Oree Banks. Todd Bowles. Rod Broadway. Vyron Brown. Eric Dooley. Broderick Fobbs. Lee Fobbs. Emory Hines. Ozias Johnson. Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones. Mickey Joseph. Bob Leahy. Tyrone McGriff. Gabe Northern. Heishma Northern. Trei Oliver. Doug Porter. Eddie Robinson (of course). George Small. James Spady. Melvin Spears. Sam Washington. Doug Williams. Dennis Winston.
All great men who have coached at Grambling State University, perhaps the crown jewel of all HBCU schools from a football perspective.
Art Briles does not belong in their company, but as of now, that’s exactly where Briles lives. This thanks to Hue Jackson, the former NFL head coach and offensive coach who became Grambling’s 14th head coach last December. It was Jackson’s decision to hire Briles as his offensive coordinator, which officially happened on Thursday.
This is the same Art Briles who has been out of college coaching since May, 2016, when Baylor officials suspended him with intent to terminate after sexual assault allegations were made against a number of school athletes, including Briles’ players. In May, 2016, Briles was fired. He later reached an undisclosed financial settlement with the university. Baylor president Ken Starr and athletic director Ian McCaw were suspended, and left the university soon after an internal investigation.
In August, 2021, the NCAA ruled that Briles and the university did not violate rules by his and their inaction, though it placed the university on four years probation and exacted other recruiting limitations.
“Baylor admitted to moral and ethical failings in its handling of sexual and interpersonal violence on campus but argued those failings, however egregious, did not constitute violations of NCAA rules,” the committee on infractions wrote in its ruling. “Ultimately, and with tremendous reluctance, this panel agrees. To arrive at a different outcome would require the [committee] to ignore the rules the Association’s membership has adopted — rules under which the [committee] is required to adjudicate. Such an outcome would be antithetical to the integrity of the infractions process.”
Basically, the NCAA ruled that Briles did nothing wrong, because everything the university did was wrong.
“The panel found that those instances of non-reporting did not constitute impermissible benefits to football student-athletes because of a campus-wide culture of nonreporting,” the NCAA said in a release. “That culture was driven by the school’s broader failure to prioritize Title IX implementation, creating an environment in which faculty and staff did not know and/or understand their obligations to report allegations of sexual or interpersonal violence. Because the culture of non-reporting was not limited to cases involving student-athletes, the panel could not find that these instances resulted in impermissible benefits.”
The NCAA was “deeply troubled,” of course.
The Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League tried to hire Briles in 2017, but withdrew the offer after considerable backlash. In 2019, former Southern Miss head coach Jay Hopson tried to hire Briles as his offensive coordinator, but university president Rodney Bennett overruled the hire.
“I believe he is a man who deserves a second chance,” Hopson wrote in a statement disagreeing with the school’s decision. “He is a man that seemed sincere [and] humble in his interview [and] personally he committed no crime. He may not have acted in the proper protocol, but that should be my job at Southern Miss! He was interviewing for an assistant position, even though I believe he will be a head coach at a major program in the near future.”
Now, and quite improbably, Briles is Grambling’s problem.
“I’m rooted in fact,” Grambling athletic director Trayvean Scott told ESPN’s Pete Thamel. “I know a lot of things are said and done. We felt it [was appropriate] to give him a chance to really redeem himself after understanding where the facts lie.
“I think the guy just wants to coach and lead men. We’re not talking about a perfect situation or devaluing things done in the past and how it has affected people. He’s sympathetic and empathetic about what went on.”
Scott told ESPN that Briles had other coaching opportunities, and that the university did its due diligence on Briles before taking Jackson’s recommendation.
Meanwhile, Briles was busy doing the car wash thing.
New @GSU_TIGERS Offensive Coordinator Art Briles on Baylor's 2016 sexual assault scandal: "You know, you report what you know. We did the best we felt at the time. Apparently, it wasn't good enough."
FULL INTERVIEW: https://t.co/I80K8UeEqp pic.twitter.com/1FwNhX15qA
— KTAL Sports (@KtalSports) February 25, 2022
“It’s hard to control what other people think,” Briles said in response to those who would criticize the hire. “I would just hope people would search through everything with an open mind and a kind heart.”
That process has played out, with Briles coaching in Italy and at a Texas high school, and now this bump.
It’s bad enough that Briles is being grandfathered through the process, and it’s bad enough that the NCAA — an organization claiming to care about the safety and welfare of its students and “student-athletes” has turned a blind eye to Briles’ specific malfeasance in the context of Baylor’s more universal shortcomings. But to have a white coach on Grambling’s staff with this much of a past? That’s where things get specifically uncomfortable.
The NFL is currently in the throes of a lawsuit filed by former Miami Dolphins head coach and current Pittsburgh Steelers senior defensive assistant and linebackers coach Brian Flores. Flores’ claims that the NFL is backward in regards to race when hiring head and assistant coaches may be tough to prove in a court of law, but the history tells a repugnant tale.
The situation for Black head and assistant coaches at the NCAA football level is just as bad, if not worse. There are precious few at this time, and those who do get opportunities rarely get second chances.
So, we’re left with a situation in which a school that has been among the gold standards in the NBCU sphere has hired a white assistant coach with a past that’s impossible to overlook. Briles’ offensive genius is the obvious reason why — Jackson clearly wants the best guy on his staff, and perhaps from a schematic perspective, Briles is that guy.
But in a larger sense, with all the factors to consider, Grambling’s hire of Art Briles isn’t just wrong — it’s an insult to the university, to the students in Jackson’s care, and to the coaches who must wait yet another season for opportunities they deserve more than Briles does.
Doug Williams, who was Grambling’s head coach from 1998 through 2003, and from 2011 through 2013, may have put it best.
“I’m having a problem with it because other schools would not bite on it, then he’s coming to a Black school like we’ll take him in,” Williams told ESPN’s John Keim. “I have a problem with it, a major problem with it. I can’t support it that’s for sure. That hurt me to my core right there. … I know [late] coach [Eddie] Robinson is turning over right now.”
Art Briles does not belong in Doug Williams’ company, and he certainly does not belong in Eddie Robinson’s company. Grambling has made an unfortunate mistake, and the backlash will be the school’s to deal with.