bear2be2 said:
Doc Holliday said:
Wichitabear said:
I think it would be better for Coach Briles to go pro. If the player screws up, it's on them! College kids need a little more monitoring.
Agreed for optics. But I hate that this is the way it is. College kids are technically adults and nobody but the student who screws up should be held accountable.
We have long forgot the concept of personal responsibility in this country.
The notion that a college coach bears no responsibility for the type of people he brings onto campus is utterly absurd. And the subscription to such a notion is one the major reasons Art Briles is currently unemployed and potentially unemployable.
When dealing with 100-plus 18- to 22-year-old men, you're going to have some disciplinary issues to deal with. That's a given. The problem with Briles is he recruited a higher-than-normal number of known character risks with disciplinary issues in their past. It was beyond obvious watching the way our program was run under Briles that he valued one thing in his players: talent. And he would make sacrifices most other coaches wouldn't to acquire it.
The exact same thing could actually be said for a majority of schools, Oklahoma being at the top of that list in our own conference. If Briles/Bennett hadn't taken some of those kids, you can bet they'd have been in Norman or Austin or Stillwater or College Station. And they'd have gotten in trouble in these places, but you would have never seen it blow up on them.
The media that cover these teams are bought and paid for just like they are in a high number of other college towns. The sins of these schools and their players are whitewashed on a continual basis. Baylor doesn't have the power to manipulate facts like these programs. If you want to do the research, go back and examine how many crimes were committed by the athletes in programs in Norman and Austin and how quickly they were swept away or how little coverage they got.
I'm not saying Baylor/Waco should engage in that kind of overwhelming conspiratorial BS, but it happens and is happening right now in Austin and Norman for sure. Briles earned much of what he got, but let us not act like his actions are different from many, many other coaches out there.
It's no surprise that Baylor "SOMEHOW" got caught up in this PC, METOO era social-justice-warrior sea change. It had as much to with the program's sudden rise to contender as it did with real mistakes that were made.