Updated at 4 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3, with response from Ian McCaw's attorney.

Ex-Baylor football coach Art Briles and other former athletic officials tried to keep misconduct by football players hidden by creating a "see no-evil, report no-evil system," a new court filing alleged Thursday, a day after the disgraced coach abruptly dropped his libel suit against school officials.

The filing, which came in response to a lawsuit by a former assistant athletic director, includes damning texts between Briles and other athletic officials as they dealt with multiple allegations against football players between 2011 and 2015.

When a female student-athlete reported that a football player had brandished a gun at her, the court paperwork said, Briles texted an assistant coach: "what a fool -- she reporting to authorities."

In another case, a masseuse asked the team to discipline a player who reportedly exposed himself and asked for favors during a massage, the document said Briles' first response was, "What kind of discipline... She a stripper?"

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The filing also laid out the athletic department's response to allegations of gang rape by football players, including when a student-athlete told her coach that five football players had raped her at an off-campus party. The coach then took a list of names to Briles, who said, "Those are some bad dudes. Why was she around those guys?" He also suggested the woman tell the police, according to the filing.

Baylor head coach Art Briles shrugs his shoulders as meets with the media on Sunday, December 7, 2014 in Waco, Texas. ((G.J. McCarthy / The Dallas Morning News))

"The football program was a black hole into which reports of misconduct such as drug use, physical assault, domestic violence, brandishing of guns, indecent exposure and academic fraud disappeared," the court filing said.

The paperwork was filed on behalf of several Baylor officials, including school regents and the interim university president, who were sued for libel by former assistant athletic director for football operations Colin Shillinglaw this week.

The narrative offered the most detailed account yet of how Baylor officials responded to the sexual assault scandal that has rocked the school.

Baylor officials were reluctant to catalog their response to the scandal for fear of violating the law or the privacy of survivors, their attorney said. But he said an onslaught of lawsuits and public pressure from major university donors compelled them to release more information.

"They were shocked and hurt and stunned as regents of the university," attorney Rusty Hardin of Houston said of the regents' response to the scandal. "But they were also fathers whose daughters may be Baylor students ... They have been driven by point one, by the first moment, to make sure they did what was right."

Briles' attorney did not return requests for comment Thursday night.

Shillinglaw's lawyer called the filing "very unorthodox" in an email late Thursday. "We look forward to the complete truth being revealed, instead of a bunch of disconnected accusations," Gaines West said.

Briles' dropped lawsuit and the new information from regents came just days after a Baylor sexual assault survivor sued the school, alleging that 31 football players committed at least 52 acts of rape between 2011 and 2014, an estimate that far exceeded what regents told The Wall Street Journal in October.

Regents said then that 19 football players had been accused of sexual or physical assault, including four alleged gang rapes, since 2011.

Hardin said regents came up with that number based on Pepper Hamilton's findings, newspaper stories and lawsuits. But Pepper Hamilton's probe was not meant to be exhaustive and did not tally every sexual assault reported.

Instead, the court filing said, the law firm did a "stress test" of Baylor's response to sexual assault complaints, which included analyzing particular cases and interviewing some victims.

Pepper Hamilton first presented their findings to regents, who govern the school, during an all-day meeting on May 2. What they had found "stunned" and "deeply saddened" the regents, to the point that several "openly wept as they tried to absorb what they were hearing," the court document said.

The law firm described a widespread mishandling of sexual assault cases, which included a university-wide failure to implement Title IX, the federal law that requires universities to proactively prevent sexual violence on campus, and a culture that blamed victims. In essence: "Institutional failures at every level."

Pepper Hamilton had planned to take six months to create a lengthy written report, but after that meeting, regents decided they needed to respond much more quickly. The law firm's investigative team then went to Waco to deliver a 10-hour oral presentation to the full board of regents on May 11 and 12, according to the filing.

By late May, the university had taken sweeping action. Briles was fired. Athletic director Ian McCaw was asked to resign. Other athletic staffers, including Shillinglaw, were pushed out. The sanctions flowed all the way to the top: Then-university president Ken Starr was demoted and eventually ousted altogether.

Still, critics complained about a lack of transparency from the board of regents and suggested that higher ups with culpability remained at the university.

Hardin defended his clients Thursday: "The regents did the only thing they could have done."

Baylor officials pinned the mishandling of several high-profile rape cases within the football program on the inaction of Briles and his team.

The filing said Briles knew that former Baylor defensive lineman Tevin Elliott, who is accused of assaulting at least six women and is now in prison for rape, was being investigated by Waco police in April 2012. When an assistant coach texted him to report that police had swabbed Elliott's mouth for DNA, an indication that the player would likely be charged soon, Briles responded, "Dang it," according to the filing.

In this Jan. 23, 2014, file photo, former Baylor football player Tevin Elliott waits with a unidentified lawyer in a McLennan county courtroom in Waco, Texas. ((AP))

Briles did not notify the university's disciplinary department or take any action for 10 days, until a reporter inquired about Elliott's status, the filing said.

It said that Briles also initially agreed to testify on Elliott's behalf at his trial. "We need to get your name cleared ... Always all in with my players," he reportedly texted Elliott. The coach did not appear in court, and Elliott was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The filing also alleged that Briles used Shillinglaw to line up legal representation for the players who had run-ins with the law.

In one text exchange, after a player was arrested for assault and threatening to kill someone, the paperwork said Briles texted athletic director McCaw that he had just talked to the player, who said Waco police had agreed to "keep it quiet." Briles promised to ask Shillinglaw to check in with a local attorney.

"That would be great if they kept it quiet!" McCaw allegedly replied. He is now the athletic director at Liberty University in Virginia.

On Friday, McCaw's attorney, Tom Brandt, said his client acted appropriately because Baylor had no Title IX office, provided no Title IX education and had no policies or procedures for handling or reporting allegations of sexual assault.

"Mr. McCaw was faced with a complex situation wherein he desired to honor the wishes of the alleged victim, who was unwilling to speak to the police according to her coach, and a request from her coach for guidances as to where he should go with information he had obtained in 2013 about this incident. Mr. McCaw responsibly directed the head coach to the Office of Judicial Affairs which handles student conduct matters and was the appropriate venue to take such an allegation."

In the filing, Hardin, the Baylor lawyer, said no one should have been shocked by Briles' firing.

"When a college football coach goes 6-7, 5-7, and 5-7 for three consecutive years, no one blinks an eye when the coach is fired," the court filing said. "But when at least 17 women report sexual and physical assaults involving at least 19 football players, including allegations of four gang rapes, why is anyone shocked by his dismissal?"

It continued: "Briles was not a 'scapegoat' for the University's larger problems -- he was part of the larger problem. So was Shillinglaw."