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Art Briles has been persona non grata in the football world since he was fired from Baylor University in 2016 for mishandling issues of sexual assault during his tenure as head coach. Now Briles is returning to the ranks of college football as offensive coordinator at Grambling State University.
Briles, who led the Bears to six bowl games in eight years as head coach at Baylor, was fired after an internal investigation uncovered multiple incidents of sexual assault or domestic violence involving 19 members of the team. The investigation found that Briles was aware of certain incidents and did not report them.
A separate NCAA investigation also found that Briles failed to report sexual misconduct by players. But since he did not violate any NCAA bylaws, he did not receive official punishment.
“In each instance, when the head coach received information from a staff member regarding potential criminal conduct by a football student-athlete, he did not report the information and did not personally look any further into the matter,” a report from the NCAA Committee on Infractions found last year regarding Briles’s culpability. “He generally relied on the information provided to him by his staff and likewise relied on them to handle problems. His incurious attitude toward potential criminal conduct by his student-athletes was deeply troubling to the panel.”
Since his firing, Briles has struggled to find a place in the football world, working briefly for the NFL’s Cleveland Browns as a consultant in fall 2016; he then joined the staff of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Canadian Football League in 2017 before the team rescinded the deal amid public backlash. Briles coached in Italy in 2018 and at a Texas high school from 2019 to 2020.
In an interview with local TV station KTAL, Briles suggested the issues at Baylor were due to an understaffed Title IX office and said he would work to protect students at Grambling State.
“I’ll do exactly what I’m required to do and what they expect of me, which is to be a very solid citizen, to be a positive leader on a day-in and day-out basis, to do everything I can do to protect our students and our student athletes on campus, and to represent the Grambling University to the best of my ability, because I’m very humble and grateful to be at this university,” Briles said.
The controversial hiring has prompted widespread scrutiny from observers of college athletics.
“Briles made career decisions—bad ones—by placing football success and protection of his own players over the safety of student athletes,” David Ridpath, a sports management professor at Ohio University and past president of the Drake Group, which pushes for reforming college athletics, told The Advocate. He added, “I think it’s a bad move by Grambling.”
