Liberty Hires Ex-Baylor Athletic Director Ian McCaw 

Liberty University announced Monday that Baylor’s former athletic director Ian McCaw has been hired as the school’s new AD. McCaw will assume the spot left open by Jeff Barber’s Nov. 17 resignation. McCaw is the first of the major three ex-Baylor officials publicly disgraced for their role in the school’s sexual assault scandal to land a job.

As anybody that’s bothered to pick up a newspaper, read a blog, or check Twitter over the last year is aware, McCaw presided over Baylor’s athletic department for the past 13 years. He resigned in May following the release of the Pepper Hamilton report summary, which detailed the school’s—more specifically, the athletic department’s—sexual assault cover-up scandal. Football head coach Art Briles and university president Ken Starr also lost their jobs following the revelation of multiple instances of ignored or improperly managed sexual assault allegations from female students at Baylor.

In a statement, McCaw made known his intention to build up Liberty, a private Christian university, to the level of Notre Dame or BYU—his former employer was and is the largest private Baptist university in the nation. Liberty president Jerry Falwell also released a statement in the press release; I swear to God this is authentic:

“Ian’s success really speaks for itself,” Falwell said. “You look at what Baylor was able to do during his tenure, it fits perfectly with where we see our sports programs going. This is an exciting time for us.”

The Liberty press release cited various impressive Baylor team records while introducing McCaw as AD. It failed to mention when Baylor confirmed a November ESPN report that both Briles and McCaw knew about a gang rape allegation and did not report it, or when McCaw allegedly asked for immunity for all remaining football players during an emergency meeting in February—he was rebuffed by the school’s ex-Title IX coordinator. The release also skipped over the fact that Baylor’s football team is currently 6-5 and has but one (!) football recruit for the Class of 2017, according to the . The once-promising class has been depleted over the past six months; the Bears’s next-to-last commit reneged on his offer on Sunday.

The hiring comes days after ESPN reported that two women who were allegedly gang raped by Baylor football players settled with the school for an undisclosed amount. Since 2011, 19 allegations of sexual or domestic violence involving members of the Baylor football team were voiced by 17 women; four of the sexual assaults were reported to have been gang rapes.