Folsom Field gate 14 on May 6, 2025. Ben Bouzi was arrested near Gate 14 on Oct. 12, 2024, on charges of domestic violence and harassment. (Greta Kerkhoff/CU Independent)
Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of domestic and sexual violence. On-campus resources for survivors of traumatic incidents are available through the Office of Victim Assistance and the Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance.
In December 2022, the University of Colorado Boulder hired Deion Sanders to be the head football coach of a program that, at the time, had a 1-11 record.
Brought to the university on the heels of one of its football programs’ most poorly performing seasons, Sanders began setting the standard for how his players performed, both on and off the field.
In a video posted on X in January 2023, Sanders spoke to players and staff about his expectations regarding the treatment of women.
“One thing that I don’t condone is disrespect for a woman,” he said. “If there is any dysfunction, obstruction with your girlfriend, fiancée or whoever – with any abuse – that’s it, it’s over. Don’t call me, don’t have your mama call me, don’t call Rick (George), it’s a wrap.”
Less than two years later, on Oct. 12, 2024, one of Sanders’ players, freshman cornerback Ben Bouzi, was arrested at Folsom Stadium during a home football game against Kansas State University on charges of harassment and domestic violence.
Bouzi is not the first member of the football program to face similar harassment or assault charges. In recent years, the athletic department has recruited or hired several players and coaches with past histories of misconduct allegations and arrests. CU Boulder follows National Collegiate Athletic Association rules regarding recruitment, but given the repeated nature, some community members are calling for the university to reassess how it recruits and hires.
At least three women, all of whom are freshmen at the university, spoke to the CU Independent about instances of alleged harassment and domestic violence involving Bouzi. A case remains open with the Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance.
While this investigation was pending, Bouzi played during the university’s spring football game in April.
Bouzi has since entered the transfer portal. He did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Additionally, Sanders and Marshall Breit, Bouzi’s attorney, did not respond to a list of questions and requests for comment.
Football player accused of on-campus misconduct
Bouzi’s charges relate to one woman, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for her safety. The woman says she had had an intimate relationship with Bouzi beginning in late August 2024.
According to a CU Boulder Police Department report, on Sept. 17, Bouzi entered the woman’s dorm room exhibiting a “frightening and intimidating demeanor.”
The woman says she was fidgeting with a stuffed animal when Bouzi repeatedly attempted to yank it out of her hand. When she tightened her grip, Bouzi grabbed her forearm “aggressively and tightly,” according to the affidavit.
Later, the two met in a university dorm study room to discuss the incident.
“(I) explained to him what he did in my room and he told me that he was so angry that night that he blacked out and didn’t remember any of it…” the woman told the CU Independent. “During this conversation, I was profusely crying. I told him ‘Consider yourself lucky I’m even sitting in a room alone with you right now because I’m deeply afraid of you.’”
The woman says she witnessed other behaviors prior to the incident, such as Bouzi “banging” on her and her friend’s doors looking for her.
“I should’ve seen or taken the signs more seriously, he was super violent and loud, and things with his friends would escalate really quickly. His friends wouldn’t become super angry or crazy but Bouzi always would,” she said.
Another woman, who also requested anonymity out of concern for her safety, said Bouzi began pretending to punch her in the face after she disclosed her previous experience in an abusive relationship.
One night, while visiting her in her dorm, Bouzi repeatedly made “rape” and “misogynistic” jokes, which she said made her uncomfortable to the point of tears.
Bouzi then tried to fake punch the woman and punched her accidentally, she said.
The woman said Bouzi harassed her by pounding on her door, on one occasion prompting her to hide. He then sat in a study room within view of her door, waiting for her to exit. She also said that he had shown her pictures of him holding guns, which scared her.
Both women jointly filed a report to the OIEC, and the first woman filed a report with CUPD.
A redacted version of a police report filed with the University of Colorado Boulder Police Department lists the two counts Ben Bouzi was charged with. (CU Independent)
A third freshman woman, Tess Cahill, who lived in the same dorm as Bouzi, said that Bouzi and two other men blocked the east doorway entrance to the dorm one day when she was trying to return home.
Cahill says the men, all shirtless, repeatedly asked to exchange phone numbers and continued blocking the door until she agreed to reply to a message that Bouzi had sent her on Snapchat.
“I had to comply in the interaction for the sake of me being able to get home,” Cahill said. “I was only able to get through when he felt satisfied.”
This isn’t the first time Bouzi has faced allegations of this nature.
In 2023, Bouzi was arrested in Naples, Florida, on a misdemeanor battery charge, related to an incident that occurred in March that year.
According to an incident report from the Collier County Sheriff’s Office, a witness described seeing Bouzi, who was 18 at the time, forcing a girl between the ages of 16 and 17 by the neck into a car. When the witness approached the vehicle, the girl was “crying and upset.” While the girl later stated that nothing had happened, her mother expressed a desire to press charges, stating that Bouzi had threatened her daughter with a gun approximately six months earlier.
