time that it hired Hulst & Handler, in July 2020 the university announced that it had changed its policy, so that any student found responsible for sexual misconduct would be removed from intercollegiate athletics (the previous “zero tolerance” policy didn’t mandate this level of discipline for violators). SI reviewed the sexual misconduct policy currently published on the school’s website, made effective in August 2020, and found that the announced changes do not appear to be reflected. Asked about the discrepancy, the USF spokesperson said university policies “do not list every possible outcome of an investigation or incident of misconduct.”
While the Hulst & Handler report does not identify Padilla by name, Casciano was interviewed, and it directly addresses their case. The report states that Sidwell was informed that Padilla was found responsible in Casciano’s Title IX case but decided not to tell the men’s soccer coach, Eddie Soto. The report attributes this to a “lack of communication” within the athletic department and cites Sidwell’s belief that Title IX cases should be kept confidential. So Padilla played on.
The result, the report concluded, was a “misperception” on campus that soccer players are not held accountable for sexual misconduct. Casciano, though, recalls being told at the time by a USF official that Padilla’s coaches were informed. Regardless of who was or wasn’t told, the confusion and lack of trust on campus over how the university handled sexual misconduct cases impacted her and, very soon, would impact others. Soto declined an interview request from SI, saying that he cooperated in the investigation and has “nothing further to add.”
Even without Soto’s involvement, Sidwell could have imposed additional discipline on Padilla on his own. The school-commissioned report, though, suggests another reason why he may have chosen not to: “Multiple witnesses report that following the 2012 matter ... (and a lawsuit that followed, which named this Athletics Director as a defendant), the former Athletics Director regularly communicated to his staff that it was the policy of the Athletics Department to defer to the University on discipline issues. These witnesses surmise that because USF did not suspend the soccer player when he was found responsible in December 2015, the former Athletics Director may have been reluctant to suspend the soccer player from spring competition.”
USF asserts the 2012 investigation and subsequent lawsuit “did not have a substantive impact on later discipline.” Sidwell declined an interview request and did not reply to specific questions emailed by SI. In a general statement issued through the USF spokesperson, Sidwell said, “as is invariably the case in these situations, judgment calls are made based upon the best information available at specific points in time. I stand by the administrative actions that we took and the principles that motivated them.”
Casciano has long since moved on. She graduated from the University of San Diego and, now 25, lives in the Midwest, near the military base where her partner serves. But in July 2020, her phone began buzzing with messages from her former peers at USF, asking whether she’d seen this campaign spreading online.
“I exhausted all my resources (at the time),” Casciano says. “I did everything I felt like I could do in my power. I talked to everybody I felt like I could talk to. And so when it came up again, now, it just kind of felt like all my effort that I had put in previously might actually come to use now.”
According to the USF-commissioned report, Soto, the now former coach, was never informed of the school's findings against Padilla.
Pedro Fiúza/NurPhoto/Getty Images
Tanya was the same year at USF as Casciano. They knew each other through a mutual friend. She remembers seeing Casciano anguishing in the fall of 2015, “trying to get the university to help her and have there be consequences,” Tanya says. “They offered no support.”
Tanya says that, the following semester, she was raped by another player on the team in the soccer house. There were many reasons Tanya (a pseudonym) decided not to file a report with the university or the police. She did not want that night to define her college career, nor did she want to put herself and her family through the pain of reliving what had happened to her. She also thought about what Casciano had gone through—all her efforts, to what end?
Tanya’s experience wasn’t unique—nor was her reason for not reporting what happened to the school. In a 2015 incident, one woman described to SI meeting a player, one of Padilla’s teammates, at a local bar and blacking out shortly after. She says she woke up in her roommate’s bunk having intercourse with the player, who was aggressively biting her chest. She pleaded with him to stop, but he bit her harder; she remembers staring at the top bunk, waiting for it to be over. While going to kiss her on the mouth, she says he bit her lip so hard that she tasted blood.
A second woman described to SI being similarly assaulted by the player a year later, in 2016. This encounter began as consensual, but the woman says she told the player to stop when he became physically aggressive. She remembers being pinned down by him and starting to cry because she wanted to leave, but she says he forced penetration on her. He also bit off a piece of her lip. Both women say they wore high-necked shirts for the next week to cover the bruises he left on their necks and chests. (The woman from the 2016 incident showed SI a photo of what she said were her injuries.)
When reached by phone by SI, the player said he did not remember these incidents but acknowledged he has bitten sexual partners and said he feels bad if he “overdid it.”
