Chik Fil A requires their owners/operators to have a clean background with no controversy. So yeah, he actually wouldnt get approved for one.
He took the hush money and the fall. He couldâve fought it in the courts, refused the hush money, etc. He did none of that. If heâs clean he got paid very well to look dirty. If heâs dirty then he got well paid to go away. Either way these are the consequences of the choices.
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Again Tom, not convicted, not a criminal, what is even ironic, Briles has higher standards than most. Baylor was paying him big bucks and they wanted to win, so you recruit the best you can. Baylor finally won some games and even a bowl game and may have looked the other way. I am sure Briles regrets not watching the partying closer, but sometimes we all get caught up in winning. I am not condoning the players, but sometimes a woman will sleep with you for a drink. The whole thing is sad, bottom line is he should be able to work.
Sucks Baylor got to move on easily but Briles still canât
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Whatâs the old sayingâŠâyou run with outlaws, you die with outlawsâ
I donât think heâs an outlaw but he sure paid the price for looking the other way
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Dude got a $10,000,000 payout.
I once told him if he didnât coach, he could offer his services as a scout for skills. His ability to peg, QB, RB and WRâs is uncanny. He laughed thinking âthereâs no way I wonât be coachingâ
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Agree
He showed he can still coach, took a small 3A East Texas HS in Mount Vernon to the playoffs.
I am still mad about the way Briles left us and I rooted for Baylor to lose every game he coached there, but looking at the âfactsâ objectively, this looks to me like the most successful smearing of a scapegoat in history. This was orchestrated by Ken Starr who has proved that once he decides to take someone down, he can do it. He and the BOR head hired a top-notch Madison Ave. PR firm before they even got around to hiring lawyers to deal with the fact that Baylor, under Starrâs watch, did not do even the basics to comply with the Clary Act, Title IX and numerous federal requirements. They ignored that sexual assaults were occurring. Patty Crawford (I think thatâs the name of the campus compliance person) verified that only 5% had to do with athletics (so football was a subset of that). The PR spin that the football team was responsible for numerous rapes has been accepted by true by seemingly everyone. Why?
Starr and his cohorts brought in Pepper Hamilton to cover up for him and put what they could on an available scapegoat - Briles served the purpose. I keep seeing statements like - he ignored rapes etc, but I have not seen any proof by anyone. In fact, a couple of years have past and some of the accusations have made it to court. The charges against Oakman went to trial. The majority white jury took 30 minutes to find him ânot guiltyâ on a case that was so weak that there were lawyer discussions about âprosecutorial misconductâ for bringing the case to trial.
Okuwachu (sp?) was found guilty and give probation. He appealed and conviction was reversed, then reinstated, then reversed again, then reinstated again. First reversal was because the Judge let in an outcry text from the victim, but refused to admit the text from hours earlier where she describe the sex act she intended to perform with the guy. How can you let in one without the other? Next time it was reversed because the prosecution argued that cell phone records they surprised the defense team with proved that the alibi witness was lying. After the trial, it was learned that the cell phone records were on âmean timeâ not central time, so the times shown to the jury were 7 or 8 hours off. So they used false evidence/argument to call the alibi witness a liar. Last I checked, appeals were still ongoing.
I have printed out the Pepper Hamilton report and read it a few times. It is laughable. It has nothing coming close to proof of anything it allegedly included in âfindingsâ. For example, it say the culture was that the team believed they were above University rules and had to follow only the coaches rules. Sounds bad. What basis? The only thing cited was that if they missed class, they had to meet the strength coach at 6 am and run. How did that undercut University rules? The whole report is goofy and has no real facts in it.
I am open to looking at facts and evidence ,but I admit that I donât automatically believe media sources who donât back up what they say with something concrete. Also, I donât believe that just because a lawyer puts âfactsâ in his pleadings asking for $10 million in damages that there is anything to back it up. (Media always reports that âlegal pleadings assertâŠâ that there were dozens of rapes during Brilesâ watch.) Is it wrong to ask for evidence? If there is some reasonably strong evidence out there that says Briles is responsible for something bad, I wonât hesitate for a second to believe it. I have followed this deal pretty closely from the start. Why do we have âspinâ but no facts?
