The story around the Arizona Wildcats firing Rich Rodriguez goes beyond just the gridiron. At the foundation of the termination is the allegations made by a former a former female administrative assistant.
There is a lot going on in those allegations. At the heart of her lawsuit, though, is that Rodriguez created a hostile work environment and harassed her in several instances from 2011 to 2017.
There's even more damning, and specific, information starting to come to the surface as people have begun to get a look at the allegations. According to the claim filed, Rodriguez did nothing to help prevent the death of one of his players in 2016.
Arizona offensive lineman Zach Hemmila died in his sleep in August 2016. It was later discovered that a wrong mix of anxiety medications and painkillers is what caused his death.
According to the claim (found here), the night prior to Hemmila's death, former Arizona director of on-campus recruiting Matt Dudek "had taken Zach to Rodriguez telling him that something was wrong with Zach and needed help. But Rodriguez did nothing simply saying, 'he'll be fine.' Rodriguez's knowledge of the extent of Zach's issues was another secret Melissa had to keep."
Since Rodriguez was fired on Tuesday evening, he's already released a statement in which he made some startling admissions, but also rejected some of the claims.
