BUATX2000 said:
PartyBear said:
Robert Wilson said:
The fundamental issue is that being good in football just isn't that important to Baylor. We shall see how that works out.
That is a fundamental issue created entirely on this board. Dont listen to the loudest voices here.
I think we can objectively say that given the aggregate numbers related to on the field performance, Baylor cares about football about as much as half the teams out there with an all-time winning % of 51%
Generally speaking, teams that are around the all time .500 mark are considered in the lower tier of programs all time. This winning % puts us in the #70-80 range out of an active ~130 teams.
Even over the last 15 years, which is absolutely the best run in Baylors football history, we are only slightly better with a winning % of 58%, but trending down under Aranda. We were 61% winners under Briles and Rhule. Aranda's all time winning % is 44.6%, well below the average and almost 15% worse than the previous 2 coaches.
Baylor probably does care about football but resources, instate relevance and bias as well as a series of colossal missteps by an administration chronically out of tune with the state and trajectory of the world around them have doomed the program to a longstanding level of mediocrity with some pockets of abject failure and a few bright spots along the way, mostly in the modern era.
College football is changing more quickly than the folks in Pat Neff seem to realize. Their answer to NIL was to go before Congress to try to kill it rather than adapt. I fear that they have shown a tendency to be caught flat footed on most issues. They were slow to engage in the facilities race in the 1990s and 2000s, they missed the boat on NIL and the Portal and are now playing catch up, and they will probably get left out in the cold when college football consolidates around a new and more stable format in the not too distant future.
I've seen enough examples of failure to assess, adapt and overcome to recognize that pattern. I see it here clear as day. We need changes from the top down if we are going to compete in this new landscape. Otherwise, let's just stop claiming to care about football.
If anything, I think you're being generous.
In the post-Teaff era, which now covers parts of 4 decades, Baylor football is 170-206, winning at a 45% rate. If you back out us catching lightning in a bottle with Briles/Griffin, Baylor football is 105-169 throughout that period. That's a winning about 38% of your games. Abysmal.
The only other post-Teaff coaches to have a winning record were Reedy (by 1 game coasting off Teaff) and Grobe in the Briles hangover year.
All this, despite Baylor's great location for football recruiting, Baylor's solid academic reputation, and enough BMDs to step up when needed.
I agree with you completely on the series of missteps. We are always behind. Then we inevitably show up to the party late, which costs us dearly each time. That ignores how badly we botched the Briles mess. First, we didn't have the people/infrastructure in place to support big time football. Then, we reacted to a media storm by publicly acting out our preexisting internal divisions/strife rather than just handling the issue. And we ultimately chose to sacrifice football to try and mitigate the stink for the rest of the university or the BOR itself. If that same #metoo attack had happened at OU, for example, or any SEC school, there's no way it goes down like it did here.
When I say football isn't that important to Baylor, I don't mean that Baylor doesn't care about it at all. Some people care a lot. Lots of people care some. I just mean that Baylor, as an institution, has repeatedly shown that football is not enough of a priority to get things right.
And ... my investment of time and dollars into something that (i) I have no control over and (ii) other people can completely screw up based on just whim or bad luck, is going to continue to decrease.