Fans thrive off of an identity.
It gives them something to lean on during the good times and something to fall back on during the bad times. It makes success more enjoyable and failure more understandable. Understanding what your team is trying to accomplish makes the entire fan experience more enjoyable.
Before Baylor's game against Air Force, I was walking around the tailgating area noticing how many Air Force fans were at the game, despite the young season already having proven that they were awful.
I thought to myself, "It's because they know the deal; they know who they are. They have no illusions of them being a big-boy program. They know they win with ball-control on offense and a solid defense. They know that they can hope to be really good when they have an experienced team but will be bad when they're very inexperienced."
Although that may not be your sexiest idea of being a college football fan, I think there is comfort in knowing your program's identity. And right now, I don't think Baylor football has an identity.
I did not follow college football before arriving at Baylor in 2011. I showed up to my first game knowing that Baylor apparently had an exciting quarterback and was playing a great TCU team, but I didn't know much else.
By the end of that Friday night, I knew what Baylor football was about. They were fast. They took a ton of downfield shots mixed in with a perimeter throw game and an interior run game. They were aggressive and boisterous. The defense was bad but didn't seem to know it; they acted as if they were as good as the offense. The team fed off of the energy of the crowd. They were coming after their opponent.
This specific identity is what the nation came to know about Baylor. Opposing fans mistakenly derided Baylor as a finesse team and were then surprised when their team got punched in the mouth. Everyone knew Baylor operated at a lightning tempo and seemingly scored on a big throw on nearly every drive.
It became something Baylor could recruit to, for better or for worse; elite receivers like Corey Coleman and KD Cannon came to light up the scoreboard, while some big-time defensive recruits such as Malik Jefferson shied away because they didn't see Baylor as ever being an elite defensive program.
But more than anything else, Baylor's identity became the fanbase itself. Even your casual fan knew what Baylor was trying to do with the ball. Maybe not every fan knew exactly why Baylor was throwing so many bubble screens or why they ran inside so much, but the offense and program had such an intuitive feel that it was easy to join in.
It also made the downsides more explainable. When Baylor collapsed in the Cotton Bowl against Michigan State, we all understood that a major downside of Baylor's offense is that they really only have one speed: fast. Some offenses spend lots of time practicing how to sit on a lead; Baylor did not. They put as many points into "fast!" as possible. So, while the loss was a gut punch, we understand it was a tradeoff for what Baylor is.
I haven't been a Baylor fan long enough to see many head coach introductory press conferences, but Matt Rhule's was the best I've seen. It was evident he was the son of a pastor, and he laid out the message Baylor fans needed to hear: You may be in a bad place right now, but Baylor is not a bad place.
He also laid out his vision for the program: Baylor will win with toughness. At every opportunity he had to speak to Baylor fans through the media, he discussed how they were getting down to fundamentals, practicing hard, learning to play while hurt, etc. It was a clear strategy of burning it down and forging something stronger in the fire.
When Baylor lost at home to Liberty in Rhule's first game, fans questioned whether Rhule's message of toughness was a false bill of goods. Do tough teams lose to FCS teams at home?
But Rhule stayed the course. This was part of the process, he said. We heard "Trust the Process" over a thousand times. As a fanbase, you could either get in or get out, but his message was clear. And over the coming two years, he proved it was real. Baylor became tough as hell. The defense played on its toes and put ball-carriers on their back. Rhule inherited four scholarship offensive linemen and, by his third year, had developed a solid rushing attack that could punish good defenses.
That toughness became the identity and ethos of Baylor's program, which is a remarkable feat given how different it was from Art Briles' system just a few years prior. Baylor's fanbase was fractured after Briles left, and Rhule did about as good of a job as feasible in pulling us back together. I think that's a big part of why his departure hurt so much; it felt like Baylor was once again on the verge of building something great that could last and then had the rug pulled out from underneath us.
I don't know what Baylor's identity is.
When Dave Aranda was hired, everyone focused on hiring one of the best defensive minds in the sport. But for the first four years, he was almost completely hands-off with the defense, letting his coordinators handle things. Now, in his fifth year at the helm, we are finally seeing the schematic vision of Aranda's defense.
Baylor's offense has been a whiplash. He initially hired Larry Fedora and Jorge Munoz to yield a power spread offense, a very similar system to what Rhule had been operating, but it was incompetently run.
