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The third installment of the SI series on Oklahoma State is out. This time, the topic is about drugs.
The majority of it catalogs drug use and sometimes even dealing among players on the team over the past decade. Since this is an SEC site, I'm focusing on the stuff that is alleged to have happened under Les Miles's watch from 2001-04.
That stuff is, well, less than damning for Miles in most cases. Some players admitted to taking drugs at parties, and a couple admitted to selling some too. For the most part, it was marijuana. I don't know the first thing about drugs, so I can't tell you if the quantities in question are a lot or not. Aside from hiring PIs to tail players 24/7, I don't know what a coaching staff is supposed to do to stop players from doing any of that on their own time away from the team. The report also mentions that marijuana was already a problem before Miles arrived. As an aside, I'll bet a lot of programs have a problem with marijuana depending on how you define "problem".
The piece also mentions a so-called "Weed Circle", a regular counseling session for players who tested positive for marijuana. One of the bigger accusations of the reports is that the person running it at OSU is not a licensed drug counsellor, but that post-dates Miles's tenure. From the circle's inception in 2003 to 2006, a licensed counsellor did conduct the sessions, and before it, that licensed counsellor did one-on-one sessions. While Miles was in charge, a qualified professional was doing the drug counseling. Miles dropped in on some sessions, which is counterproductive according to someone who runs the drug counseling program at another school, but it's hard to ascribe nefarious intentions to him doing so.
The only real thing here against Miles is a non-specific charge of being lenient on good players and harsher on lesser players. That would be unfortunate if true, but it would make Miles like basically every other coach who has ever held a job. There's not a lot here against Miles.