Updated at 3:55 p.m. with a statement from an attorney representing an ex-Baylor football player accused of sexual assault.

A former athletic director at Baylor University said the school's regents cast black football players and the football program as the scapegoats in a university-wide rape scandal that spanned decades, according to a motion filed Wednesday in federal court.

The deposition by Ian McCaw, now the AD at Liberty University in Virginia, is part of a lawsuit filed by 10 women who allege that Baylor violated Title IX by denying them educational opportunities after they reported sexual assaults to the school.

The regents sanctioned McCaw in May 2016 during the scandal and placed him on probation. He resigned within days because he "was disgusted at that point with the regents, the racism." He said he "did not want to be part of some Enron cover-up scheme," according to the court filing.

In the deposition, McCaw described an "elaborate plan that essentially scapegoated black football players and the football program for being responsible for what was a decades-long, university-wide sexual assault scandal."

Baylor issued a brief statement Wednesday disputing the contents of the deposition.

"The plaintiffs' counsel have grossly mischaracterized facts to promote a misleading narrative in an effort to deflect attention away from the actual facts of the case pending before the court. Baylor has complied and will continue to comply with all court rules in this case," the statement said. "Much of the testimony of Mr. McCaw that is selectively quoted in the motion is based on speculation, hearsay and even media reports."

The university is asking a judge to prevent McCaw's deposition from being released, in part because it contains confidential student information. Lawyers for the 10 women said excerpts of the deposition could be released without revealing such information. Wednesday's motion contained only quotes from McCaw's deposition.

Russell Wilson, an attorney for one of the former football players accused of sexual assault, said the court should require Baylor to be up front about its actions behind the scenes.

"It's shocking to hear a former athletic director acknowledge that Baylor scapegoated African-American football players in an effort to cover-up broader issues beyond the control of any single player," Wilson said. "Players sacrificed immensely for Baylor University, and the university failed them. We are optimistic that the courts will require the university to provide full disclosure of all of its actions in this regard."

Wilson, a former Dallas prosecutor, represents former Baylor tight end Tre'Von Armstead, who was charged with sexual assault in 2017 — four years after he was accused in the gang-rape of a woman at an off-campus party. The case is pending, and no trial date has been set.

A lawsuit brought against Baylor by another woman has alleged that as many as 31 Baylor football players committed at least 52 acts of rape from 2011 to 2014. School officials said in 2016 they were aware of 17 women who reported sexual or domestic assaults involving 19 players.

Each of the women who filed suit alleges she reported her assault to Baylor but received an inadequate response, from a lecture on the hazards of drinking alcohol to outright discouragement from filing a report.

An internal investigation into the scandal ended when school president Ken Starr and football coach Art Briles were fired in May 2016.

Briles ' attorney Ernest Cannon told The Associated Press that McCaw's testimony "validates what Art has been trying to say from the first day. Baylor had a campus-wide problem. It was not unique to the athletic department. ... Baylor needed two things: A bus and someone to throw under it."

The women's lawyers deposed McCaw on June 19. A deposition is sworn testimony — just as if he had testified in front of a judge and jury.

"It's bad for business. ... It's bad for Baylor's brand, bad for admission, bad for tuition revenue," McCaw said in the deposition about why the board of regents handled the sexual assault allegations the way it did.

"And obviously you know Baylor is heavily reliant — it does not have a large endowment, so it's heavily reliant on tuition revenue. So if there's a dip in admissions, a dip in tuition revenue, that severely affects the university."

During the deposition, McCaw said the attorneys for Pepper Hamilton, the firm that conducted the internal inquiry, told him there would be three possible results: The report would either be a "detailed document," a "summary report," or the firm could "whitewash the whole thing."

In the end, McCaw testified, a trip by several regents and Baylor general counsel Chris Holmes to Pepper Hamilton's Pennsylvania office led to the decision that regent J. Cary Gray would issue a "false" and "misleading finding of fact skewed to make the football program look bad and cover up the campus-wide failings."

Baylor said Wednesday in a second statement that neither Gray nor any of the regents were present when the draft of the findings of fact was written.

According to the court filing, McCaw also said the school's former police chief, Jim Doak, ignored rape reports and discouraged reporting sexual assaults. The former AD told of one recording that "reveals a police dispatcher putting a young woman reporting her rape on hold to order himself a meal," the motion says.

Doak resigned in 2013 and was thrown a retirement party.