ASU’s Anderson not Baylor’s pick
Baylor hired Matt Rhule from Temple on Tuesday to be its next football coach, not Arkansas State Coach Blake Anderson, which one report indicated was a possibility late Monday night.
Rhule becomes the fulltime replacement for twotime Big 12 champion Coach Art Briles, who was dismissed after a scathing report over the university’s handling of sexual-assault complaints, including some against football players.
Rhule, who had consecutive 10-victory seasons with the Owls, will be introduced by Baylor on the Waco campus today.
The hiring came hours after a report from footballscoop.com, a website that tracks coaching news, said Anderson met with Baylor on Monday and was “negotiating” with the school about its opening. Athletic Director Terry Mohajir had said that no representative from Baylor contacted him wishing to speak with Anderson, who did not respond to messages from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette seeking comment.
Anderson told a Jonesboro radio station Tuesday that there was “very, very limited” conversation that occurred “a week ago” with Baylor gauging his interest.
“Conversation of, ‘Would you be interested if we chose to move forward with you?’ ” Anderson told The Drive on KNEA-FM 95.3 on Tuesday afternoon. “And my conversation being from Texas and having played there and all that was, ‘I would have interest, would have questions.’ ”
Anderson, who said he was recruiting in Mississippi on Monday and in Kansas on Tuesday, said he also told Baylor he wouldn’t talk further until after the season.
Since then, Anderson said: “There has been zero conversation. Never a job offer. Never a communication with them. Never an interview with them.”
Anderson grew up in Hubbard, Texas, about 30 miles from Baylor’s campus and started his college career there.
ASU (7-5) will play Central Florida (6-6) in the Cure Bowl on Dec. 17 in Orlando, Fla.
The Bears are 6-6 and headed to the Cactus Bowl despite a six-game skid under former Wake Forest coach Jim Grobe, who had been out of coaching two years when he put his retirement on hold in May to serve as Baylor’s acting head coach this season. Grobe said in September, when the Bears were still undefeated, that he didn’t want to be a candidate for the full-time job.
Rhule, 41, is a former Penn State linebacker who will have a challenge in putting together a coaching staff and a recruiting class for the Bears. With a month-long quiet period in
recruiting starting Monday, Baylor has only one firm verbal commitment.
“I am truly honored and humbled to join the Baylor family,” Rhule said in a statement. “Baylor is a tremendous institution with a history of football success, and I know the passion that so many have for the Bears will help bring the community together to reach even greater heights. I am excited to get started.”
Mack Rhoades, who took over as athletic director in August, said in a statement that he wanted to find “a coach who shared our values, who had demonstrated success, who showed a true commitment to the overall student-athlete” and could lead the Bears to championships.
“We found all of that and more in Matt, and I know that he will be a perfect fit with the Baylor family,” Rhoades said.
Rhule was 28-23 in four seasons at Temple, his only previous head coaching job. The Owls are 10-3 this season and won the American Athletic Conference championship with a victory over Navy last weekend, after going 10-4 in 2015. Rhule last year got a contract extension from Temple through 2021.
Baylor, with a dozen seniors, has about 70 scholarship players this season after half of its highly touted 22-player signing class from last spring backed out of commitments. It also seems unlikely that any of the assistant coaches, all retained from Briles’ staff, will remain.
Briles took Baylor from the bottom of the Big 12 to backto-back conference titles (2013, 2014) and six consecutive bowl games that ended a 16-year postseason drought. Before Briles, the Bears hadn’t had a winning season since before the conference’s inception in 1996, and his tenure on the field included Robert Griffin III winning the school’s only Heisman Trophy in 2011.
Baylor just missed the first four-team College Football Playoff in 2014, the same year a new $264 million campus stadium opened on the banks of the Brazos River.
But the nation’s largest Baptist university was hit by a scandal earlier this year, and an investigation by the Pepper Hamilton law firm determined the school mishandled assault claims for years. The firm’s report in May led to the immediate suspension of Briles, who had eight seasons left on his contract and reached an undisclosed settlement with the school a month later.