It was an utter disaster, so Aranda quickly cut bait and hired Jeff Grimes to run the wide zone offense, a very different system from Rhule and Fedora/Munoz. Fans were initially skeptical of a non-spread system but bought in when, by year's end, Baylor was pummeling people as the players chanted, "RVO! RVO! RVO!" — short for 'reliably violent offense' — on the sidelines. A punishing offense, in combination with an elite defense run by Ron Roberts, seemed something to build around. Maybe it wasn't aesthetically what Baylor fans ideally desired, but it was working, so who cares?
But things quickly fell apart. Baylor's offense replaced its own quarterback entering 2022 and attempted to become much more of a passing team, except it had subpar receiver play and never could get going. They still had a great offensive line, but subpar running back play limited their ceiling. They were a shell of their 2021 selves even though the advanced metrics thought they were a better offense, better statistically, but with a more amorphous identity. And, of course, the defense became a below-average unit, and Aranda fired Ron Roberts, his former mentor.
We all know about 2023. Both the offense and defense were abject disasters. Aranda then made wholesale changes on offense and took over the defense.
Things are better than 2023 — which isn't saying much — but I still don't get a strong sense of Baylor's overall identity. What is Baylor's offense trying to achieve? Do they have a calling card on defense?
A certain portion of this is simply due to Baylor being a mediocre football team. Such teams look like they don't have an identity because they're not very good. And when you're not very good, the coaching staff often searches for an identity just as much as the fanbase.
But I think back to the Air Force example. They're one of the worst teams in FBS this year, but they still know who they are. Their coaches know the deal. Their fanbase knows the deal.
I think most of the Big 12 know their identity as well. Programs such as Kansas State, Iowa State, Utah, Kansas, Texas Tech, West Virginia and Colorado — I don't think there is any question about what kind of team their coaches are trying to build.
I don't think Baylor's fanbase knows who Baylor is trying to be. And if the fanbase doesn't, you have to wonder whether the team does as well. One of the hallmarks of the Briles and Rhule eras is that their players sounded just like them; when Bryce Petty said, "We're just ready for OU," that may as well have been Briles up there. When guys like Clay Johnston were talking about trusting the process, it may as well have been Rhule talking. What are the maxims and themes of Aranda's players?
I've told a few friends this, and I don't even say it tongue-in-cheek: I'd rather Baylor be a team built around the triple option, ball control and good defense than an amorphous combination of nothing in particular.
One of the head coach's paramount jobs is to explain his vision and program identity to the fanbase.
Public speaking is obviously not one of Aranda's strengths, but there is no way around that aspect of being a head coach. If you win 10 games every year, perhaps the fanbase doesn't care too much about anything else. But that's not feasible at Baylor or for 95% of college football programs.
You need the head coach to be the figurehead of the fanbase. The players follow him, and the fans do. It certainly felt that way with Briles and Rhule; fans felt like an extension of the team. I do not get the sense that when Baylor fans show up to McLane Stadium right now, they feel like an extension of the team. They feel more like outside observers.
If Aranda is able to salvage this year and remains as head coach, I think he has to overhaul his fan outreach strategy. He's not a gregarious guy who can go out and lead a pep rally like many college head coaches can, but it doesn't have to be that way, though I think that would be nice. He should lean into his strengths. Create some short videos to help fans understand your defense. Explain what kind of players you're looking to recruit at different positions. Explain what the vision for the offense is. Is it close to achieving its goals?
Right now, Baylor fans just want to watch good football. We haven't seen it in a long time. Winning does cure everything, but it would really help Baylor fans to know what the plan is.
I think this is a big part of why Baylor fans have gotten so frustrated with many of Aranda's answers, where he's seemingly just as perplexed by the results as we are. After a bad loss, I don't want to hear, "I was really surprised by this result because we had a great week of practice." The coach should not be as confused by a situation as the fan.
This is where program identity comes in. If fans had a good understanding of what Baylor is trying to be, they might be more forgiving of poor results. For example, "We're trying to build something new on offense. Our offensive run game blocking scheme is completely different than last year, and it's been a tough transition to our current scheme. We have to get these interior runs going. Otherwise, defenses can squat on our perimeter pass game. Our run game just isn't good enough right now, and that is on us as a staff. But this is a process, and we will get better. Once our run game gets better, you'll see defenses have to respect it, and that's when you'll see the big plays happen on the outside."
Would or should that answer satisfy fans in year five? Probably not. But it least helps fans understand the context and what they're trying to do.
With frequent coordinator changes and wildly different results, Baylor fans have been all over the place with Aranda. But I crave an identity for Baylor. As our own poster, LionBear, put it, "Setting an identity is an intentional process. It almost never 'just happens.'"
Regardless of what happens the remainder of this season, Baylor football needs to pay more attention to building its program's identity.
