Columbia Suspends Griffith for Three Games, and Her Players Publicly Back Her

Columbia’s season will start with an empty chair where its head coach should be. The university announced on Thursday that Megan Griffith, the winningest coach in the program’s history, is suspended for the first three games after an outside review of how she ran practices in past seasons, USA Today reports. Griffith accepted the finding in a statement of her own. Within the same news cycle, her players published one too, and theirs said the opposite of what a suspension usually implies: they stand with her completely.

What did the review actually find?

Less than the announcement invites you to assume, and the gap is deliberate. Columbia said the review followed a complaint about Griffith’s behaviour during practices from previous seasons, was carried out by an outside firm, and concluded that some of her interactions with the team had not aligned with the university’s expectations, USA Today reports. The school published no specific incident, no quoted finding and no named complainant. It was careful about the boundaries instead: the review did not require the NCAA to be notified of any rules violations, and it did not involve allegations under the university’s anti-discrimination policies, Title IX or related policies. The sanction is internal, the language is institutional, and the conduct at the centre of it remains undescribed by anyone on the record.

What did Griffith and her players say?

Two statements, arranged in sequence, pointing in different directions. Griffith said she fully respects the review process, takes complete responsibility for everything that happens in her program, and accepts that her conduct fell short at times, AP reports. Then the roster spoke for itself. The players’ statement, provided to USA Today, said the suspension is not indicative of their experience, called that experience overwhelmingly positive, and stated plainly that the team fully stands with and supports its coach. Public player statements in a coach-conduct case usually arrive lawyered into neutrality. This one used the word family. Whatever the practices in question felt like from inside them, the current squad chose to be counted, the same instinct that made the Liberty’s players and coaches keep arguing their timeout case in public after the league closed it, and the opposite of Sophie Cunningham telling A’ja Wilson to grow up during their fan-incident row.

Why does a three-game ban land this hard at Columbia?

Because Griffith is the program’s modern history. She played at Columbia from 2003 to 2007, assisted on Courtney Banghart’s Princeton staffs, and came home in 2016 to build a team that had never mattered nationally into a regular winner, USA Today reports. Across the last five seasons the Lions went 125-35, won three regular-season Ivy League titles, earned the first NCAA Tournament bids in school history and won a tournament game in 2025. Her career record at the school is 171-99, AP reports. A suspension for a coach with that standing is not a scheduling inconvenience; it is the university publicly marking the record of the person who created its expectations, for failing to meet expectations of a different kind. Coaches absorb public judgements from all directions in this sport, from JJ Redick dissecting his own young players after a preseason game this week to a front office having to explain where its absent star actually is. Columbia’s version is rarer: the judgement came from its own review, and the defence came from its own players.

Which games does she miss, and who coaches them?

The opener and a useful road trip. Griffith sits out Davidson at home on November 2, then Rhode Island on November 6 and Belmont on November 8 in Nashville, AP reports, three strong mid-major opponents of exactly the kind Columbia schedules to build an at-large case for March. The university said it will not name an interim head coach for those games, a small decision with a real signal in it: the staff will cover the bench collectively rather than hand the program, even temporarily, to a successor figure. Griffith returns on November 12 against Michigan, with Maryland on November 15 and Duke on November 21 behind it, USA Today reports. Her roster, led by reigning Ivy League Player of the Year Riley Weiss, gets its coach back just before the hardest fortnight of the non-conference schedule.

What happens next?

November answers most of it. The three games will show how a veteran, player-led team runs itself, and the November 12 return will show whether the story has closed or merely paused. What will not arrive is the detail: Columbia has given no indication it will publish more of the review, Griffith has said her piece, and the players have said theirs. The file stays exactly as balanced as Thursday left it, a university saying its coach’s conduct fell short, a coach agreeing, and a team saying, in writing, that this is not the program they know. All three statements can be true at once. The season will be played in the space between them.