You know I was sad that I missed a whole year of writing because I missed being able to share my opinion on this whole Baylor covering up rape and sexual misconduct and a plethora of other things in order to protect their precious football program, and lo and behold, the football gods have seen fit to give me an opportunity to talk about it anyway. Well call it football gods or karma or whatever you want, but here we are again with Baylor.
Now you might remember Baylor. The football team in the Big-12 who somehow managed to work their way to being close to attending a National Championship a few times but never actually made it because the Big-12 doesn't have a Championship game and only conference champions get into the Playoff... wait that's not right? Oh yeah Penn State. Never mind. So in the time before a certain coach named Art Briles got to Baylor there was no hope for football in Waco, Texas. Before him the best record the Bears had ever managed to have was 10-2 during the 1980 season under Grant Teaff. At this point in football history the Southwest Conference was still in tact and this was before the whole SMU thing, the first death penalty which is important later on in this conversation so keep that in mind. Football in Texas was a huge deal and the Southeastern Conference hadn't quite yet gotten hold of the "dominance" that they enjoy. And Teaff enjoyed moderate success at Baylor, two Southwest Conference titles and eight bowl games, and retired from coaching in 1993.
Now, he was the most successful coach at Baylor for a while. And when I say a while I mean over a decade. 14 years to be exact. That isn't to say that Briles didn't struggle. His first two seasons were 4-8, then there was a 7-6 season... But then 2011 happened. 10-3. 6-3 in conference play and a win in the Alamo Bowl. Not too bad. People had started to hope. 2012 was nothing special, 8-5. But then there was 2013 and 2014, 11-2 both seasons. Big time bowls, we're talking Fiesta and Cotton, no wins in either but still a good bowl. Briles' career ended abruptly in 2015 after a 10-3 season when he was fired for, you guessed it, covering up his athletes' misconduct... pardon me the rapes and abuses and bad things that his players did. ESPN and other places want to call it misconduct when it's so much more than that. Call it what it is. It's sexual abuse and domestic violence and general not-niceness that was covered up for years. 2011-2014 to be exact. Those years when he was doing so well at Baylor.
Briles and his staff kept things secret and handled things "internally", code for not at all so their players didn't have to miss playing time, and never reported very important things that happened. They had instances of players such as Sam Ukwuachu who was indicted for sexually assaulting a Baylor female athlete and later was convicted, but he was still participating in team activities. But these weren't isolated incidences. According to ESPN's Outside the Lines, Baylor either "failed to investigate or adequately investigate allegations of sexual violence". Baylor was taking years to investigate complaints of sexual violence made by their students, or in some cases, they weren't investigating them at all. Art Briles was eventually fired, University President Ken Starr resigned, and AD Ian McCaw resigned as well.
I can't accurately cover the extent of what all happened during the course of this whole thing, because there's so much information involved with it. It was and still is a mess. Recently a woman has come forth and alleged that there were 52 separate incidences of sexual assault by 31 players from 2011-2014. Right now those are just allegations, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Baylor is a mess of a program. A mess. Whether or not all those are true, I'd be willing to bet there's some truth in it. According to Sports Illustrated, "The university called Briles's team culture a disciplinary 'black hole' where 'reports of misconduct such as drug use, physical assault domestic violence, brandishing of guns, indecent exposure and academic fraud disappeared.'"
I mean just reading all that is sickening. What is the extent that coaches and athletic departments will go to to make sure they can play football well? Covering up literal crimes? Making sure that people who are broken by this are never talked to or heard? Hiding criminals just so they can play football? What is this? I'm not naive enough to believe that this is something that doesn't go on in other football programs, I'm sure it does, but the bottom line is that what happened at Baylor is now out there for everyone to know. There has to be punishment. I don't care that they fired Briles, who should never coach college football again, and I don't care that they replaced their AD and President. I don't care about any of that. It. Isn't. Enough.
Remember when I said we'd revisit this whole death penalty thing later on? Well here it is. I think Baylor deserves it. I feel badly for the players who had no knowledge of what was happening, and probably lots of the players at Baylor now weren't even near the school when it was happening, but the bottom line is that Baylor doesn't deserve to have a football program. The things that the program did and covered up and lied about are sick. And for that reason why should they play football? Why should they be allowed to do that?
And look at USC. They were stripped of most everything and had rights taken away from them. For paying players. Granted it went deeper than that, but still. The NCAA handed down these harsh punishments for that, practically the death penalty, and we're still not talking about Baylor getting it? SMU got the death penalty in the late 80's for a slush fund and for basically paying players. So what I'm saying is that if the NCAA is going to punish teams for paying players then they should definitely punish teams for having an entire athletic organization that thinks it's okay to cover up sexual assault and violence and other crimes by football players just for the sake of the game. That is not okay. Because what happens is that these players go on to the NFL where it's basically considered a right of passage to beat and/or abuse your spouse or significant other or random women and still be allowed to play. Why is this okay? It isn't. And it shouldn't be rewarded as such.
Baylor needs to be punished for this. They need the death penalty. By not giving them any punishment the NCAA is saying it's okay for this to happen, they can still play football, they can still do what they do and business will continue as normal. But that's not okay. None of it is okay.
Until next time college football fans, and dad.
