Smith: Briles, Baylor abandon moral high ground.
Ask Baylor to open up McLane Stadium, and Texas’ oldest college will proudly show off its $266 million state-of-theart football centerpiece, which cozily rests along the Brazos River.
Ask Art Briles to do or say anything for his beloved Bears, and one of the game’s most revered coaches will preach and convert like only a true believer can.
But question how a private school with prized Baptist ties can allow Sam Ukwuachu to walk through its prestigious doors, be charged with sexual assault against one of its female soccer players and still be associated with the No. 4-ranked team in the country?
Big Baylor cowers and hides. Aw-shucks Briles becomes deaf and dumb. And those gleaming new athletic facilities that are the best thing to happen to quiet, little Waco instantly become tarnished and worthless.
It costs $56,776 to annually attend Baylor, a nationally ranked research institution that touts its SAT and ACT scores like unanimous Big 12 titles.
Even an idiot could instantly realize that Baylor, Briles and everyone from president/chancellor Ken Starr and associate dean Bethany McCraw to Bears defensive coordinator Phil Bennett look inept, inane and bad-Texas backwoods after Ukwuachu was convicted Thursday of second-degree assault.
The former Pearland High School star, who faced up to 20 years in prison, was sentenced Friday to felony probation for 10 years, 180 days in jail and 400 hours of community service.
His early life has been wasted. Jane Doe’s will never be the same.
Starr spent years investigating a sitting U.S. president during the 1990s. But it must have been a little too much trouble for Starr, who has argued 36 cases before the Supreme Court, to discover anything real about Ukwuachu’s disturbing past or to fully explore Doe’s claims.
Anything goes
Briles knows more about Baylor football than anyone. But when asked Friday just what and when he knew about Ukwuachu’s horrific acts, the golden key that turns the Bears’ $266 million machine was a little too busy for anything but the game itself.
“I appreciate y’alls interest and concern, but we’re getting ready for SMU,” said Briles, who acknowledged the events surrounding Baylor’s banished defensive lineman were “unfortunate.” Sic ’em? Sick of them. “In a world where faith is often the casualty of a serious pursuit of academic achievement, Baylor is a special place.”
That’s Waco’s crown jewel, loving itself on its website.
Replace “academic” with athletic, remove “special,” and that’s what Baylor has become.
The Bears are no different than every other football-obsessed, moralscaving athletic program in the country. Briles is Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher, who has lived with crime after numbing crime, all in the name of a glorious national championship.
God, they want to win. And, by God, they’ll stomach anything to do it.
The sickest part about Baylor’s two-year backing of Ukwuachu was the Bears didn’t need him. Baylor’s defense is stronger than it has been in years, buoyed by nine returning starters and already boasting an elite line. The Bears are coming off back-to-back Big 12 titles and rival TCU as the best football school in the state this fall.
This wasn’t some Division III startup blatantly ignoring time-consuming background checks just to pick up an opening-week victory.
This is a major national program — one that hired a public-relations firm nine months ago to aggressively campaign for a College Football Playoff spot — sacrificing everything it’s supposed to believe in for another weapon in the gazillion-dollar arms race that never ends.
You want to be just like the big, bad kids, Baylor?
Congratulations. Now, you are.
More than an issue
You sided with the 6-5, 245-pound Ukwuachu. You ignored and blackballed Jane Doe, who was turned into just another of the one-in-five females who are victims of sexual assault on a college campus, and has now been forced to transfer to another school.
The Bears had the stupidity to say Ukwuachu, 22, had “some issues,” then covered up his crime for a year in the macho game of next man up.
Issues? These aren’t issues. These are horrible things that a lost, sick person does to another human being: “He was using all of his strength to pull up my dress and do stuff to me,” said Doe, whose real name was concealed, according to testimony obtained by Texas Monthly. “He had me on my stomach on the bed, and he was on top of me.”
Then Ukwuachu raped her, Doe said.
Briles is married with three children. What if that happened to his wife? His daughters? Would Briles have stood behind Ukwuachu for almost two years?
God, no.