Mississippi University for Women Athletic Director Jason Trufant has been relieved of his current duties and will be shifted into a role as a special adviser to President Nora Miller, the school confirmed Wednesday night.
MUW released the following statement to The Dispatch: “The university confirms there has been a leadership change in athletics. Jason Trufant has been asked to serve in a new role, special adviser to the president, wherein he will work solely with the president on matters assigned by her. The university will release more information once an interim director is named.”
Trufant’s shift comes just over six weeks after The Dispatch concluded a five-month investigation into Trufant’s mistreatment of staff and student athletes during his time at MUW. In The Dispatch’s findings, one current university employee, two former student athletes and six former athletic department employees described a toxic culture cultivated by Trufant within the Owls’ athletic department that was largely ignored by higher-ranking administration.
Trufant’s alleged behavior ranged from language with homophobic and racial undertones to verbal bullying of staffers.
“It’s like a prison mentality and you have a warden,” former women’s basketball coach Howard White Jr. told The Dispatch in July. “We used to call it ‘Shawshank.'”
In a sit down interview with The Dispatch on Nov. 2, Trufant outright denied the allegations. During the same interview, Miller contended the university had taken the necessary steps in addressing any allegations of misdeeds, including during an investigation into Trufant’s behavior in August 2019 that resulted in his taking a leave of absence that lasted less than a week.
“There are disgruntled former employees who see things through one lens, and we can talk things out and try to explain things,” Miller told The Dispatch in November. “But if they’re hell bent on that, of seeing things in that light, that’s the way they’re going to see them.”
Trufant was hired at MUW in the spring of 2016, a year before sports returned to the school following a 14-year hiatus after a tornado ravaged the existing athletic facilities in 2003.
During Trufant’s time as athletic director, the women’s basketball team won the United States Collegiate Athletic Association national title in 2019, while the baseball and softball teams reached the USCAA Small College World Series in 2018 and 2019.
Trufant has also overseen the hiring of all MUW coaches since sports were restarted at the school. In all, MUW has seen at least nine head coaches among its 15 athletic programs leave for various reasons since the 2017-18 school year.
“On the outside, it looks beautiful,” one former employee told The Dispatch in July. “We have beautiful facilities — brand-new volleyball courts, building a new soccer and baseball field, redid the entire softball field — put a lot of money into it.”
“But on the inside, it was in shambles,” the former employee continued. “It’s run on fear. It’s run on a dictatorship. It’s his way.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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