UALR expects to name the firm that will handle an independent investigation into its baseball program soon, perhaps today, Chancellor Joel E. Anderson said Thursday.
The appointment of an investigator will get started a process of finding any accuracy into allegations made against the program from an unidentified email address -- claims that include violations of NCAA rules, assault on players and coaches drinking alcohol with players.
Once an investigator is named, the probe will be out of the hands of UALR and its athletic department for an unknown time period, Anderson said.
What UALR still has to do, though, is hire a baseball coach to take over a struggling program while it is being prodded by an investigator with presumably no ties to the university.
"There's no doubt it makes it difficult," Anderson said. "It's just one of those circumstances that's there. You accept it and you move forward as best you can. But there's no doubt that it's a complication."
UALR Athletic Director Chris Peterson said Thursday that the required job posting closes Monday, after which he can begin interviewing applicants for the position, which came open when former Coach Scott Norwood's resignation was announced June 9.
Peterson declined to comment on how the ongoing turmoil within the baseball program has affected the search, but said he's received 50 applicants for the job, 30 of which he labeled as having qualifications needed for the job.
UALR was 25-29 overall last season and reached the Sun Belt Conference Tournament in just two of Norwood's six seasons as coach.
"You'd like somebody that has strong regional recruiting ties, it's all about recruiting Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas. You really need somebody that has got that," Peterson said. "[And] the coaching pedigree that would fit a metropolitan university to bring our baseball program to a level of success we'd all like to see."
Peterson said head coaching experience isn't a necessity. The last time Peterson had an opening for a baseball coach came in 2008, when he hired Norwood, who had just taken Ouachita Baptist to the NCAA Division II national championship game.
Peterson said interim coach Chris Marx has applied and remains a candidate. Marx spent the past three seasons as an assistant coach.
"Chris is very well thought of among the players, the returning players and recruits," Peterson said.
Marx, though, could be questioned by the independent investigator because he was mentioned in allegations made to UALR that came from an email address identified as belonging to Don Hudson. A June 11 email from that address to Anderson and others at UALR said Marx conducted practices on dates before the NCAA's mandated start date.
Other allegations from the email address include:
• Norwood assaulted former player Kaleb Jobe during a practice while Jobe was a freshman.
• Players and volunteer coaches were given discounted housing rates.
• Coaches drank alcohol with players.
Anderson said in a memo Saturday to University of Arkansas System President Donald R. Bobbitt and others calling for the investigation and reiterated Thursday that nobody at UALR knows the identity of the individual sending the emails. Numerous requests by UALR to meet with the individual sending the emails have gone unreturned.
In a short phone interview last Friday night, a man identifying himself as Hudson told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that he sent a copy of an audio file believed to be Norwood berating players to sports website Deadspin.com. Multiple phone calls seeking comment since have not been returned, and his email account used to send the emails has been disconnected.
Anderson said Thursday the identity of the source, which claims to have 47 audio and video files similar to the one posted by Deadspin, isn't important to him.
"I think in one sense, it's kind of irrelevant at this point who Don Hudson is," he said. "Things will go forward. It would be helpful to have the information that he has, but, with or without it, the investigation will move forward."
Anderson said once the investigator is announced, he will send an email to campus personnel encouraging them to cooperate with the investigation, the cost of which, he said, will come from private funds.
Sports on 06/20/2014