The Biggest Failure At Baylor Is Obvious, The Second-Biggest Is Not

There’s a lot going on with Baylor right now, and I’m not going to pretend like I’m aware of all of it. Ultimately nothing has happened to anyone in terms of losing jobs and nothing is going to happen because we value success in college athletics as a whole more than we value the lives of human beings. That’s not a Baylor problem. That’s a “where we’re at in society” problem.

So the first failure at Baylor is pretty obvious. Humans were (allegedly) assaulted and women were (apparently) assaulted and raped. Whether that turns out to be true across the board (and it already is in some instances), it will remain the No. 1 failure. Because either there’s a rape culture that’s been at least in some way permitted or a lot of people are lying about rape and assault.

Either way, that’s a massive problem.

The second-biggest problem right now in Waco is one that Oklahoma State, and presumably every other large organization (especially those that are public) has dealt with. That is, how do you handle yourself when things come into the light that you were either unaware of or knew about and didn’t want to come into the light.

Baylor has not acquitted itself well.[1. As a side note, all of this sort of makes sense when you dovetail it with Baylor’s football success, right? Baylor is now a top 10 team every year. And it happened in the span of like six years. So either Art Briles is the best recruiter/coach in the history of college football or, well …]

From releasing a letter as the Super Bowl started to a disturbing silence in the last few months from its president to wondering how deep this really runs to Art Briles’ language in this statement.

” … my reaction is just sadness and sorrow because it’s certainly something you never want to be associated with,” Art Briles said. “You’d like to think you’re immune to it, but I’m not sure anybody is. So as those things come up and come around, you deal with them to the best that you’re capable of doing. Then, you try to educate and make aware to where hopefully it never happens again.”

That is, um, not what I want to hear from the most important public figure in my city. “You’d like to think you’re immune to it”? Aw shucks, we just win ballgames and our guys get a little crazy sometimes but nothing 11 wins can’t solve.

There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of genuine remorse for what has happened. And the the thing I keep hearing is we need to let this third-party investigation play out see if these guys are actually guilty according to the law.

OK.

First, two guys have already been found guilty and are in prison. Second, if another two-year-old accuses my two-year-old of punching him or her in the face but nobody knows what actually happened, I don’t say, “well, let’s let this play out in kid court before we discuss.” No! I say, “wow, I am really sorry this incident took place. I promise I’ll get to the bottom of this. This is incredibly important to me, and I don’t want to ever happen again.”

If your argument is that Baylor President Ken Starr is doing that here, I just don’t see it. There’s no “I take responsibility for this as president. I am very sorry.” It’s just, “well, we’re saddened.” Of course you are! All humans are. Get out in front of it! Say anything meaningful! Address something.

Which leads us back to Oklahoma State.

I’m not naive enough to think OSU is free of its own issues, even issues like this. They’re everywhere. We live in an irreconcilable world that is a broken and (at times) a despicable place to live.

The thing I was reminded of on Thursday though[1. By Pokelahoma. Yay Pokelahoma!] is that OSU has been out in front of pretty much every scandal that has come its way. Mike Gundy with Tyreek Hill was the latest example of that. But it goes deeper than that.

When the Sports Illustrated story was released a few years ago, Mike Holder held a press conference before the story even came out.

“We take this personally,” Holder said. “We’re all committed to playing by the rules, doing things the right way here. For people to say that’s not what’s happening here is very disturbing. Our goal is to separate fact from fiction, and then we can start dealing with it.”

He apologized to other Big 12 ADs as well.

“My message was, you’re not going to like what you hear,” he said. “It’s going to be a rough few days, but our hope is you may not be proud of what’s been said about you, but we hope to make you proud about the way we dealt with it and how we stood up, didn’t make any excuses.”

Yes! That’s what I want to hear.

Think about how much more serious this story is than the SI one though. Some guys maybe got $500 handshakes (they didn’t) vs. some guys definitely raped some girls and others might have too. And yet Holder’s response to that was far more serious than anything I’ve seen from Baylor (until today … more on that in a second).

It’s going to be fascinating to see how the next 2-4 months play out as Baylor releases its internal investigation. I’m not convinced anything is going to happen to anyone’s job, and I’m also not totally convinced that it should. Systems will be put in place to ensure the safety of kids at Baylor and there will be a lot of lawyer-y speak about the future.

But for the first time, on Thursday athletic director Ian McCaw started down the path of responsibility (this is the only thing I’ve seen like this from anyone in a big boy position at BU). “We are going to learn a lot even though it could be painful,” said McCaw. “We need to do better and we will do better.”

Good. Finally something to hold on to.