University of San Diego football coach Brandon Moore ended two months of media silence about alleged hazing incidents involving his team, issuing a statement Thursday saying he “had no prior knowledge at any level about these activities.”
The statement came in reaction to a lawsuit filed by former Toreros quarterback AJ Perez, who outlined two hazing incidents on campus in August that he alleges involved nudity, alcohol and acts of a sexual nature. Perez, who was in his first season after transferring from Utah Tech, left the team and is no longer enrolled in school.
Perez’s complaint, filed earlier this week in San Diego Superior Court, suggests members of the coaching staff knew of the hazing, specifically an annual “rookie show” where freshmen and transfers performed to music in front of the veteran players in the football locker room.
Perez said the rookies were told to perform naked, but he initially appeared in his underwear with a towel during his Polynesian-themed segment.
“Everyone was cheering and chanting, ‘Take ’em off, take ’em off,’” Perez told the Union-Tribune. “That’s when my underwear got ripped off. … I’m struggling, and I have a towel. Another person ripped off the towel.”
Perez’s lawsuit also chronicles an Aug. 9 event at a campus residence hall that involved nudity and pornographic videos.
“At no time did any of the coaches, assistants or volunteers take any action to prevent or stop the acts of hazing and assault inflicted upon (Perez),” the complaint says, “nor did they do anything to address the sexualized nature of team activities. This is so, despite the fact that several coaches had previously been (USD) players who had participated in similar acts of hazing.
“Further, it is believed that the head coach had knowledge of many of these offending acts.”
USD responded late Wednesday, saying Moore “had no advance knowledge” of any hazing and “it was Coach Moore’s alarm and quick response that prompted the entire investigation.”
On Thursday morning, the university distributed a separate statement from Moore, who was hired in April to replace Dale Lindsey.
“It is an extremely emotional time for everyone attached to this difficult situation,” Moore’s statement said. “I want to be clear that I had no prior knowledge at any level about these activities before they were reported to me by AJ Perez. This was not anything I’d heard before and certainly doesn’t represent my vision for USD Football.
“The events reported to me were counter to the directive I issued to our players and coaches about hazing not being tolerated in any shape or form in my first team meeting. As soon as I heard the allegations, I immediately reported them to university leadership, and we suspended all football activities as we initiated the preliminary investigation.”
Moore last spoke to the media Aug. 24, when he said that he was “upset, hurt and troubled” by unspecified allegations of hazing. Moore initially explained that “we had a player go missing (from team activities). We inquired about it. He went home, needed to decompress.”
In a phone interview Wednesday, Perez and his lawyer questioned why the team’s practice the day after the “rookie show” had been preemptively moved to the afternoon, when they said all other practices had been held in the morning.
“This was the only time that practice wasn’t in the morning,” said Scott Carr, Perez’s El Segundo-based attorney. “I suspect that wasn’t a coincidence. … Why did (Moore) move practice to the afternoon if he didn’t know his players would be hungover and wouldn’t make it to practice in the morning?”
A letter from USD President James T. Harris to the campus community in late August said approximately half the team faced “varying degrees of disciplinary action” in addition to potential criminal consequences from a San Diego police investigation. Harris said an outside law firm had been retained to conduct an investigation.
Several dozen players did not participate in the Toreros’ first few games of the season, but the university never gave an official reason for their absence or made players available to the media. Nearly all of them have returned to the field.
In an Oct. 12 letter, Harris said the university’s investigation is “well underway” and announced USD had joined the Hazing Prevention Consortium with 10 other schools to “build campus-wide resources aimed at safeguarding the best possible living and learning environment for our students.”
The 1-6 Toreros, who play non-scholarship Division I football, host Morehead State on Saturday at 2 p.m. in the school’s annual homecoming game.
