DALLAS — Give Hue Jackson this much: At least Art Briles wasn’t his first choice to become offensive coordinator at Grambling State. Jackson, new himself at the program Eddie Robinson made famous, first hired Ted White, who soon left to be the Texans’ quarterbacks coach. Grambling officials apparently needed time to get accustomed to the notion of Briles. A school spokesman told a Louisiana newspaper this week there was no truth to the rumors and, furthermore, he wouldn’t comment on “false hires.”
“False hire” is one way to characterize this, come to think of it.
Since leaving Baylor in 2016 after a series of sexual assaults rocked the football program, but not without a $15.1 million settlement and a carefully-worded letter of recommendation, Briles has covered the map.
Hired and fired within 24 hours at Hamilton of the Canadian Football League.
A year coaching football in Italy.
Two seasons at Mount Vernon (Texas) High School, including a state semifinal appearance.
Before the East Texas gig, Jay Hopson hired Briles as Southern Miss’ offensive coordinator, or at least he thought he did, until the university’s president overruled him.
Hopson’s subsequent letter of protest to his boss covered much of the debate over Briles’ future in coaching.
"I believe he is a man who deserves a second chance. He is a man that seemed sincere [and] humble in his interview [and] personally he committed no crime. He may not have acted in the proper protocol, but that should be my job at Southern Miss! He was interviewing for an assistant position, even though I believe he will be a head coach at a major program in the near future."
Hopson wrote that letter three years ago, and Briles still isn’t the head coach at a major program. The rumor gets around a lot. The “near future” apparently isn’t anytime soon.
The reason Briles hasn’t found another head coaching job at a major program was summed up pretty well in the aftermath of the CFL fiasco. June Jones hired Briles one day in 2017, only to have the Tiger-Cats’ owner, Bob Young, rescind the offer before the day was out after a withering torrent of criticism, including from his own family.
In an interview with 3DownNation, a Canadian website that covers the CFL, Young was asked how a community-minded owner could hire a guy with Briles’ reputation.
“We got confused between the individual and the brand,” Young said, “and we have the responsibility at the end of the day to protect and grow our brand on behalf of all our community and we did not do that.
“I can’t speak to Art Briles at all, but the fact that we thought the community might have forgiven him for the situation at Baylor was just astoundingly naïve on my part.”
Frankly, it’d be hard to gain a better insight into the thinking behind moves made by an athletic organization. Young basically said Briles wasn’t a bad hire until community members told him it was, and his biggest regret was that he had no idea how they felt until they were coming over the walls.
The gulf between an athletic program doing what’s right and what it can tolerate in the name of winning has always been fairly vast. Work around athletics long enough, as I have, and you can become inured to it. Besides, one program’s sins aren’t much different from another.
Baylor, though, was on another level entirely. No need to rehash it all, but it’s enough to know that two players were convicted of rape – one on multiple counts — and another charged.
Briles’ defenders, including the former university president and athletic director, contend the football program was made a scapegoat for a larger problem on campus. Even if that’s true, it hardly excuses the football program’s culpability.
Briles apologized for his part in the scandal in a 2016 interview with ESPN. Asked what he’d say to victims of players he brought on campus, he said, “I’d tell them I’m extremely sorry. It just appalls me that somebody could victimize another human being. And there’s no place in society for it. And I’ve never condoned it and never will and never put up with it.”
Then again, there are mea culpas you make to national media outlets when you’d still like to find a job somewhere, and there are texts to staff members and comments you make to the coach of a female student-athlete after she said she’d been raped by five Baylor football players.
“Those are some bad dudes,” Briles reportedly said as he looked over the list.
“Why was she around those guys?”
He didn’t seem all that appalled then.
As for that letter of “exoneration” Briles holds? The legalese states that he never directly heard from a victim. Didn’t say he didn’t know.
For the record, I have no idea how many schools considered hiring Briles over the last six years, but it’s more than you’d probably think. A source once told me that Texas Tech’s board was divided between Briles and Dana Holgorsen before Kirby Hocutt confounded everyone by hiring Matt Wells.
Having been washed in the blood long ago, I believe in second chances. No better story than a tale of redemption. The problem is they’re rarer than you’d like to think, except in sports, where programs and organizations are always willing to forgive a coach or player no matter how great the sin. If the sinner is good enough, that is.