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Believe what you want. It was bad. How any of those guys are coaching is beyond me.
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Briles filed a lawsuit against the school before he was awarded the bribe money.
Briles broke no laws and I agree with Red, he probably deserved another chance.
Didnât Kobe Bryant get another chance after settling out of court with a woman who accused him of raping her?
Bryant later apologized to the woman and said he thought it was consensual and the big payoff happened.
Numerous other examples of athletes and coaches who have gotten second and third chances.
Regardless, all that money he has probably lightens the pain.
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Heâs not banned and heâs getting chances. The market isnât interested. Nobody is doing him wrong - his reputation is doing that.
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Baylor moved on easily? What are you talking about? Do you not remember that fine? It was $5,000.00. They will never recover 
Briles is used as the universityâs scapegoat BUT he got a nice check for it.
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Everyone got to move on, Baylor, Ad, asst. Coaches, except Briles⊠Which is exactly what he was paid for.
My guess is he miscalculated or was led (not incorrectly) to believe. Take the money and the fall, go to the hinterlands make no noise, and someone will quietly hire you on a rehab tour. Turns out thatâs not the case, heâs still not worth the PR headache for places in a front facing role. And my pure guess is if he had known he would remain radioactive after all these years he probably doesnât take that money and fights it court and maybe burns the whole thing down in the process.
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True, but when your reputation is based on lies and not what actually happened, it makes it tough to see a guy not able to work because of mainly false accusations, what happened to second chances? Is it because it happened at a Baptist University?
But heâs getting his second chance, it just so happens his second chance itâs at Mt. Vernon. Getting a second chance doesnât mean you get to go to your desired spot, desired job or anything like that it means someone, anyone will take a chance on you and let you claw your way back. Heâs asking for a promotion not a second chance at this point.
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This is a big reason for the backlashâŠ
A day after Art Briles dropped his defamation suit against Baylor, it looks like we found out why, and a lesson for us all, at that:
Never put anything damning in writing.
Even a text.
Hard to build a case that someone is spreading vicious lies about you when your purported text messages with Baylor athletic department officials support the narrative of the last 18 months, culminating the most disgraceful period in school history.
Only last week, when news broke of a lawsuit claiming 52 sexual assaults by football players over a four-year span, Brilesâ attorney dismissed allegations that his client knew anything about a âculture of sexual violence.â
Over the next five days, though, something apparently happened to change Brilesâ mind about the lawsuit.
Something like this: In a text to one of his assistants, Briles called a female student athlete "a âfoolâ for reporting a football player to police because heâd brandished a gun at her.
Or this: In another text, he implied that a football player needed no discipline after reportedly exposing himself to a masseuse, insinuating that the woman might be a stripper.
Or this: In still another text, he told then athletic director Ian McCaw that Waco police would keep an incident involving a player âquiet,â a development that McCaw called âgreat.â
Or this: Confronted with a list of five players whoâd reportedly gang-raped a female student athlete, Briles said, âThose are some bad dudes. Why was she around those guys?â
Yeah, sure. Blame the victim. Not the man who brought those âbad dudesâ on campus.
Thursdayâs court filing added another layer to a story that gets worse by the day, even the minute.
An hour or so before the filing became public on Thursday, this is what Iâd written about Briles in a column on his successor, Matt Rhule:
No, we donât know for sure what Briles knew. For that matter, we donât know if the latest allegations are the truth. Or even close to it. A series of events uncovered by a plaintiffâs lawyer isnât exactly the same thing as an independent investigation.
Letâs say for argumentâs sake itâs only half-true. Do 26 rapes sound any less horrific?
And weâre to believe the head coach is clueless?
As it turns out, no, he wasnât. You shouldnât be, either.
If the substance of these texts reveals nothing else, itâs that you should look dubiously upon coaches who claim ignorance about whatâs going on around them. Remember Brilesâ âapologyâ last fall on ESPN? Remember when he said the head coach is usually âthe last to knowâ?
Consider the rest of that statement.
