The backlash escalated Friday, faster than anyone in Waco anticipated. From national sites to the Dallas Morning News, Art Briles was no longer one of college football’s best. He was a coach whose future was being questioned.
Baylor has already reacted, releasing a compliance form that ultimately doesn’t mean much. But the school won’t stop there. Baylor will try to limit the damage to Briles, doing everything it can to find a way out, because the school wants to give Briles a second chance.
For the same reason Briles gave Sam Ukwuachu two of them.
A wild card might be a potential lawsuit by the victim. Another is Ken Starr.
Maureen Dowd once called the Baylor president “the avenging, evangelical prosecutor,” and the Clintons will confirm. Starr is known to take investigations seriously.
Starr reads the Bible every morning. And if the Good Book doesn’t specifically address transfer students with bad intentions, it does say a few things about morality. Starr will discover he doesn’t like everything about his football program.
Briles understands the dynamic. He wrote this in his book published last year, “Beating Goliath … My Story of Football and Faith:”
“Remember, this is a school that takes its Christian mission seriously. Baylor had been through the wringer with the men’s basketball program in the early 2000s, so any hint of problems is enough to raise a lot of eyebrows.”
What has happened is more than a hint of problems. And at the center of it, whether acting as if he had no idea about Ukwuachu’s background, or quietly keeping Ukwuachu around after he was charged with sexual assault, is Briles.
Pleading ignorance doesn’t fit with a coach known for doing his homework. His book also went into detail about that.
Chapter 8 was about finding an overlooked Wes Welker, and Chapter 17 described how Briles saw something in Robert Griffin III when no one else did. Briles’ ability to unearth what others miss is one of his core strengths as a coach.
But when it came to Ukwuachu? Texas Monthly found out more than Briles says he did.
Coaches know who to call to get information, from staff to friends. Besides, the Boise State coach at the time had no reason not to go off-the-record to explain why he kicked Ukwuachu off his team.
“I thoroughly apprised Coach Briles,” Chris Petersen said Friday in a statement, and the word “thoroughly” was intentionally used.
So was Briles lying Friday when he said he didn’t know? Or, after working so hard to become Goliath himself, consumed with winning more than anything else, had he stopped listening to what he didn’t want to hear?
A losing coach would have to answer those questions. Maybe a winning one would, too, at some schools. But this is Briles who, as a Houston Chronicle columnist wrote last week, is “the golden key that turns the Bears’ $266 million machine.”
Most at Baylor will want to protect the golden key. School officials might scold the program publicly, because the internal investigation deserves that. They might think a scapegoat would come in handy about now. And they might opt for the usual corporate remedy, announcing new guidelines going forward.
Briles would then get what he’s always believed in, the second chance. He addressed that in his book, too, in a chapter called “Kid-Saving Business.”
The kids he wanted to save weren’t 18-year-old freshmen soccer players. Briles wrote:
“I know other schools aren’t necessarily that way. I’ve read plenty of reports about how some colleges run kids off if they have problems. We’ve obviously had some tough choices to make as well. I just know that the first effort is to make sure we help people as much as possible. We’re going to set the standard for how we treat our players.”
Briles has set a standard, all right. But Baylor has had such success in this era — led by its coach — that kid-saving has turned into Briles-saving.
So Baylor will do what it can do hold on to him, and it’s the same reason Briles took on a troubled player and then held on to him after the player was charged with sexual assault. This is what you do when football comes first.
http://www.expressnews.com/sports/c.../Saving-Briles-Next-up-for-Baylor-6460052.php
Baylor has already reacted, releasing a compliance form that ultimately doesn’t mean much. But the school won’t stop there. Baylor will try to limit the damage to Briles, doing everything it can to find a way out, because the school wants to give Briles a second chance.
For the same reason Briles gave Sam Ukwuachu two of them.
A wild card might be a potential lawsuit by the victim. Another is Ken Starr.
Maureen Dowd once called the Baylor president “the avenging, evangelical prosecutor,” and the Clintons will confirm. Starr is known to take investigations seriously.
Starr reads the Bible every morning. And if the Good Book doesn’t specifically address transfer students with bad intentions, it does say a few things about morality. Starr will discover he doesn’t like everything about his football program.
Briles understands the dynamic. He wrote this in his book published last year, “Beating Goliath … My Story of Football and Faith:”
“Remember, this is a school that takes its Christian mission seriously. Baylor had been through the wringer with the men’s basketball program in the early 2000s, so any hint of problems is enough to raise a lot of eyebrows.”
What has happened is more than a hint of problems. And at the center of it, whether acting as if he had no idea about Ukwuachu’s background, or quietly keeping Ukwuachu around after he was charged with sexual assault, is Briles.
Pleading ignorance doesn’t fit with a coach known for doing his homework. His book also went into detail about that.
Chapter 8 was about finding an overlooked Wes Welker, and Chapter 17 described how Briles saw something in Robert Griffin III when no one else did. Briles’ ability to unearth what others miss is one of his core strengths as a coach.
But when it came to Ukwuachu? Texas Monthly found out more than Briles says he did.
Coaches know who to call to get information, from staff to friends. Besides, the Boise State coach at the time had no reason not to go off-the-record to explain why he kicked Ukwuachu off his team.
“I thoroughly apprised Coach Briles,” Chris Petersen said Friday in a statement, and the word “thoroughly” was intentionally used.
So was Briles lying Friday when he said he didn’t know? Or, after working so hard to become Goliath himself, consumed with winning more than anything else, had he stopped listening to what he didn’t want to hear?
A losing coach would have to answer those questions. Maybe a winning one would, too, at some schools. But this is Briles who, as a Houston Chronicle columnist wrote last week, is “the golden key that turns the Bears’ $266 million machine.”
Most at Baylor will want to protect the golden key. School officials might scold the program publicly, because the internal investigation deserves that. They might think a scapegoat would come in handy about now. And they might opt for the usual corporate remedy, announcing new guidelines going forward.
Briles would then get what he’s always believed in, the second chance. He addressed that in his book, too, in a chapter called “Kid-Saving Business.”
The kids he wanted to save weren’t 18-year-old freshmen soccer players. Briles wrote:
“I know other schools aren’t necessarily that way. I’ve read plenty of reports about how some colleges run kids off if they have problems. We’ve obviously had some tough choices to make as well. I just know that the first effort is to make sure we help people as much as possible. We’re going to set the standard for how we treat our players.”
Briles has set a standard, all right. But Baylor has had such success in this era — led by its coach — that kid-saving has turned into Briles-saving.
So Baylor will do what it can do hold on to him, and it’s the same reason Briles took on a troubled player and then held on to him after the player was charged with sexual assault. This is what you do when football comes first.
http://www.expressnews.com/sports/c.../Saving-Briles-Next-up-for-Baylor-6460052.php