The first woman says she filled out a report on one of the online reporting systems used by USF, Callisto, and saved the draft to submit later. A year later, when she was told the player had assaulted other students, she went back to submit the report but found that the system had deleted it. That glitch, she says, was “enough to deter me” from following through. The second student had heard rumors of a sexual misconduct case against Padilla, who was still being celebrated on campus for his on-field accolades. Her lack of belief in the school was one reason she did not file a complaint against the player.
In early 2017, a little more than a year after Casciano’s complaint and while Padilla was still on university probation, a female student who was a freshman at the time told SI that Padilla groped her and forced her to kiss him at a party at the soccer house. They’d met once previously and exchanged social media information, but she’d stopped replying to his persistent messages inviting her to hang out. A few months later, she ran into him at this party, where she says he herded her away into a dark hallway, pinned her arms over her head and asked him what he got for bringing her a flower and a drink. She says she was “terrified” and let him kiss her to get out of the situation; he groped her, as well. Padilla continued to send her messages on social media, she says, which escalated into pictures of his penis. Finally, she says she filed a report through the online reporting system but heard nothing.
“What was the point [of reporting]?” the student says. “We would just be ignored. It was a feeling that sort of permeated throughout campus.”
Padilla did not reply to questions about this incident. The university said it investigates all reports of sexual misconduct and that it sent every report it received between 2010 and ’20 to the Hulst & Handler investigators, but acknowledged issues with the Callisto reporting system, including students thinking they had submitted a report but instead the system having only saved it. The school did not directly address questions about this incident.
Padilla’s reputation was so poor on campus that in the fall of 2017, a marketing employee in the athletic department says she and a group of colleagues raised concerns to their direct supervisor about Padilla’s scheduled involvement with an “I Heart Consent” campaign. Their supervisor then sought to remove Padilla from the campaign. But a few days later, the employee says that a high-ranking athletic department administrator called her and her supervisor into a meeting and admonished them for spreading rumors about Padilla.
The Hulst & Handler report discusses this situation, saying that this administrator did not have knowledge about Casciano’s Title IX case. But the marketing employee recalls him mentioning a case against Padilla to them, saying that it had already been resolved. The USF spokesperson asserts that “coaches and Athletic Department employees did not have knowledge of the player’s sexual misconduct case.”
One thing that is not in dispute: Sidwell, the athletic director, was aware that Padilla had been found responsible for sexual misconduct by the university. And yet the school and athletic department continued to allow him to be featured and promoted in their media. Per the Hulst & Handler report, also in fall 2017, multiple freshman women complained to an RA that Padilla was reaching out to them on social media and “making them uncomfortable.” The report states that the Title IX coordinator at the time, who is no longer with the school, regarded this conduct as “relatively minor,” so did not reach out to the female students or Padilla. (This former Title IX coordinator did not respond to a message from SI.) Soto told the school-hired investigators that he instructed the athletic department’s video director that semester to hold back a video feature on Padilla, because he heard about the complaints from a deputy Title IX official. But he later authorized the feature to be published because he hadn’t heard anything further. Nobody above him did anything to stop the video.
At the end of 2017, Padilla was featured on the official athletics website in a “Dons Spotlight with Manny” video, focusing on how his family and love of dogs “made the person he is today.” When the Houston Dynamos selected Padilla in the second round of the 2018 MLS draft, the USF athletics website and social account highlighted the news. The website post is still up.
Sidwell did not respond to questions from SI about USF’s decision to continue featuring and promoting Padilla.
The Hulst & Handler report adds that three additional women described separate instances of sexual misconduct by yet another men’s soccer player between 2018 and ’19. Only one of the incidents was reported to the school at the time, but the report says the survivor chose not to participate in the Title IX process and did not name the player at the time. Still another player was suspended by the university after being found responsible in an August 2019 hearing for nonconsensual sexual intercourse. That same month, Jess Varga, USF’s Title IX coordinator, met with the team after a number of RAs had also conveyed concerns they heard from freshman women about some players’ conduct. McNelis, a junior midfielder on the team at the time, says he remembers Varga discussing the team’s perception on campus with the group.
“It was a pretty somber episode,” McNelis says. “And what was worrying, too, was that there was kind of a pushback that these reports were legitimate.”
The soccer team had just hired a new coach, Leonard Griffin, and McNelis recalls his trying to get the team to take Varga’s message seriously. But the pushback came from a handful of team leaders, including one whom McNelis remembers saying that the team’s critics were jealous of its privileged standing on campus and were using allegations to knock the team down. McNelis says Varga never followed up with the team again after the brief meeting. (The USF spokesperson said the meeting was “received well” and “taken seriously” by coaches and players.)