On August 8, 2023, the Naples Daily News reported that the charges had been dropped. At the time, Bouzi was committed to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to play football. On August 10, Bouzi decommitted.
UMass’s athletic staff did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the circumstances of Bouzi’s decommitment.
In March 2024, one year after Bouzi was charged in Naples, Sanders offered him a chance to play for the Buffaloes.
According to an article by the Coloradoan, Bouzi was “unsure if he’d ever play again” before Sanders’ offer.
Steve Hurlbert, a spokesperson within CU Boulder’s athletics department, said the university was aware of the charges Bouzi faced in 2023.
A history of misconduct within university athletics
Shortly after Bouzi’s arrest in Boulder, he was placed on an interim campus exclusion by the OIEC, which was lifted ten days after his arrest. He was then moved into another residence hall in Williams Village.
The three women who had encounters with Bouzi told the CU Independent the university didn’t take enough action.
“(That dorm) was my home,” Cahill said. “Now that’s solved for us, but it’s not solved for the people in the dorm he’s at now.”
Bouzi is at least the third CU Boulder athlete in as many years to have faced charges or allegations of harassment or misconduct. He is also not the sole member of last season’s football team to be brought to the university despite prior allegations.
Defensive tackle Chidozie Nwankwo was accused of choking his then-girlfriend in 2021. Following his arrest, he was suspended from playing for the University of Houston, where he played at the time.
A grand jury declined to indict Nwankwo and he was reinstated to the team. He later signed with CU Boulder in December 2023. He has since declared for the NFL draft.
A spokesperson for UH said that Nwankwo left the program in “good standing” in 2024.
According to Hurlbert, the university was aware of Nwankwo’s prior allegations when he signed with CU Boulder.
In 2023, two women accused Brennan Pieper, a Ralphie handler, of sexual assault and harassment. Similar to Bouzi, Pieper was removed from his dorm room, but allowed to continue running at games after he was charged with sexual assault.
In 2022, the university signed a football player, Anthony “Deuce” Roberson II, who had been accused of sexual assault, rape or harassment by at least 14 women before coming to the university. Roberson is no longer a football player or student at CU Boulder.
These cases are part of a long history of alleged misconduct within CU’s athletic department – one that goes back at least 20 years and has faced recent scrutiny with the arrival of Sanders.
Erika Krouse is a private investigator who worked for a law firm that sued CU Boulder in the university’s highest-profile Title IX case in the early 2000s.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs in that case alleged the university was aware of a “sexually hostile environment” in the football program and was “deliberately indifferent” to it. They settled the case and CU Boulder agreed to pay the two plaintiffs a total of over $2.8 million.
Immediately following the settlement, CU hired a Title IX advisor and agreed to substantially increase the Office of Victim Assistance’s budget, as well as fund two other counselor positions within the Title IX office, among other reforms.
Krouse says that today she sees a parallel to what she saw back in the early 2000s, a time when the university received similar national attention for football.
“A winning team is a more powerful team. It’s a team with more resources at their disposal, probably both financial and social, and again, with improper leadership power can go to places of danger,” she said.
But it’s not just CU Boulder’s athletes who have faced allegations of misconduct. Members of the current CU coaching staff have recently come under fire for past allegations.
In the last year, the university has hired two coaches – assistant defensive line coach Warren Sapp and running backs coach Marshall Faulk – who were named in a 2017 sexual harassment lawsuit that described behaviors from when they both worked at the NFL Network.
The suit was filed by a former wardrobe stylist for the network. According to the New York Times, she alleged that Faulk “asked personal questions about her sex life, fondled her and pulled out his genitals while demanding oral sex.”
Before coming to CU, Faulk had never previously been a coach at any level.
Sapp was accused of urinating in front of the wardrobe stylist, showing her nude photographs of women, discussing his sex life in front of her and buying her sex toys as Christmas gifts.
The case was resolved by a settlement agreement, but Faulk permanently lost his position with the network as a result. Sapp was fired in 2015 after being arrested for soliciting prostitution and assault.
Sapp was also arrested in 2010 on a domestic battery charge. However, according to ESPN, the case was dropped due to inconsistencies between the evidence and the victim’s statements.
According to Hurlbert, the athletic department was aware of Sapp and Faulk’s histories of alleged misconduct when they were hired.
Hurlbert said assistant coaches are hired by the sport’s head coach along with other athletics department personnel and, sometimes, the athletic director. Coaches must go through the same hiring process as other potential university employees.
In 2017, current Athletic Director Rick George was required to donate $100,000 to benefit domestic violence awareness after his “failures” to properly report allegations of domestic abuse against a former assistant football coach.
In a statement, George said that he “could have handled this situation better” and that he “should have engaged our Office of Equity and Compliance right away.”
NCAA, individual school codes of conduct come into play
The NCAA Board of Governors policy on campus sexual violence states that “There is an expectation that if a student discloses that they have been disciplined through a Title IX proceeding or criminal conviction, then the school will take appropriate action to confirm that information and determine athletics eligibility.”
