Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis resigned on Friday, the latest university official to step down in the wake of former Michigan State doctor Larry Nassar’s sentencing.
Hollis follows in the footsteps of the university’s president, Lou Anna Simpson, who relinquished her post on Wednesday after public backlash over how the school handled the accusations against Nassar.
An MSU alumnus, Hollis became the university’s athletic director in 2008.
On the same day of his resignation, an investigation by ESPN's "Outside the Lines" into Michigan State University and its athletic department "found a pattern of widespread denial, inaction and information suppression of such allegations by officials ranging from campus police to the Spartan athletic department … well beyond the highly publicized case of former MSU athletic physician Larry Nassar."
The more than 6,000-word report based on the investigation, under the headline, "Michigan State secrets extend far beyond Larry Nassar case," was published Friday afternoon and, if accurate, could send more tremors through an embattled and embarrassed university.
A special, one-hour edition of "E:60" will air at 9 a.m. ET Sunday on ESPN that, according to the network, details a pervasive failure by Michigan State to properly handle multiple reports of sexual assault and allegations of violence involving athletes and athletic department members.
"Even MSU's most-recognizable figures, football coach Mark Dantonio and basketball coach Tom Izzo, have had incidents involving their programs, 'Outside the Lines' has found," ESPN's Paula Lavigne writes in the in-depth report that also included work by investigative reporter John Barr, investigative producer Nicole Noren and staff writer Dan Murphy.
The bombshell report comes the same week Nassar was sentenced in a Lansing, Mich., court to 40 to 175 years in prison for criminal sexual conduct, some in his role as an MSU athletic department physician.
It offers a compelling and detailed case — built around never-before-publicized reports of sexual or violent incidents, purportedly kept quiet by an array of university or university-related officials.
Bob Hille contributed to this report.