NOT A CHANCE
Art Briles doesn’t deserve another opportunity.
Five years after Art Briles was suspended and subsequently fired as Baylor head football coach, the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions released its findings, determining that he broke no major NCAA rules.
Were that the most important part of the report, Briles would soon be headed back to an NCAA sideline.
But he won’t and he shouldn’t. In investigating Baylor and Briles’ handling of “alleged sexual assault, interpersonal violence and threats of violence,” the committee said, “His incurious attitude toward potential criminal conduct by his student-athletes was deeply troubling to the panel.
“The head coach failed to meet even the most basic expectations of how a person should react to the kind of conduct at issue in this case. Furthermore, as a campus leader, the head coach is held to an even higher standard. He completely failed to meet this standard.”
Sexual assault on college campuses is not a sports issue nor a football issue. Baylor turned it into one with its poor handling of so many cases involving members of its football team.
Briles’ “incurious attitude” was part of a win-at-all-costs attitude.
Playing dumb as he so often did, is as almost certainly as much an act as his playing victim now, after he had to “settle” for only $15 million after being let go.
The closest Briles has come to acknowledging that he might have mishandled situations is a statement from five years ago that included the phrase, “I have certainly made mistakes and, in hindsight, I would have done certain things differently.”
Mac Engel of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram said he received a text message from Briles on Wednesday in which the coach felt hopeful that his ordeal was finally over.
“I’m no doubt, the most scrutinized and investigated college head coach in last 25 years,” Briles said. “NCAA found no wrongdoing or violations for a reason.
“Small window of hope, feels large. Mom (and) Dad smiling today in Heaven.”
Briles still doesn’t get it.
Briles’ lawyer Scott Tompsett released a statement that could just as easily have come straight from a bull’s rear end.
“My client Art Briles has been completely exonerated and cleared of all NCAA violations alleged against him. As the NCAA Committee of Infractions explained, the conduct at issue was pervasive and widespread throughout Baylor campus, and it was condoned or ignored by the highest levels of Baylor’s leadership. The NCAA’s decision today clears the way for Mr. Briles to return to coaching college football.”
Briles, who played at Houston and engineered the program’s turnaround in a five-year stint as its head coach (2003-07), expressed interest in a return to UH when Tom Herman left for Texas in 2016.
UH, said, uh, no.
No school should want Briles, who could not have cared less about alleged victims of sexual assault, as a leader of young men.
A good number of people involved in Baylor’s athletic administration gave the impression that they were most concerned with keeping football players eligible. The cost of winning is not supposed to be traumatized students.
To its credit, Baylor’s new administration has taken significant steps to assure such callous and casual approach to serious allegations are a thing of the past.
Baylor president Linda Livingstone and athletics director Mack Rhoades held a news conference during which they said the school doesn’t dispute any of the facts in the 51-page report and it is unlikely to appeal the sanctions.
Baylor’s rather light penalties, which included a $5,000 fine and a few minor recruiting restrictions, is an indicator that the NCAA is limited in situations such as this. Again, this is not a football issue.
The panel concluded that the “widespread institutional failings,” at Baylor weren’t about athletics, because the NCAA’s monstrous Division I operations manual doesn’t address what was going on at Baylor.
Thus, Briles and his supporters (yes, amazingly, he has some) can claim he didn’t break any NCAA rules.
Briles is a heck of a football coach, but his responsibility to his players and the university at-large is not limited to what happens between the white lines.
To be willfully blind toward questionable and often criminal behavior of his players might not constitute an NCAA violation, but it is a violation of morality and human decency.
To seemingly still not give a darn, as is indicated by his celebratory mood after this report, is incredible.
Not everyone deserves a second chance.
This isn’t about football.