BONHAM — As legend has it, before he became a martyr at the Alamo in 1836, attorney James Bonham, in those days prior a South Carolina gentleman, took a cane to opposing counsel after that man wielded an insult at Bonham’s client, a fair lady.
Rather than comply with the judge’s order to apologize or, at the very least, make some sign of remorse, Bonham said he would instead rearrange the judge’s nose.
That dishonor of your honor in a noble act of honor got him 90 days in the clink.
It’s a strange black-and-white world we live in, with so many shades of gray. Not long after that, Bonham decided he needed a new start and found the faraway frontier in Texas.
Even stranger still is that, as fate would have it, it was in the small Texas town named in honor of that Alamo hero and defender of the fair sex – so remote that even Starbucks forgot it — that the curious comeback of the once-disgraced Art Briles began on Friday night.
There were no protests or #metoo outrage. Just a seemingly regular high school football game on a Friday night. All that was out of the ordinary were the 75-degree temperatures on Aug. 30.
If anything, the coach’s supporters were an uber majority.
The clanging of those cans Stephenville made famous in the 1990s made an appearance, symbolic less of the support for Mount Vernon’s Tigers – no one from Mount Vernon had ever recalled hearing them before – and more for Briles.
Mount Vernon, which went three deep in the UIL state football playoffs last season, won Briles’ debut convincingly, 44-16, over the Warriors. The result in the yearbook won’t mention the combined 11 turnovers these teams committed.
Coach Briles, you’re not at Baylor anymore. Or even Italy.
You couldn’t help but notice the striking difference between coaching the Cotton Bowl in AT&T Stadium and Friday night at Warrior Stadium.
Some of the sloppiness stood to reason, though, at least from the point of view of Mount Vernon. The new coach has been with the team less than a month, having first to finish off his season of professional football in Italy with Guelfi Firenze of the Italian Federation of American Football. Guelfi Firenze went 8-3.
At Mount Vernon, there was no team meeting to meet the new coach. He simply showed up, essentially from the airport, for day one of two-a-days.
“I was extremely [nervous],” Briles said of the game. “The heartbeat was quite a bit faster today. But that’s good because when people depend on you, you want to fulfill their hopes for their community and their team.”
It was an answer cloaked in the bling of irony considering the coach’s demise.
At Baylor, it was alleged that Briles cared nothing for his community, only his football team, in the aftermath of scandal. An external investigation conducted by the firm Pepper Hamilton found at least 17 women who reported being sexually assaulted by 19 football players.
Briles, it was alleged, not only failed to act, but covered up reported assaults and discouraged women involved to go to the police. He has denied those allegations all along.
Baylor fired him. He has since been deemed persona non grata, unable to find a job in college or professional football in the U.S. or Canada.
When the Italians called, he jumped at the chance to get back in the game. Same with Mount Vernon, which has taken the expected flak for making the hire.
To those interviewed last night, that criticism was mostly from “the outsiders.” They acknowledged a “few,” a vocal minority in town, who didn’t approve. But otherwise, the town is supportive. A good visiting crowd that made the 77-mile drive from Mount Vernon seemed to attest to that.
On the advice of counsel, Briles won’t talk about what happened at Baylor because he’s the subject of a civil suit, stemming from the Baylor scandal, currently in litigation. Say what you will about him, though, and there is plenty, he’s never been more honest than when he says all he wants to do is coach football.
He has made enough money to retire, but at 63 the former high school coach made famous at Stephenville is back in Texas’ Teacher Retirement System, aka, TRS, chasing the Rule of 80 or 90 or some such for only one reason: He wants to. He clearly loves what he does.
Briles is everything great about Texas football. His greatness as both a strategist and tactician is unquestioned. The record speaks for itself. Four state championships at Stephenville and highly successful reclamation projects at Houston and Baylor.
Briles and his staff have been with Mount Vernon for 25 days. In that short period, they have connected with the players and developed a bond.
“We’ve learned to trust each other,” Briles said. “And expect good things out of each other and developed into kind of a football team. We’re not there yet, of course, but in 25 days, for them to accept us, not knowing any of our coaches and lead us into their family and graciously accept us it means a whole lot to me personally.”
Briles is also everything that is wrong with Texas football, a MacBethian figure of unchecked ambition and its corrupting power. The situation at Baylor was a perfect storm of his unchecked ambition, along with a university and fan base desperate to succeed in football.
So clouded with ambition, no one could decipher right from wrong.
For Briles, an inability to strike some sort of balance between the consuming ambition to win football games and his dual responsibility to mold young men into both muscle and morals is a criticism that has followed him since his days at Stephenville.
He’s not the first and won’t be the last that is said about. He just happens to be the most infamous at the moment.
“My parents were fine with it,” said Kole Barrentine, a senior cornerback at Mount Vernon. “My step-dad is a big football guy. He looked into it and has been following it since [the Baylor situation].”
As far as the circus that now follows Briles being a distraction, Barrentine said, “I hadn’t heard much of it. My parents kept up with all the news and stuff. From what I see, I don’t see anything out of it. He’s just a normal guy. I like him a lot.”
How God and history remember him might hinge on fulfilling all the obligations of a coach, especially at this level, in what might be his last stop.
Like always, he is saying the right things.
“I want them to understand how precious each day is and how you should be grateful if you’re given an opportunity,” Briles said. “I’ve been given an opportunity at Mount Vernon High School because of some people who believe in me. I’m extremely grateful and thankful for them.”