The most notorious college football coach in America has returned to his high school roots. Former Baylor coach Art Briles will be on the sideline with the Class 3A Mount Vernon Tigers this fall.
The news broke Friday when a reporter from Dave Campbell’s Texas Football tweeted he was hearing Briles was in line for the job. The reactions on Twitter were swift and without mercy. Some reporters were troubled the school district “dumped” this news during a holiday weekend. As I tried to explain, Mount Vernon ain’t the White House. I don’t think these folks were attempting to execute an elaborate plan to suppress the reaction.
In our 24-hour news cycle, there’s really no such thing as a Friday afternoon “news dump” anymore, but folks seemed incensed by the timing of the announcement. It seems to me the larger issue is hiring a man at the center of a rape scandal at Baylor to help mentor high school kids. The place for Briles was in professional football, but not even the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League were able to withstand the backlash when they tried to hire him. The University of Southern Mississippi took a run at him, but the head coach was denied. Maybe Mississippi State would’ve been a better destination since it’s basically the new Last Chance U.
Briles had been coaching some old dudes in Florence, Italy, because it was the only gig he could land. I had a good relationship with Briles when he was at Baylor, and we talked on a regular basis. When the scandal broke, I was as stunned as anyone. And I was horrified to learn in subsequent reports Briles didn’t do more to protect female students.
A few months after he’d been fired at Baylor, I wrote a story for Texas Monthly about whether Briles would coach again. Hall of Fame scout and former (coaching) headhunter Gil Brandt believed his only shot was pro football. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones vouched for Briles as a person when he showed up at training camp in 2016. Briles, who had hired the powerful agent Jimmy Sexton, believed he would coach again at that point. But nothing materialized because no college president wanted to deal with the backlash of hiring a pariah like Briles. He did try to express contrition, but it wasn’t enough to appease his doubters.
“I’m very sorry for the victims,” Briles told me at the time. “I always am thinking about their pain. It’s a sad fact that any female should face those types of fears.”
Those victims have to be sickened by the thought of Briles working at a high school. The folks I spoke to in Mount Vernon on Friday were excited by the chance to have such an accomplished coach. One of them called it a “redemption story.” I think it’s simply the only chance Briles has to coach football again. And while it’s humbling for one of the greatest offensive minds in the country to coach at this level, it beats the heck out of brooding at his home near Horseshoe Bay. He’ll coach the program that was once home to the late Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith. Something tells me season ticket sales in this town of about 3,000 will be brisk.
But Mount Vernonites are probably a bit naive when it comes to the scorn they will face for offering Briles safe harbor. We might see protesters outside the stadium on Friday nights. Outside of Florence, there’s not a lot of places you can hide Art Briles. He’s tried to say the right things, but it will never be enough. He is the public face of the biggest rape scandal that has hit a college campus. His “aw shucks” charm can’t take the edge off this horror. I have no doubt Briles will win games, but what has Mount Vernon sacrificed in pursuit of football glory? Maybe the school board tells itself that everyone deserves a second chance, but that’s no consolation to the victims of the Baylor scandal.
Like a lot of folks, I lost touch with Art over the past couple years. I would hear from mutual friends that he was struggling without football, but I had trouble mustering much sympathy. He was a great football coach who turned my alma mater into a perennial Big 12 contender. It was thrilling to be a Baylor football fan during that era. Then it all came crashing down.
Maybe he’ll find a modicum of redemption in Mount Vernon. But the good folks of that community will stand accused of sacrificing character for wins. It’s not the first time that’s happened in our state, and it surely won’t be the last.
We love a comeback story in this country, but this won’t have legs. And best of luck to Mount Vernon trying to sneak up on Winnsboro this season. Everyone will see the Tigers coming.
