The University of Mississippi and lawyers for head coach Lane Kiffin have filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a player who claims the coach denied his request for a “mental health” break.
In his lawsuit, junior DeSanto Rollins is alleging that he asked for a break from the team but was denied despite the fact that other white players in the school had their break requests approved. The defensive tackle filed his lawsuit in September, accusing Kiffin of making his depression worse due to the “grossly reckless and indifferent” treatment he received at the coach’s hands, according to Front Office Sports.
Rollins provided evidence that a white football player, several white female softball players, and female volleyball players were granted breaks without any punishments. In his federal lawsuit, he claims his 14th Amendment equal protection rights were violated.
DeSanto Rollins #99 of the Mississippi Rebels during the game against the Troy Trojans at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on September 03, 2022, in Oxford, Mississippi. (Justin Ford/Getty Images)
When Rollins met with Kiffin on February 27, the player said Kiffin was furious that he hadn’t entered the transfer portal after the 2022 season. And Rollins says he was “moved from his defensive tackle position to the scout team on the offensive line.” And at that meeting, Rollins says he told the coach he wanted a “mental health break.”
But the motion to dismiss filed on Wednesday makes several points that they say should lead a judge to dismiss Rollins’ lawsuit.
Firstly, the school claims Rollins enflamed the situation by skipping meetings with Kiffin. He was ordered to appear before the coach on March 1, and then another team official told Rollins to meet with Kiffin on March 7, but he didn’t finally show up until the 21.
The school claims that the March 21 meeting was more contention than it had to be since Rollins kept skipping meeting dates.
Audio of the March 21 meeting shows Kiffin’s frustration.
“Guess what? We can kick you off the team. You can read your fucking rights about mental health,” Kiffin says on the recording. “We can kick you off the team for not showing up. When a head coach asks to meet with you and you don’t show up for a week, OK, we can remove you from the team.”
The school adds in its motion to dismiss that it has no responsibility to treat players in any particular way.
“There is no statutory duty for a football coach to manage his team roster or speak to his players in any particular way,” the lawyers wrote in the motion. “To the contrary, Mississippi courts have recognized that coaching decisions are largely discretionary because ‘coaches know their players and must be able to control their teams.’ Nor has Plaintiff identified a legal duty to ‘have written institutional procedures for routine mental health referrals.’”
The school further claims that Kiffin cannot be individually targeted for the 14th Amendment violations.
University lawyers also say the player’s claim that his rights under Title IX were violated should be dismissed because Rollins “may not seek reputational or emotional distress damages for his claims under Title VI, Title IX, and the Rehab Act.”
Finally, they also say the lawsuit is illegitimate as a federal lawsuit due to the Mississippi Tort Claims Act.
Rollins has not played since filing his lawsuit as both sides wait for the outcome of the legal wrangling.
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