GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Just a day after hiring a new defensive line coach in former Tiger Kyle Williams, LSU coach Brian Kelly may be looking for a new offensive analyst.
Antonio Parks, whom Kelly and LSU hired just last month to assist with wide receivers, was charged early this week with felony strangulation of a woman last December while an offensive football analyst for the Oregon Ducks in Eugene, according to the Lane County Circuit Court there.
Parks, 29, was accused of strangling the Eugene woman for 30 to 60 seconds in mid-December of 2024 after she refused to delete a video, according to a report Thursday by The Oregonian newspaper in Portland – approximately 100 miles north of Eugene. He was released from jail in Eugene on Wednesday, according to the Oregonian, to which he said he was innocent.
LSU apparently conducted a background review of Parks before he was hired.
“LSU completes background checks on every employee as required by its policies,” Zach Labbe, media relations coordinator for LSU’s office of communications and university relations, told Tiger Rag on Friday.
No other details were provided by Labbe, though, such as if LSU knew of the December incident.
“We are aware of the (news) report and working through the appropriate parties,” LSU athletic department spokesman Zach Greenwell said Friday. “We have no further comment at this time.”
Asked if Parks has been suspended by LSU, Greenwell said only, “No update yet.”
LSU opened spring practice on Saturday. Kelly’s next media availability is on Wednesday.
Parks is a native of Reserve who played at East St. John High and was a defensive back at Texas-San Antonio in 2019 for then-head coach Frank Wilson, who has been LSU’s running backs coach since 2022 when Kelly took over after leaving Notre Dame. Parks played at Arizona in 2017 and ’18 before transferring to play for Wilson at UTSA.
Parks was an analyst at Oregon in the 2023 and ’24 seasons under coach Dan Lanning, who directed the Ducks to a 13-1 season last year with a Big Ten championship game victory over Penn State on Dec. 7. Oregon’s season lasted through all of December as it lost in the College Football Playoff to eventual national champion Ohio State on Jan. 1 in the Rose Bowl.
LSU’s adherence to background check policies and/or how closely Kelly reads background checks of his prospective new hires, came into question in December of 2023, interestingly, concerning Kelly’s hiring of Wilson to his first staff in December of 2021 shortly after taking the job that month.
“Getting the entire staff through HR (Human Resources), getting that process completed, doesn’t happen overnight,” Kelly said in March of 2022.
Wilson’s background check by LSU then came up during a December, 2023, trial that pitted LSU and Wilson, among others, against accusations by former LSU assistant athletic director Sharon Lewis regarding Wilson’s previous time as an LSU assistant coach from 2010 through March of 2016.
“His status here is unchanged,” Kelly said on March 23, 2022, when asked about accusations by Lewis against Wilson at a press conference. “We consider those as being egregious and simply allegations that were unfounded, so it does not affect Frank Wilson and the person that we know.”
Tiger Rag received a copy of LSU’s background check of Wilson concerning his hiring in 2021 prior to Lewis’ trial against LSU in 2023. It included some of Lewis’ accusations against Wilson, but it was heavily redacted and contained none of the “egregious” sexually related ones of which Lewis accused him. Those accusations by Lewis came after Wilson’s hiring at LSU, yes, but a more thorough background check would have likely uncovered them at the time of Wilson’s hire.
The cursory background check included this: “Former LSU athletics administrator Sharon Lewis accused Wilson of telling Lewis (under then-head coach Les Miles’ direction) to hire fewer black women as student workers, or at the very least, those with lighter skin.”
So, the LSU personnel who did the background check on Lewis talked to her about Wilson, but not about the sexually related allegations? Really? Please.
In the end, Lewis lost her lawsuit against LSU, Miles and Wilson, among others, in December of 2023 in a trial that included strong statements against Lewis by Wilson and deputy athletic director Verge Ausberry on the witness stand.
“My thought is this I believe we are at this point because I refused to testify against Les Miles when Sharon asked me to,” Wilson said on the stand. “Most of Lewis’ allegations in her lawsuit involved Miles (LSU’s head coach from 2005-16). While I was at McNeese, I had cordial, friendly conversations with Sharon. Until that request that I turned down, everything changed. All the allegations against me she made are not true – egregious and not true.”
And the all-white jury of five men and three women agreed.
Kelly also hired Wilson, even though LSU had previously reprimanded him in 2012 for breaking NCAA recruiting rules regarding off-campus visits.
“Wilson was not forthright and honest,” then-LSU athletic director Joe Alleva (2008-19) said of that reprimand in testimony to NCAA officials during the NCAA’s investigation of LSU football and basketball from 2017-19.
But Kelly may not have known about that, because the above NCAA issues with Wilson were strangely not included in LSU’s background check of Wilson, unless they were redacted. The check did include a recruiting violation accusation against Wilson while he was at LSU in 2016 before taking the Texas-San Antonio head coaching job in March of that year.
“In 2016, LSU, under the lead of Wilson, allegedly offered cash of $650,000 for a recruit, according to comments made by the recruit’s mother,” the background check states. “It does not appear as though those allegations were founded.”
Under the heading, “NCAA Reputation,” the background check states, “Wilson has a checkered reputation as a football coach. He has raised red flags about his recruiting tactics.”
It is unclear if Kelly read the background check or, if so, how closely he read it. Or if he did, how seriously he took it. When or if Kelly received the background check is also unclear.
Parks could be proven innocent, but did LSU and Kelly know about the incident in December via its background check before it hired him in January?
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