Whitlock: Why Doug Williams and the social media mob should think of Kobe Bryant when assessing Art Briles



Art Briles is worthy of the redemption the sports world afforded Kobe Bryant.

You could make an argument that the former Baylor head football coach is more worthy of grace and mercy than the former NBA legend.

But it appears that the 66-year-old offensive guru won’t get a shot at redemption. Yesterday, just four days after taking the offensive coordinator job at Grambling State University and only hours after the school’s head coach, Hue Jackson, released a strong statement of support, Briles resigned his position. He said he doesn’t want to be a distraction.

The school’s biggest star, former NFL quarterback Doug Williams, said he did not support Briles’ hire. Corporate media and blue-check social media influencers also did not support Briles’ hire. A USA Today columnist, Dan Wolken, labeled Briles “forever radioactive.”

It seems odd. Briles’ alleged crime is not nearly as reprehensible as the alleged misdeeds of countless football players who get second and third chances. From Cincinnati Bengals running back Joe Mixon (domestic violence) to former NFL quarterback Michael Vick (dog fighting) and all the way down to former Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy (domestic violence), I passionately defend their rights to resume work and redeem themselves. That’s America, the land of opportunity.

Our country and our sports culture allowed Kobe Bryant to ascend to deity. Both Briles and Bryant were entangled in high-profile sexual assault scandals.

In July 2003, a teenage hotel clerk accused Bryant of rape. She later refused to testify in a criminal case. Bryant reached a financial settlement with his accuser in a civil case. He publicly apologized for the incident while maintaining his innocence.

“First, I want to apologize directly to the young woman involved in this incident. I want to apologize to her for my behavior that night and for the consequences she has suffered in the past year. … I also want to make it clear that I do not question the motives of this young woman. … Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did.”

Other than Michael Jordan, Bryant is the most revered basketball player of the last 40 years, surpassing Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and LeBron James. In terms of worship, Bryant eclipses Jordan. It is high-risk to publicly criticize Bryant and/or discuss the rape allegation that momentarily stained his reputation. The rapper Snoop Dogg threatened Oprah Winfrey’s best friend Gayle King for asking an interview subject about Bryant’s alleged sexual assault.

Bryant is treated as a deity.

Art Briles is treated as a pariah.

In 2015, Baylor fired Briles after a law firm, Pepper Hamilton, the school hired issued an oral report that revealed more than 100 campus-wide rape allegations. Five of the allegations involved Baylor football players. Briles did not sexually assault anyone. He recruited a handful of players who, like Bryant, were accused of rape. Most people who have examined the case closely – including yours truly – believe Briles and his black football players were used as scapegoats to cover up a campus-wide problem at the private Baptist university.

Baylor had failed to adopt federal laws and guidelines to protect student safety. The Pepper Hamilton report put the entire university in the crosshairs. That’s why the report was delivered orally. No written record to be subpoenaed later. The school’s board of regents then took the additional step of hiring a San Francisco public relations firm, J.G. Bunting, that promised to “change the narrative.”

When administrators realized that Briles and his supporters would not disappear quietly (Briles filed a wrongful termination lawsuit), the public relations firm worked with a Wall Street Journal reporter to escalate the allegations against Briles and his football program. With virtually no evidence, the Journal reported that Pepper Hamilton really discovered 17 allegations of sexual misconduct against Baylor football players.

America’s football-hating sports journalists/tweeters surmised that canceling and further vilifying Art Briles were the best ways to clean up football’s toxic masculine culture. And Baylor was able to pretend that once it rid itself of Briles, it had taken a major step in reducing sexual violence.

According to court documents, Baylor’s former athletics director Ian McCaw stated the school used Briles and black football players to cover up a problem that existed on the school’s campus for decades.

We all know that football is the catalyst for rape and other forms of sexual assault on college campuses. It’s not the prevalence of drugs and alcohol. It’s not the hyper-sexualized music played at social gatherings. It’s not the normalizing of sexual promiscuity and pornography. It’s not the secularized values promoted on campus.

It’s football and men like Art Briles. Everybody knows it.

If Briles is allowed to call plays at Grambling State, sexual assault cases will jump 3%-5% in year one and another 2% in year two.

The narrative-changing San Francisco public relations firm, J.G. Bunting, did its job. It summoned a social media lynch mob and strung up Art Briles.