According to the policy, each school can determine the steps they will take after receiving past misconduct information from all incoming, continuing and transfer athletes. The policy covers interpersonal violence, sexual violence and other acts of violence.
However, the NCAA does not require that schools ask student-athletes to disclose if they were found innocent or not responsible.
Andrew Miltenberg, a campus misconduct, due process and Title IX lawyer, told the CU Independent that all NCAA and individual university policies apply to both incoming recruits, as well as all active team members.
“(Student-athletes) may face higher scrutiny in some respects, that’s unfair, and I’ve had situations where I think a student-athlete, male or female… have been treated a little more aggressively,” he said. “On the other hand, the converse is true. There are student-athletes who… are given the benefit of doubt.”
At CU Boulder, while investigations remain ongoing, Title IX regulations normally prohibit the university from taking any punitive action, such as separating a player from a team, prior to the investigation’s conclusion. While coaches can make decisions, such as playing time, based on athletic or academic performance, they cannot consider open investigations.
“Any interim protective measures are determined by the OIEC, Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution and/or the Department of Threat Assessment, not unilaterally by other campus departments, such as the Department of Athletics,” Hurlbert said in a statement.
“An arrest doesn’t mean someone is guilty. In my own experience as a lawyer, an arrest will often mean that pending the resolution of a criminal action, a coach for the athletic department will not want someone actively participating with the team,” Miltenberg said.
Former professor suggests ‘Tracy rule’
In response to student-athlete misconduct, a former CU Boulder professor proposes the Tracy rule: a serious misconduct policy that bans athletes from competing or receiving athletic-based financial aid if they’ve been found guilty of “serious misconduct” or disciplined by a university for a similar offense.
The policy was developed by Brenda Tracy, a nurse and advocate, who created the nonprofit Set The Expectation, which works to reduce sexual violence in sports, after surviving a gang-rape in 1998.
Only two schools, the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, have publicly adopted the rule.
Neither Bouzi nor Nwankwo meet the criteria of the Tracy rule, as their charges were dropped before they signed to CU Boulder.
Although the policy wouldn’t have applied to these two cases, former CU Boulder professor Roger Pielke Jr. believes implementing it would still benefit the athletic department.
“The idea that you shouldn’t bring to campus athletes or, let’s make it even more general, coaches, or even professors who have a history of sexual misconduct, or whatever euphemism you want to use, seems pretty compelling to me,” Pielke told the CU Independent.
Pielke ran CU Boulder’s athletic department Sports Governance Center from 2015 to 2019 and studies how universities deal with athletics. In 2020, he called on the university to adopt the policy in an article published in Forbes.
“If campuses find it difficult to lead on an issue as straightforward and common sense as the Tracy rule, it gives us a better sense of why it is that broader reform of college athletics does not come from universities. Decision-making in college athletics appears to have too many followers and not enough leaders,” he wrote.
Current NCAA policies are not as comprehensive. According to Hurlbert, CU Boulder has not considered changing its recruitment policies or processes in the last two years.
Community members call for change
Of the three women who had experiences with Bouzi, all say their encounters have left a lasting impression. They feel he didn’t deserve to be on CU’s campus in the months following their encounters. One woman expressed concern about him joining another program in the future. Cahill expressed concern with the university’s handling.
“I don’t think that the university is allowed to say that they handle these allegations seriously or understood the weight of any of this when he was simply placed in another dorm,” she said.
Krouse, the private investigator, also said hiring Sapp and Faulk as football coaches is particularly worrisome.
“When you have a head coach bring in two assistant coaches with a history of sexual (misconduct), it’s a message not just to the school and to the community, but also to those players that are being trained daily by these coaches,” Krouse said. “People have praised Deion Sanders for giving these trainings to students about sexual assault and ethical behavior, but it just looks like lip service when you actually hire people who can not only put students in danger but set an example to others who can put students in danger.”
Avery Johnson, a student at the university and the co-vice president of Students Against Campus Sexual Assault, sees a similar issue.
“It’s already hard for victims to come forward. And then, if you do have these people that are elevated to the celebrity status that people hold in a higher regard than they would others, it’s even harder to try to go up against that,” she said.
Pielke, the former professor, said that if a faculty member had a history of past allegations like Sapp or Faulk, they “wouldn’t be a professor for very long.”
As the new season approaches with Bouzi in the transfer portal, Sapp and Faulk remain on the coaching staff.
“You have to ask the question: We’re going on 20 years, so what is it about the university and its leadership that allows these things to continue?” Pielke said. “That’s the question I would raise as somebody who (has) three degrees from CU, two of my kids went there, I was a professor for 24 years.”
Contact CU Independent Editor-in-Chief Jessi Sachs at jessica.sachs@colorado.edu
Contact CU Independent News Editor Greta Kerkhoff at greta.kerkhoff@colorado.edu
Contact CU Independent Managing Editor Celia Frazier at celia.frazier@colorado.edu