âHead coaches are sometimes protected, in certain instances, from minor issues,â Briles said then. âNow, major issues I was always made aware of.â
A couple dozen or more sexual assaults would certainly be considered âmajor issues.â
Of course he knew what was happening. The case against Briles had looked bad since late summer 2015, after Sam Ukwuachu, a transfer from Boise State, was convicted of raping a Baylor student. Only a year before, another former player, Tevin Elliot, had been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Four women either testified against Elliot or stood ready to do so.
Two rape convictions in two years are terrible enough. Considering the odds in a college town put on the map by its Baptist institution, it seemed reasonable to conclude that maybe these werenât isolated incidents.
And then there was Brilesâ reaction when first asked about Ukwuachuâs conviction.
âUnfortunate,â was the word he used, displaying a stunning lack of shock or horror or shame.
âUnfortunateâ doesnât begin to describe whatâs happened at Baylor and, in particular, to the victims.
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THAT is what reeks about all this. I understand institutional control. But in my understanding Briles was not the only executive-level personnel to be confronted on the matter.
I didnât read the entire case file though. Whereâs the institutional control at the university level on public safety?
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The old DMN article posted by Venum is the sort of âreportingâ that has created such outrage. I was outraged when I read stuff like that. But then things seemed to turn out to be a lot different than what that reporter was attempting to convey.
Lawsuit claimed 52 sexual assaults. That means there are dozens upon dozens of rapists to be prosecuted. I waited to see a string of guilty pleas and severe sentences and a bunch of trials with clear âguiltyâ verdicts. Where are they? (The Tevin Elliott situation is the outlier. Clear criminal. I am told that he never suited up in a single game, but I donât know if that is true or not). Article closes by ridiculing Briles over saying âunfortunateâ when Okwuachu was originally found guilty. Probably Briles was right given the reversals on appeal. Also, seems strange that the jury questioned its own guilty verdict and gave him probation. The reporter lays it on thick . Briles was âdisplaying a stunning lack of shock or horror or shameâ by saying âunfortunateâ.
Allegation of gang rape by 5 players. This has to be the volleyball player. I am still trying to figure this one out. There is verification in the deposition of the volleyball coach who told Briles that one of his volleyball players claimed that she was gang raped. When told of her claim apparently Briles said to the volleyball coach those were âbad dudesâ. Thatâs true. Thatâs where the story stops with the reporter who wrote this story. When you keep reading the deposition, the volleyball coach says that Briles also said that if that happened âitâs criminalâ and they should be prosecuted. He and Briles agreed that the allegation should be reported. The volleyball coach encouraged the young lady to report it to the police so it could be investigated and prosecuted. She declined. The volleyball coach, with Brilesâ agreement, tried to report it to campus Judicial Affairs, but they would not take the report unless it came from the complaining witness. So she would not make a report to the cops and would not file a report with campus Judicial Affairs, but now claims that the coaches who advocated that she report it as a crime âshould have done somethingâ. Why does the reporting include the âbad dudesâ comment but fail to talk about the remainder of the sworn testimony that says that Briles encouraged the reporting of the incident to the authorities?
Briles talking to police to keep and incident âquietâ. Thatâs my favorite part of the Pepper Hamilton report. It concludes that coaches contacted police to ask that they not vigorously investigate and prosecute. In the back of the report, they set out the specific evidence that led to their conclusion that coaches improperly contacted police. Only one incident was identified. It involved a 19 year old walk-on who got a minor in possession of alcohol charge for having a beer. If guilty, the kid would be kicked off the team and at risk for being kicked out of school. A coach tried to talk the police out of doing that to the kid. I donât see that as a huge âcover upâ that people make it out to be.
Like I said originally, there may be a whole lot of damning stuff out there that I am not seeing. I read what I can in articles and they make a lot of conclusory statements and provide little or nothing to back it up. I have gone to the extent of reading Pepper Hamilton report, and reading a couple of depositions. I have talked to a lawyer or two who are involved in the case on behalf of some peripheral folks. Maybe they are hiding the good stuff from me since they are involved in defending some of the people impacted by all of this. I understand that they are advocating for one side.
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