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Cal Assistant Coach Fired For Allegedly Offering Journalist Access To The Team For Sex...We've Got Leaked Texts!

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SF ChronicleAn assistant coach for the Cal men’s basketball team was fired Monday following an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment, UC Berkeley officials said.

University investigators concluded after a months-long probe that Yann Hufnagel, who joined head coach Cuonzo Martin’s staff two years ago, had violated UC Berkeley’s antisexual harassment policy. Martin, whose team opens the NCAA Tournament on Friday as the highest seed in school history, fired his assistant after receiving the report from the Office for the Prevention of Harassment.

DeadspinOn July 6, 2015, someone identified as a “head varsity athletics coach” at Cal forwarded an email to an Associate Athletic Director (AAD). The email, sent by the reporter, accused Hufnagel of subjecting her to “frequent and recurrent sexual harassment.” The AAD contacted the Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD), and by the end of August, the investigation was in full swing. It conducted interviews with the complainant and with Hufnagel, as well as a witness, and collected scores of text messages exchanged between Hufnagel and the reporter.

She alleged that Hufnagel had harassed her on a “weekly” or “bi-weekly basis,” and highlights one incident from January 2015. The two arranged to meet, and although she insisted on meeting for coffee, he wanted them to meet at a bar, so they went to a bar on Berkeley’s main drag, Shattuck Avenue. She alleges that he had two beers and told her he wanted her to drive him home. She initially refused, and told him to take a taxi, but he insisted, so she drove his car back to his apartment.

Days later, on March 23, she alleges that he provided her with misinformation on the story she had hoped to meet with him about, which she reported on as if it were true. She told investigators that was revenge for her rebuffing his advances in the garage.

The power dynamic in play here—reporter relies on coach for information, coach exploits that need to his own ends—kept going until May, when she(it appears) published something that enraged Hufnagel. He called her on the 22nd and yelled “What the fuck were you thinking?” at her, which she says “tipped the scales” for her and emboldened her to come forward with her allegations.

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Oof, tough look for Yann here. Best part is…we’ve got leaked text messages! I repeat, we’ve got leaked text messages! Oh man I love when these things come out. Get to see somebody’s creep game in action. Not only that but they’re always so damning that it makes all their claims of innocence pretty funny. Their statements and tweets about doing nothing wrong, then you see their iPhone records featuring their name and phone number asking for threesomes and oral sex and stuff, then making a power play and shutting the woman out when they don’t agree to it. Allegedly.

Let’s see what we got.

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And this is exactly why I picked Hawaii for the upset. Do I know anything about Hawaii? Well, besides than the fact that I’ve vacationed there like 9 times, no big deal. But do I know anything about the team? I do not. Couldn’t name one player. But I do know there is turmoil in the Cal program right now, a coach getting fired literally days before the tournament starts. And now the kicker? He’s a horrible sext creeper. Just zero times zero game. Seriously dude enough about the coffee. Drop the coffee angle. Coffee clearly wasn’t working. Adapt or die.

[h/t Deadspin]