Why are some people trying to hire Briles after scandal?
Grambling State played Langston in a football game at Taft Stadium in 1997. It was a big deal. About 20,000 fans showed up at the ancient coliseum, which seated about 12,000.
We knew it would be a big deal. Eddie Robinson, 78 years young, still was coaching Grambling. Turns out, that would be his final season on the Tiger sideline, after 56 seasons.
In the days leading up to the game, I went down to Grambling, Louisiana, a hamlet no bigger than Langston, to interview the man who had coached Buck Buchanan, Willie Brown, Charlie Joiner, Willie Davis and Doug Williams. Robinson had turned Grambling into a household gridiron name.
Downtown Grambling then was no more than a block long, with few commercial enterprises. But at a spirit shop, I found a sharp Grambling sweater. Bought it. Wore it. Wear it still.
In fact, I wore it last week, and Sunday night, I pulled it out of the dryer, and a thought hit me. Can I still wear this? Should I still wear this?
The answers were yes and yes. But I at least had to think about it.
And now you know why Art Briles no longer is the Grambling offensive coordinator. He lasted four days on the job before resigning.
You wonder what took so long. Briles is a college football pariah. The man without a country.
He coached Baylor football to great heights. Sparkling McLane Stadium, the recruiting renaissance, the Bears’ status as the most successful college football program in Texas — Briles is the No. 1 reason why.
But now Briles is unhireable for his role in the coverup of multiple sexual assaults by Baylor football players. Baylor fired Briles in May 2016, and he’s been a wanderer ever since.
Hiring Briles makes people rethink their loyalties. Right or wrong, Briles gives most people an icky feeling. Grambling alums, including the revered Williams, questioned the hire.
“I’m not a fan at all,” Williams told the Washington Post. “I’m very, very disappointed in Grambling, I really am. They knew where I stood, but they
did it anyway, and if that’s what they want to do, that’s fine. I’m out.”
This never was going to have any other ending. Makes you wonder what Grambling coach Hue Jackson was thinking.
Especially since Jackson just a few weeks ago decried the lack of opportunity for minority coaches, in the wake of Brian Flores’ lawsuit against the National Football League. Then Jackson, head coach at the most acclaimed football program among Historically Black Colleges and Universities, hired not just a white coach, but a scandal-ridden coach.
It’s not going to work out anywhere in college football for Briles. He’s 66 years old, and he wears the scarlet letter of shame.
He was born too late. Thirty years ago, Briles would have kept his job. Fifteen years ago, Briles would have been scooped up by another aspiring Baylor. But not today.
Coaches can come back from losing and do. Coaches can come back from cheating and do. Coaches can come back from personal scandal and do. But sexual assault awareness is soaring. It’s not 1642 anymore or even 2002.
The Canadian Football League’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats hired Briles in 2017 but rescinded the offer after a few hours, due to public outcry. Then-Southern Mississippi coach Jay Hopson interviewed Briles for offensive coordinator in 2019 but was prevented from hiring Briles, due to public backlash. Now Grambling.
In between, Briles coached in the Italian Football League and at Texas’ Mount Vernon High School.
Seems impossible to imagine Briles ever being employed again on a college campus.
Briles is the face of the Baylor scandal, though president Ken Starr and athletic director Ian McCaw lost their jobs, too. McCaw has declared that Baylor football was made a scapegoat for a campus-wide culture that predates Briles.
I don’t know what’s been going on in Waco. Baylor was a messed-up place long before Briles landed on the Brazos. Dave Bliss, anyone?
But I know this. Briles was the face of the scandal because he was the face of Baylor. He was paid exorbitant amounts of money and was given exorbitant amounts of power to operate Baylor football. The gig is great when you’re beating the Sooners and Longhorns. But it comes with great responsibility, too.
That’s why I’m more lenient about Briles’ lieutenants, notably son-in-law Jeff Lebby, OU’s new offensive coordinator. Lebby — and Briles’ son, Kendall, now the offensive coordinator at Arkansas — were Baylor coaches when the scandal broke.
They were rightfully shamed, too, and their careers were sidetracked. But they weren’t in charge. A second chance seems reasonable.
There appears no second chance for Art Briles, though he clearly, maybe even desperately, wants one. The line is not long to be offensive coordinator at Southern Miss or Grambling.
I don’t know what is driving Briles. Does he need a football fix that high schools or internationals can’t meet?
Does he seek absolution, to show that he’s a changed man?
Does he believe he did nothing wrong and desires a platform to prove it? I mean, the disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo is running television ads in New York, “recasting himself as the victim of his sexual harassment scandal,” according to the New York Times.
I don’t know. I don’t know if Briles knows. I don’t know what makes Briles tick.
I know he’s ultra-competitive and was very good at his job.
I know some of his family history, which includes tragedy — his parents were killed in a 1976 car crash, driving to one of Briles’ games while he was playing for the University of Houston.
I know he wants back in college football. And I know that people want no part of Briles at the school whose colors they wear.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.