Thursday, May 26, Art Briles, head football coach at Baylor University, was suspended with "intent to terminate." For those who do not keep up with college football or watch ESPN regularly, this blip on the bottom of the screen may appear to simply be the result of a series of poor seasons, but that could not be further from the truth.
Art Briles is one of, if not the most, successful coaches in Baylor's history. In the two decades before his now expired tenure, the Baylor Bears posted a 30-94 record, but since 2008 Briles has led the Bears to a 65-37 record which included two BCS Bowl berths and a current preseason top 10 ranking. Briles clearly had success on the field, but he failed egregiously off of it.
Briles was fired due to his failure to report and further investigate numerous issues of sexual assault. Briles was fired because he and those under him cared more about their record on the football field than lives of numerous women. This is despicable.
There is an avalanche of information showing that the program either did not adequately investigate reports of their players sexually assaulting women or did not investigate them at all. Two cases were reported in 2013, and investigations did not start until 2015. In essence, Briles and the football program swept these allegations, including rape, under the rug in order to ensure further growth for their program.
Due process should be applied in all cases and exists for the benefit of both the accused and the alleged victim. In this case, the victims were robbed of their legal right and those accused were made to look more guilty because of the efforts made to hide the accusations. Both avenues, but especially the first, show a heinous disregard for humanity. Personally, I often wind up looking at the world through an idealized lens that shows we put our neighbor first, when in reality we are still stuck in our mercantile past. Money should never take priority over people, but sadly it did at Baylor.
It's ludicrous to imagine having a daughter one day and telling her that a football team's success is more important than her safety. Yet, with the events at Baylor it would be borderline asinine to tell her otherwise. We trust educational institutions to keep those who attend safe, and at the very least do something about it should harm come their way. Briles and Baylor failed to do this, and that failure is inexcusable. The Board of Regents made the right decision in terminating Briles. Hopefully, these events serve as a preemptive warning for other academic institutions that somehow value any of their athletic programs over their students.
