The Sun Herald broke the story last week that former Baylor head football coach, Art Briles, had interviewed and was being considered for the offensive coordinator position at Southern Miss. Briles was fired at Baylor after many allegations that sexual assault complaints reported against players in his program went uninvestigated.
The weird hushed culture that protects college athletic coaches is something that has to end, and keeping Briles from ever coaching college football again is a place to start. Too many college football coaches have been ousted in recent years for having knowledge of wrongdoing by members of their programs, whether sexual or not. Most recently Urban Meyer chose to retire after it was made public that he had knowledge of one of his assistant coaches committing spousal abuse.
Southern Miss received a large amount of backlash for considering Briles for a coaching position, which led to the president of the university eventually releasing a statement saying that he was no longer being considered. Some thought that he should be given a second chance to coach and used former Ole Miss head coach as an example of a coach that had been given a similar second chance.
I think it is important to note that Freeze was fired after a review of his phone records showed that he had contacted an escort service, while Briles had continuously ignored a pattern of alleged sexual misconduct of his players towards women. It is also important to note that the athletics director at Liberty University, where Freeze is currently head football coach, is the same athletic director that was at Baylor when Briles was coaching there. He was forced to resign as well when the allegations came against the football team.
The man that gave Hugh Freeze his "second chance" is the same man that employed Briles at Baylor, so it doesn't make sense to use Hugh's shot at redemption as a reason that Briles should be given one. Art Briles should be kept away from college athletics for as long as possible, and Southern Miss was right to end his consideration.
