Investigative reporter

Kenny
jacoby

About me

I’m an investigative reporter for USA TODAY with a track record for uncovering abuses of power in sports, higher education and law enforcement. Much of my work over the last seven years has exposed institutions’ mishandling of sexual assault and misconduct allegations against top athletes, coaches and university leaders in violation of Title IX and other campus safety laws. My abilities to write hard-hitting investigative narratives, unearth hidden public records, analyze and scrape data from websites and PDFs, and earn the trust of survivors and whistleblowers have helped me consistently break big national stories whose impact is sweeping and swift.

In 2020, my investigation into Louisiana State University’s systemic failure to address sexual misconduct complaints against football players, coaches and non-athlete students prompted a wave of reforms. An outside law firm hired by LSU confirmed our findings and recommended more than a dozen changes to the school’s processes. LSU suspended two senior athletic department officials without pay and scrubbed from its record books the name of its former star running back, Derrius Guice, whom multiple women had accused of rape and sexual misconduct. Its beloved former head football coach, Les Miles, was fired from his new job as head coach of the University of Kansas after our reporting revealed LSU had investigated, then buried, allegations that Miles sexually harassed two female student workers and sexualized the football recruiting office. F. King Alexander, who had been LSU’s president during the scandal, was forced to resign from his new post as president of Oregon State University. State lawmakers grilled LSU leaders at legislative hearings and passed several new laws aimed at improving campus safety and holding bad actors to account.

The same year, I investigated allegations that San Jose State University’s longtime sports medicine director, Scott Shaw, sexually abused dozens of female athletes under the guise of medical treatments over a 14-year span. Our reporting prompted a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice that found SJSU violated Title IX for more than a decade by repeatedly failing to adequately address the complaints. Shaw resigned from SJSU after our reporting, as did SJSU’s former athletic director, Marie Tuite, who was found to have retaliated against a coach and deputy athletic director who tried to hold him accountable. The DOJ also charged Shaw with six criminal counts of violating the civil rights of students by violating their right to bodily autonomy. After a criminal trial ended in a mistral, Shaw pleaded guilty to two of the six counts, admitted to all of the charged conduct and was sentenced to two years in prison. SJSU paid more than $7 million to 30 women who came forward.

While working on a national investigation examining how 107 top public universities adjudicated sexual misconduct claims over a multi-year period, I discovered allegations that Joseph Castro, the head of the nation’s largest public university system, the California State University, mishandled numerous sexual harassment complaints against his friend, vice president of student affairs Frank Lamas, when Castro was president of Fresno State. Despite a Title IX investigation substantiating that Lamas propositioned a subordinate for sexual favors, Castro authorized a sweetheart settlement agreement for Lamas that gave him $260,000, a clean record and a letter of recommendation to help him land a presidency at another university. Castro was forced to resign as CSU chancellor two weeks after my investigation published. The story sparked a wave of reporting by other news outlets into other sexual misconduct scandals across the CSU. The California legislature conducted an audit that confirmed systemic issues throughout the CSU and passed more than a dozen new laws to strengthen campus Title IX compliance across the state.

In fall 2023, I published an exposé into a long-running investigation at Michigan State University into allegations that its head football coach, Mel Tucker, masturbated and made unwanted sexual comments during a phone call with Brenda Tracy, a prominent rape survivor and anti-sexual violence activist he had hired to speak to his team about sexual violence prevention. Michigan State suspended Tucker without pay hours after our story and fired him for cause two weeks later, canceling the roughly $75 million left on his record 10-year, $95 million contract. As the only journalist Tracy trusted enough to speak to, I continued breaking a steady stream of news about the case based on confidential case documents she shared with me. Putting myself in the shoes of the investigator and hearing officer, I spent months analyzing the evidence and presented a fair accounting of the facts, including numerous key inconsistencies in Tucker’s account. As my reporting telegraphed, the university ultimately found Tucker responsible for sexually harassing and exploiting Tracy on several occasions before, during and after the now-infamous phone call, finding her account more plausible, consistent and supported by the evidence.

These stories and others I’ve written have earned national awards from Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), National Headliner Awards, Society of Professional Journalists, Education Writers Association, The Livingston Awards and other reputable journalism organizations. I have placed in the top three nationwide in the Associated Press Sports Editors’ investigative reporting contest each of my five years with USA TODAY.

With a background in computer science, I also do freelance data scraping and analysis for the journalism school at my alma mater, the University of Oregon, and the elections data team at the Associated Press.

Top stories

2024

Trump's would-be assassin had little time to prepare – and left little trace of plot

By Kenny Jacoby, Kristine Phillips and Christopher Cann, USA TODAY | July 17, 2024

Exclusive records show Nevada athletics ran afoul of Title IX. Its leaders shrugged.

By Kenny Jacoby, USA TODAY | May 7, 2024

2023

Michigan State football coach Mel Tucker accused of sexually harassing rape survivor

By Kenny Jacoby, USA TODAY | September 10, 2023

After alleged rape by Michigan athlete, a woman’s death and a mom’s search for answers

By Kenny Jacoby, USA TODAY | April 6, 2023

2022

Despite men’s rights claims, colleges expel few sexual misconduct offenders while survivors suffer

By Kenny Jacoby, USA TODAY | Novermber 16, 2022

Title IX was intended to close the gender gap in college athletics. But schools are rigging the numbers.

By Kenny Jacoby, Lindsay Schnell, Rachel Axon, Steve Berkowitz, Nancy Armour and Dan Wolken, USA TODAY | May 26, 2022

Fresno State president mishandled sexual harassment complaints. Now he leads all 23 Cal State colleges.

By Kenny Jacoby, USA TODAY | February 3, 2022

2021

Six women reported a Louisiana college student for sexual misconduct. No one connected the dots.

By Kenny Jacoby, USA TODAY | May 26, 2021

Former LSU football coach Les Miles was banned from contacting female students after 2013 probe

By Kenny Jacoby, Nancy Armour and Jessica Luther, USA TODAY | March 4, 2021

2020

LSU mishandled sexual misconduct complaints against students, including top athletes

By Kenny Jacoby, Nancy Armour and Jessica Luther, USA TODAY | November 16, 2020

Marsy’s Law was meant to protect crime victims. It now hides the identities of cops who use force.

By Kenny Jacoby, USA TODAY, and Ryan Gabrielson, ProPublica | October 29, 2020

San Jose State reinvestigates claims athletic trainer inappropriately touched swimmers

By Kenny Jacoby and Rachel Axon, USA TODAY | April 17, 2020

2019

Predator Pipeline: NCAA looks the other way as college athletes punished for sex offenses play on

By Kenny Jacoby, USA TODAY | December 12, 2019