McNelis, who left the team after the 2019 season, felt a responsibility last summer to support the online campaign and speak out about what he experienced: a team culture in which he says teammates boasted about sexual conquests, particularly if two players had slept with the same woman, and misogynistic and anti-LGBTQ slurs were commonplace—the latter of which created personal stress as he grappled with his own sexuality. He detailed that last July in a letter he sent to USF’s president, Fitzgerald, and other top school officials, a version of which he also posted on his blog.
It was around this same time that Padilla finally faced meaningful repercussions. He was originally mentioned by name in Midence’s Change.org petition and, after confirming the account with USF, his midlevel professional team, New Mexico United, suspended him for two games—more time than he missed at USF—and ultimately released him.
Today, McNelis thinks back to the university’s core value of cura personalis, care for the whole person. “It begs the question,” McNelis says. “Who's getting cura personalis, and who isn't?
A screenshot of the USF Athletics post on Padilla's selection in the MLS draft.
When the school-commissioned Hulst & Handler report was released in January 2021, it was met with disappointment by many past and present members of the USF community. One former student spoke to investigators about two soccer players she says were suspended for nonconsensually filming women during sex back in 2003. Despite its apparent relevance, her account, which fell outside the 10-year period from 2010 to ’20 that Hulst & Handler reviewed, was left out of the report. USF says the university “investigated the incident at the time and has those records,” and that it was Hulst & Handler that “determined the scope” of their investigation.
Others, like Casciano and the marketing employee who recounted flagging concerns about Padilla’s involvement in a school consent campaign, did not feel as though aspects of their testimonies were accurately reflected. Hulst & Handler assert that they “accurately represented” the information reported to them by survivors and witnesses.
The marketing employee says administrators are “still just refusing to take any kind of responsibility. It’s time to be a little bit more direct to call them out. This is not O.K.”
There has been some progress over the last year. In conjunction with the release of the report, USF announced additional measures such as the hiring of a new deputy Title IX coordinator, which was done in April; the planned addition of a sexual violence resource advocate; and a review of the school’s Title IX program planned for this fall. The online campaign also grew into an independent organization called “It’s On USF,” led in part by Midence, dedicated to pushing the university toward reform.
When the school announced a town hall over Zoom in March on the Hulst & Handler report, the It’s On USF group mobilized. They held sessions with students and alumni to prepare, and, during the two-hour event, McNelis questioned the investigators’ ability to make such broad conclusions about a 10-year period, when they talked to only 15 soccer players, and the 90 total people interviewed represent only a fraction of the USF community. Orio, the vice provost, responded to him that the report was “just a piece” and doesn’t mean that “things are great,” according to an audio recording shared with SI by another participant in the town hall.
Athletic director Joan McDermott also cited during the town hall how the men’s soccer coach, Griffin, immediately began to instill a culture of high expectations for his players when he was hired in 2019. While McDermott told students that Griffin dismantled the soccer house soon after being hired, the school confirmed to SI that it was not until July 2020, after the campaign launched by USF alums, that Griffin was instructed to do so. Two months after the town hall, Griffin left USF to become the coach at Grand Canyon University. (Griffin did not respond to SI’s attempts to contact him.)
Sidwell, the longtime athletic director, had left two years earlier to take a plum job at a far bigger institution, albeit one with its own troubled past. He now serves as a deputy athletic director at Penn State.
Fitzgerald, the USF president, did not speak at the town hall, opting instead to send a joint letter with Board of Trustees chairman John F. Nicolai following the release of the report through the USF student portal. In a statement to SI, USF said Fitzgerald “communicates regularly with the university community through email messaging, town halls, and university convocations,” in addition to meeting with student leaders.
The university’s response has added to the disillusionment felt by those who advocated for serious change. One survivor says she stopped reading the report halfway through, as she wasn’t “emotionally prepared” to keep reading a document she felt balked at all responsibility. Ashley had a similar experience, skimming through the report after its release. So many women told the school what was happening, what is happening, and she still feels like no one took them seriously. “These aren’t just rumors,” she says. “I just hope the soccer team got a wakeup call with everything that happened.”
With her assault overshadowing almost her entire college career, Ashley has finally begun to heal. It’s been a little over a year since she and other women shared their stories. Her panic attacks are gone, with the help of a doctor and daily journaling. Ashley even connected with two other survivors and formed a mini support group, but says she is done talking about everything for now. The last year has been intense, and, although it forced her to process what happened, she is ready to start fresh in a new city. “I’m just excited,” a feeling she hasn’t had in years, Ashley says.
She can’t help but think back sometimes on USF’s stated values, on cura personalis. Ashley graduated with no faith in a university dedicated to the greater good. But she also left knowing that a group of students and alumni had done the work to expose the soccer team’s behavior, upholding the values that led them to the university to begin with. “Everyone at school knows,” she says. “There’s nowhere to hide.”
