USA TODAY International Edition
What is coach Hopson thinking in defending Briles?
Art Briles loves the Lord, so all is now forgiven.
So says Southern Mississippi coach Jay Hopson, who took a curious approach to job security by leaping to Briles’ defense after university leaders rejected the former Baylor coach as their new offensive coordinator.
Dozens of women at Baylor were sexually abused by Briles’ players and degraded by his coaching staff. They were treated as if they had no value, their pain and anguish irrelevant, their pleas for compassion and justice ignored.
Yet Hopson seems to think Briles has paid a big enough price. That his threeyear exile from college football is enough penance for such trivial matters as sexual violence and the systemic brutalization of women. Especially when someone is as humble and sincere as Briles was in his interview.
“I believe he is a man who deserves a second chance,” Hopson said in a statement Wednesday. “Personally, he committed no crime. He may not have acted in the proper protocol, but that would be my JOB at Southern Miss. … I believe he is a man who does love the Lord and deserves a second chance.”
I’m not sure where Hopson goes to church, but apparently he’s been absent on the days Matthew 25 was covered. You know, the chapter where Jesus warns his disciples that they’ll be judged by how they treated others.
Hopson must have missed the lessons on Luke 6 and Matthew 7, too, verses that take aim at false prophets and hypocrites.
It wouldn’t matter if Briles had become a monk these past three years. So long as he fails to acknowledge his very central role in fostering the culture that made players see women as disposable, not worthy of being treated with dignity and respect, Briles doesn’t deserve redemption, biblical or otherwise.
And he sure doesn’t deserve any job where he’ll be molding the minds and characters of young men.
“I understand both sides have opinions,” Hopson said, “this is just mine.”
It’s a flawed one, and ought to give Southern Miss administrators pause about whether Hopson is the right man for his job, too.
I wonder if Hopson would be such a passionate defender of Briles had it been either of his two daughters who were demeaned like the women at Baylor were. Would he be so willing to forgive? Would he consider the vain spirituality of someone desperate to get back in the game an acceptable trade-off for a high-powered offense?
If not, then why now? The women at Baylor were someone’s daughters, too.
This is at least the third time in the past three years that Briles has been rejected for a job, his wrongdoings at Baylor deemed too toxic to be overlooked. Yet he keeps trying, no doubt counting on the fact that, at some point, people will forget just how horrible what happened at Baylor was.
That can never happen. The damage, and the university’s callous disregard to it, was too great.
Baylor regents told The Wall Street Journal 19 players were accused of sexual assault by 17 women between 2011 and 2016. That includes two players brought to Baylor by Briles despite knowing they’d been dismissed from previous schools for off-the-field incidents.
Even more damning, the regents said Briles knew a female athlete had accused five of his players of gang rape. Yet he did nothing. Said nothing. Reported nothing. In the football offices, the atrocities suffered at the hands of Baylor players were somehow acceptable, collateral damage for a top-five program and shiny new stadium.
To this day, Briles has yet to express anything close to an understanding of what he did wrong or the ramifications of it. The best he’s been able to manage is that he thinks everything could be fixed with “a good cry session, a good talk session and then, hopefully, a hug session.”
That’s not enough. Lord knows, it doesn’t even come close.