Baylor expected to make defensive coordinator Phil Bennett interim coach, per source. Kendall Briles to remain on staff as of now.
— Pat Forde (@YahooForde) May 26, 2016
Baylor will fire head coach Art Briles, as previously reported by ESPN. The university announced on Thursday Briles had been suspended with intent to terminate as part of a larger release detailing a massive restructuring of the school’s leadership. BU commissioned a third-party law firm to investigate the school’s handling of, among other things, many allegations of violence against women by football players. A summary of that report has been released, detailing, among other things, that football coaches failed to report complaints of “misconduct.”…. The school also announced university president Ken Starr will step down to chancellor and athletic director Ian McCaw is “sanctioned” and “on probation.”
This story at first blush seems nothing if not incongruous. Baylor University is a deeply Conservative Southern Baptist institution of higher learning located in the not-at-all-Liberal enclave of Waco, TX. It’s the last place one might assume a sexual abuse scandal involving athletics would exist…yet Baylor is now the poster child for what happens when you allow a football team to own a university.
Time was when Baylor football was the punchline to a long-running joke. Before Art Briles became head coach, the Bears had suffered a dozen consecutive losing seasons…and when Baylor lost, it lost ugly. Briles, who’d experienced tremendous success at Stephenville High School and the University of Houston, brought the same magic to Baylor. Before long, the Bears were no longer a guaranteed “W” for opponents, and in 2011, then-quarterback Robert Griffin III won the school’s first Heisman Trophy.
Success on the football field meant an influx of additional cash and eventually a brand-new state-of-the-art stadium on the banks of the Brazos River. The cry of “Sic ‘em Bears!” was no longer voiced with trepidation, because the Baylor Bears had become a formidable and exciting force to be reckoned with.
And then things began to spin out of control….
Baylor’s positive momentum came to an abrupt and sudden halt with the scandal associated with Sam Ukwuachu. The former Boise State defensive end transferred to Baylor and was charged with sexual assault of a soccer player at the university before ever playing a game for the team. The football program didn’t quickly come forward about the story.
Ukwuachu was eventually found guilty of the charges, but Briles insisted that he never would have accepted the transfer from Boise State if he were aware of the circumstances that led the Broncos to dismiss the defensive end. Chris Petersen and Briles had a back-and-forth shortly thereafter in which Petersen said he “thoroughly apprised Coach Briles of the circumstances,” while Briles insisted he was only told that Ukwuachu was depressed and had some team-related issues.
Over time, success on the football field led to a loosening of the standards the university had previously adhered to. Maintaining the success that became the new and expected normal meant having to occasionally stretch the boundaries that makes Baylor what it is. Sam Ukwuachu was merely the figurative straw that broke the camel’s back.
The NCAA euphemistically refers to problems such as Baylor’s as “lack of institutional control,” which is a ten-dollar phrase meaning “the inmates are running the asylum.” In Baylor’s case, this appears to be an understatement. A January report by ESPN’s Outside the Lines (OTL) program outlined several instances in which the school and its athletic department failed to adequately investigate accusations of sexual assaults alleged to have been committed by Baylor athletes. Another OTL report detailed a pattern of violent behavior by Baylor football players…and the odd and unusual efforts on the part of Waco’s police department to keep allegations from becoming public knowledge.
I’d seen other girls go through it, and nothing ever happened to the football players. It’s mind-boggling to see it continue to happen. I can’t understand why. I think as long as they’re catching footballs and scoring touchdowns, the school won’t do anything.
Turns out this observation was spot on. Baylor wouldn’t and didn’t do anything about the increasingly felonious and violent behavior displayed by some football players. As long as the team was winning, players and coaches were bullet-proof.
The inmates were indeed running the asylum.
Baylor commissioned a law firm to conduct an independent investigations…and the results aren’t pretty. The report represents a significant black mark on the reputation of a school that has traditional held students and staff to high standards of conduct.
The sad thing about this story is that Baylor isn’t the first major university to allow the tail to wag the dog (hello, Florida State). When a football coach makes five to eight times more than the university’s president (exact figures are hard to come by because Baylor’s a private school), you have to know that the priorities of said institution of higher learning are seriously backasswards.
This is what happens when a university sells its soul in order to win football games. Now school president Kenneth Starr (yes, THAT Kenneth Starr) has been demoted to chancellor and football coach Art Briles has been fired.
Is it enough?
ICYMI: #Baylor Fires Football Coach, Promises Sweeping Reforms and Other Personnel Changes https://t.co/LUDJAPHU7S pic.twitter.com/w4phbLZPtg
— Houston Press (@HoustonPress) May 27, 2016
Will the school’s belated actions send the message that Baylor University has standards…and that those standards must and will be adhered to? Will Baylor football continue to be successful without recruiting and enabling miscreants and thugs? Will fans and alumni be able to adapt to the new reality? Will anything really change?
Only time will be able to provide answers to those questions. Those answers will determine whether major college football will return to its rightful place as part of an institution of higher learning…or whether the inmates will continue running the asylums.
Oh…and if you find yourself thinking that this embarrassing episode will scare Baylor into coming clean doing what needs to be done to clean up the mess…well, you sure are some kinda naive, aren’t you?
