The only thing more astonishing than the rise of Baylor football was Baylor’s decision Thursday to fire the architect of that rise.
Art Briles is out as coach after the school no longer could look the other way as far too many of his players raped and plundered off the field while Briles turned the Bears’ sad-sack program into the unlikeliest of perennial championship contenders.
Even in my native Texas, where the sport is religion and one Dallas-area high school just announced plans for a $63 million stadium, big-time college football no longer is bulletproof.
Though it could be argued Baylor’s twin decisions to fire Briles and demote school president Kenneth Starr (the notorious former Whitewater special prosecutor) were belated and came only after mounting outside pressure, score one for sanity in this case.
Baylor bounced Briles despite knowing the football program — a huge source of revenue and prestige for the tiny Baptist school — no doubt quickly will revert to being the doormat it was for decades before Briles’ arrival seven years ago.
At a school like Baylor, whose place among the “haves” of the Power Five conferences and their gusher of football TV money always will be precarious, that takes legitimate courage. The school finally stood up for sexual-assault victims and stood up to a football program run amok.
Baylor actually is used to this sort of national embarrassment. This is, after all, the school that suffered through the unimaginable scandal 13 years ago in which a basketball player murdered a teammate and the coach at the time, Dave Bliss, tried to smear the dead victim in hopes of covering up NCAA violations and saving his job.
But that was basketball, a sport played in Texas just to pass the time between the end of football season and the start of spring football.
This was football, where Briles and his wacky version of the spread offense had put Baylor on the national football map for the first time since, well, ever.
If you’re like me and remember when the Big 12 was the Southwest Conference and the Big Eight, to see Baylor alongside the likes of Alabama and Ohio State in the weekly rankings and Baylor product Robert Griffin III win the Heisman Trophy was nothing short of mind-boggling.
After all, this was a school that had endured 12 consecutive losing seasons before Briles came along in 2009 and was forever in danger of getting left by the side of the road in conference realignment.
Somehow luring NFL-caliber talent to dusty Waco — basically an off-ramp between Dallas and Austin on Interstate 35 known more for David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — was an unimaginable feat that Briles appeared to pull off with ease.
Baylor had played football since 1903 and never enjoyed a single 10-win season before Briles. He won at least 10 games four times in the past five seasons and nearly qualified for the College Football Playoff two years ago.
It also is doubtful the school would have been able to get its gleaming new 45,000-seat McLane Stadium built without Briles’ success.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, but especially the victims of Briles’ players, that success required bringing in too many unsavory characters and then serving as enablers — or worse — as those players formed what amounted to a local football crime wave.
That Baylor is a strict religious school that long banned dancing on campus only made Starr’s nonchalance in the face of actual sex crimes look even more hypocritical.
The school finally decided enough was enough and put big-time football in its place. Question their motivation all you want, but that’s a breath of fresh air these days.