OldSchoolBU said:
D. C. Bear said:
OldSchoolBU said:
Art Briles was a helluva of a football coach but he ran one helluva an amateur program off the field. The buck stops with the head guy.
Quit blaming the university and other parties. We might have completely bungled this crisis but we would have no crisis to completely bungle had it not been for the amateurism of how this staff conducted things off the field.
I'm really only writing this post because I know there are probably national media looking at this message board right now and I don't want them to think every single Baylor fan is a win at all costs, Art Briles got screwed nut job like so many on this board portray.
The University did not have drug testing of our athletes. That decision was not made by the football coaches. A coach (allegedly) trying to help player avoid a positive test is on the coaches and the player, but the fact that we didn't even have university-based testing is on the University. I don't care that it wasn't technically required, it was the same attitude that administrators had toward sexual assault: "that kind of thing doesn't happen here."
We had a crisis to handle that was beyond football, and the publicity over wrongdoing in the football program revealed that crisis. Let us not pretend that everything was great except for football. Were it not for what you call the "amateurism of how this staff conducted things off the field" we would still have had a crisis to deal with, it just would not have been dealt with. It would have remained hidden.
Accidental emoticon yet again.
I don't disagree with anything you said. It was amateur hour from the top to the bottom. I'm okay with people coming to that conclusion. I'm not okay with rational people believing that Briles had no responsibility in the matter. Perhaps that amateurism would have been masked with the right values based coach. Maybe Drew is that way, I don't know. Mulkey seems to be rock solid in that area.
Hopefully, the school learned its lessons and has a more accountable culture going forward.
This is where I am as well. I don't have any problem whatsoever with people saying this was a university-wide problem. But to bury your head in the sand and ignore that the football program was a part of that problem -- and likely a large one -- really bothers me.
It's not an either/or situation. It's a both/and situation. And when dealing with cancer, you don't pick the lump you like and argue against all evidence to the contrary that it's not malignant.
I know some would counter with the argument that the regents seem to have done exactly that, and that's probably fair. I, too, am frustrated that that's the one group in this mess that didn't face just accountability. But unlike the football staff, the university administration at least admitted a problem existed and took real, tangible measures to try to fix it.
