Under the mostly old staff, Baylor continues to nurture big aspirations on the field. The Bears were 6-0 and ranked eighth nationally before Saturday's 35-34 road loss to Texas (4-4). They boast the Big 12's best defense and an offense that averages more than 42 points a game, and their remaining schedule includes matchups with only two ranked teams, No. 16 Oklahoma (5-2 before Saturday) and No. 10 West Virginia (6-1), both on the road.
But the scandal shows no sign of fading. Several of Baylor's regents told The Wall Street Journal, in an article[1] published Friday, that the investigation had found that 19 football players had been accused of sexual assault by 17 women, and that Briles had been aware of one episode but had not reported it to the appropriate university offices.
Ron Murff, the chairman of the board of regents, did not respond to a telephone request, through a Baylor representative, for comment.
Speaking to ESPN in his sole public interview in the last several months, Briles indicated that he had taken the fall for others' actions. "The way the chain usually works," he said[2], "is the head coach is last to know."
There is a pantheon of hugely successful but morally questionable teams in college football. Nebraska's 1995 squad was an undefeated juggernaut whose star running back had been suspended for domestic assault that season. Lurid recruiting violations accompanied the dominance of Miami's teams in the early 2000s. Florida State's Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback during its 2013 campaign, Jameis Winston, was revealed to have been accused of rape. (Winston denied the accusation, and prosecutors declined to charge him after an incomplete investigation.)
Baylor's ability to continue the unbroken line of on-field success that began under Briles has shined a light on Grobe's decision to emphasize continuity, which he justified in June as an effort to promote stability for "the coaching staff with families" as well as the players. When the coaching staff was kept intact, he had presumed that it had nothing to do with tarnishing the program.
Grobe said in a recent interview that he assumed those privy to the investigation by the law firm Pepper Hamilton would have dismissed any coaches implicated in the reporting failures.
"I had to trust the university," he said.
According to the board of regents' summary of a report prepared by Pepper Hamilton, football staff members "affirmatively chose not to report sexual violence and dating violence to an appropriate administrator outside of athletics" — a direct contravention of guidelines associated with Title IX, the federal law mandating gender equity in higher education.
The coaching staff includes Briles's son, Kendal, the offensive coordinator, and son-in-law, Jeff Lebby, who holds a variety of responsibilities on offense. They and other coaches have continued to express solidarity with Briles, who is accused of presiding over a program tha t made not airing dirty laundry a priority over fulfilling its legal obligations concerning sexual-assault complaints.
Because Baylor requested[3] an oral report and then released only a 13-page "Finding of Fact"[4] that contained few names, it is impossible to know who the bad actors were. In addition to Briles as well a s McCaw, who resigned, only two athletic department staff members, neither of them football coaches, lost their jobs.
Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an advocate for women's equality in sports, said she worried that among the junior staff members who kept their jobs were those directly responsible for some of the worst failures outlined in the summary.
"It's hard to believe that the victim would report directly to the president of the school or to the athletic director," she said.
Garland, the acting president, who defended the university's handling of the investigation as "transparent," said he wished the summary "had been a little bit more specific about these persons rather than 'some coaches.'"
Mack Rhoades, who became Baylor's athletic director in August, conceded that there had been some "times of awkwardness" this season. Before last month's season opener, Kendal Briles wrote the initials "CAB" — for "Coach Art Briles" — on both of his hands and coached from the sideline. At last month's game at Rice, Art Briles appeared in the stands, and Shawn Oakman, a former player who has been charged with sexual assault, entered the locker room after the game to mingle with former teammates. (Grobe later said that he did not recognize Oakman, whom he had never coached.)
After an incident in early October in which, in response to an unrelated controversy, several coaches tweeted[5] the hashtag "#TRUTHDONTLIE" — which Art Briles had tweeted after damaging news broke in May — Rhoades said he had another conversation with the staff about putting the players first.
"For me, it's not about all the noise and all of the, maybe, 'good days, bad days' stories that come about," Rhoades said.
That noise is unlikely to go away. The Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights announced[6] last week that it was investigating Baylor for possible noncompliance with Title IX. Baylor is also the subject of several lawsuits by women who said the university had mishandled their accusations of sexual assault against fellow students — in many cases, students who did not play football.
Still, the team's success seems to have improved campus morale.
"I feel like the way that the team has come together, it's a big part of showing how resilient Baylor is as a whole and a community," said Meghan Mitchell, the sports editor of Baylor's student newspaper, The Lariat.
Ryan Reid, a senior cornerback on the football team, added: "Us being 6-0 plays a great part in the atmosphere of this university and this team. To me, it just shows everybody we are still Baylor with Coach Briles gone."
According to Garland, admissions inquiries are up and donations have held steady since May. Yet the scandal still threatens to undermine a central premise of big-time college sports: that investing big in on-field success pays dividends to the whole university.
Athletic directors and presidents like to say that sports serve as their university's "front porch," providing the inviting first impression that produces applicants, donations and national attention.
Starr, the former president, bet big on that link. He made fund-raising for a new football stadium a priority after being persuaded that athletics was the best entree to donations for a scholarship fund and a new business school facility. He led freshmen as they sprinted onto the field before home games.
In 2014, he summarized[7] his philosophy about the value of college sports: "Success in athletics means that all boats rise."
What happened at Baylor raises the question of what happens when, despite victories, the front porch appears less welcoming. At this point, Baylor athletics may nearly be as well known for scandals — including one that one began with a basketball player's murder of a teammate in 2003, as well as the more recent ones — as it is by Robert Griffin III's Heisman Trophy in 2011 and Briles's Big 12 titles in 2013 and 2014.
Garland, who like Grobe is serving on an interim basis, was more reluctant than Starr to claim a central role for athletics in campus life.
"This isn't the University of Football, this is Baylor University," he said.
Of the "front porch" analogy, he added, "I would prefer to refer to athletics as the backyard, and the backyard is where you go to have fun."
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