Mothra said:
Pecos 45 said:
This:
That success is being revealed for what it was......great for a downtrodden program that is barely over .500 lifetime but built upon a foundation of questionable characters, unfaithful coaches and amiable alumni thirsty for ANYTHING to crow about even if it meant monumental collapses in our bowl games. Paper Lions!
Because less than 1% of the posters here on this bulletin board have ever competed at this level and do not understand what goes into Championship Football, I go easy on you because you are all my Baylor Brothers. Whether you like it or not.
I don't always agree with everything Thee posts, but I agree with this, particularly his last paragraph. If you have never played, nor coached, at the D-1 level you have absolutely no idea what goes in inside the huddle or the locker room. (It's not just Xs and Os.)
But I am conflicted, because I absolutely LOVED to see our Bears whip OU and UT two consecutive seasons, at home and away, under Briles. I was in the stadium at Austin the night that RGIII and the team pulled off a road win on the same night that UT was retiring Colt McCoy's jersey.
Did I make a deal with the devil? Or was I just caught up in the winning football fever, so much so that I overlooked some real problems beneath the surface? (Much like they do at Ole Miss.)
I have not yet reached what they call "closure," because I loved it when we were winning.
Thee believes a lie. Anyone close to the program during Briles years knows the vast majority of our student athletes were good, upstanding people. Unfortunately, Briles allowed in a small handful of questionable characters that sullied the whole lot. But it doesn't mean our success was built on a lie or deception.
Briles problem is not that he was a bad person. It's that he was undisciplined and failed to run a tight ship. It was mere negligence, not intentional conduct.
I don't believe a lie. I've just accepted reality and moved on. I never clung to the robe like you. It is only football. A game. I'm trying to help you and your ilk move on also.
The fact that the majority of student-athletes are good upstanding people is NOT a Baylor exclusive. We have not, nor never will, corner the market in fine, upstanding and pure as the driven snow players. We should however, hold Baylor student-athletes to a higher standard and I suspect based on the obvious that we watched unfold over a number of years, that we moved away from this. Quite severely. A small handful can erase wins, magnify the horrible and taint accomplishments just like a poisoned well. It just takes a little bit of bad to ruin the entire lifeblood of a program.
Perhaps most glaring and depressing is that anyone who has played the game at a high level understands the risk-reward and knows that you have to "manage" this assembled and custom-built machine even more closely as you pull in these various elements.
I never said it was intentional. I've contended it was reckless, self-serving and way outside the Baylor lines.
You could see it coming and myself and a few others posted warning signs a few years ago. We were not popular here, on BFs or in conversations around Waco. We were, unfortunately for ALL of us, correct. We are paying a very steep price. Obviously a number of students are paying an even steeper price. We are left to pick up the pieces of a largely dismantled program and put it back together.
Just like making sausage, most of you don't have the stomach for it nor do you want to take the time to clean up the sausage house floor so as to avoid the outbrake of disease from cutting corners and not disinfecting the entire assembly line. Yes, even the BOR. The problem is that the vast majority of the BOR don't want to be involved in making sausage and rightfully know nothing about doing it correctly.
Life, real life, goes on.
