Keyser Soze said:
You clearly live inside a bubble - go to Texas Ags - Shaggy anywhere outside and See what they think to get some perspective - they think the absolute worst possible of Briles. Briles is a scapegoat is an absurdly small number of the whole.
I'm not defending or whitewashing Art but that's a pretty low standard for assessing the man's character and actions. It is no trade secret that horn, sooner, frog and aggy wanted Art gone for competition reasons. There has been some strong suggestion that Art's firing came out of the Big 12 office, fueled by Boren, sooner and horn, with the Big Boys swapping a firing of Art for a school dismissal from the league. We'll never know the facts behind this but other schools' opinions of Briles are to be disregarded from the get-go. The opinions of the coaching profession are another thing altogether and are largely ignored. Those with whom I have spoken have an entirely different take on this deal.
In short, Art is gone and the firing can be justified solely on the grounds of Baylor's personnel management guidelines and the Regents' wishes. That is all that is needed. The question of whether he was the recipient of the bulk of the attention for this disaster is not open for debate: he was. The reason for this seems obvious: successful big-time football wedded to the press which is often intentionally biased coupled with culture's sensitivity/awareness of sexual assault/rape. Perfect storm.
The role the Regents played in all this is what is being fought over or should be fought over: total failure to respond well to claims of sexual assault and rape on the part of the university ultimately falls on the Regents who are charged with setting policy. (I don't know how safety for women can be insured beyond prevention counseling in situations where women's decisions led to such activity of which we are now aware.) I do know that the law has to be adhered to until the law is changed: it doesn't matter if a top-flite lawyer thinks it "unconstitutional". It is the law until the court says it isn't. Starr, The Regents, the COO and Baylor's legal counsel ALL know this, which begs the question(s) of why they led us to this place.
The signal question demanding answers is why the Regents "didn't come clean" to begin with but allowed the bulk of the vitriol to flow down onto Art Briles, destroying his reputation beyond his culpability and wrecking his career. Using one man for an air raid shelter to shield themselves from the incoming rounds seems fearful at best and shirking responsibility at worst. "Protecting the university" is really weak sauce to serve with this **** sandwich they cooked up. When drawing conclusions about Briles and his termination, we'd best recall that there is a lot of conflicting information (depending on the source) and that the opinions of competing schools is completely unreliable.