I have a great deal of respect for Doug Williams. He’s a good man. I wish he’d done some basic homework before using his influence to undermine Briles and Hue Jackson. Williams admitted he doesn’t know Briles and has never talked with him. Williams, apparently, accepted the corporate and social media narrative about Briles.

It’s not accurate. No different from the people who claim the media narrative about Kobe’s Colorado encounter is inaccurate.

I don’t pretend to know the whole truth about Bryant or Briles. I just know they’re both worthy of a shot at redemption. Briles might be more worthy. His parents died in a car accident when he was in college. Kobe is the son of a former professional basketball player. He was an elite global citizen long before it became popular.

Whatever, the standard can’t be that talented black athletes accused of and/or convicted of crimes get to resume their careers and super talented white coaches must be removed from society.

Eric Bieniemy, everyone’s favorite black NFL assistant coach, has several female-related criminal allegations in his past. That has not stopped one member of the media from saying NFL owners are racist for failing to promote him to head coach.

Doug Williams and everyone else should rethink their position on Art Briles. At some point, the standard we apply to Briles will be applied to us.

Couch: Former Baylor football coach Art Briles mistakenly believes NCAA’s lack of power exonerates him



"Completely exonerated." That's the term the attorney of former Baylor football coach Art Briles used this week. The NCAA made a ruling after a six-year investigation into Briles and Baylor football over its sexual assault scandal, the one that led to Briles, Baylor's president, and its athletic director all being run out. And what was the ruling from college sports governing body? That it doesn't have the authority to govern or rule any more.

It seemed like more of an indictment of the NCAA than a release of Briles.

The NCAA said that Briles was so inhuman — my word — that he looked the other way when he received reports of women alleging that they'd been sexually assaulted by his players. It said there was a lack of institutional control in helping assault victims but that the lack of control existed not only in the football program but also the entire university. Baylor officials agreed with all of that.

And yet the NCAA said there was no actual, specific NCAA rule broken in all of that. So, the NCAA couldn't pin anything on Briles or Baylor.

"My client Art Briles has been completely exonerated and cleared of all NCAA violations alleged against him," attorney Scott Tompsett said. "As the NCAA Committee on Infractions explained, the conduct at issue was pervasive and widespread throughout the Baylor campus, and it was condoned or ignored by the highest levels of Baylor's leadership. The NCAA's decision clears the way for Mr. Briles to return to coaching college football."

It's an interesting thing to celebrate, that women were left unprotected campus-wide and that their safety wasn't just ignored by Briles, but also by the entire university. Hooray!

It's an argument that Briles and Baylor football couldn't have done anything heinous because other people on campus were doing heinous things. All parents have heard this argument from their 5-year olds: "My friends are doing it …"

We are in an interesting moment in the American justice system. In this case, college sports is the model. The justice system might be lost.

The social media mob demands swift and timely justice, something resolved in minutes, or 40 seconds on TikTok. Meanwhile, the old style of long, slow, drawn-out justice doesn't work any more. So the NCAA is outdated, ineffectual, and without purpose. Meanwhile, the mainstream media is another institution we no longer trust.

Add it all up, and there are no legitimate watchdogs any more.

Even my good friend Jason Whitlock leans toward siding with Briles. He disagreed with me yesterday on his show, "Fearless with Jason Whitlock," and said it's not fair to lay the problems of an entire university culture on the football team just because it's in the spotlight. He argued that Baylor, trying to pacify the Twitter mob, used Briles as a scapegoat. Put the blame on Briles, give the mob what it wants, and douse the fire. He also said there were questionable aspects of Baylor's own investigation.

There is one reason why it's hard to argue with Jason on that: It's because he's right.

That does not exonerate Briles, not in our new justice system. People aren't desperate to defend Briles out of any sense that he's clean. It's more of a distaste for his accusers, who are part of our institutions. It's a counter-culture attack, not a defense of Briles.

The truth is the NCAA could easily have charged Briles with lack of institutional control and ruled that he could not coach again. Nine years ago, the NCAA ruled hard on the Penn State rape scandal regarding former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. The NCAA fined Penn State $60 million and banned it from the postseason for four years. And NCAA president Mark Emmert said that we'd never again put football above education and keeping young people safe.

Then his authority was questioned, his penalties weakened. And the NCAA lost its ability to enforce rules. Emmert, rather than fixing the rules to protect people over the past nine years, has no power or purpose any more. Neither does the NCAA.

Meanwhile, the court system is dragging along on the Baylor case. One former player is in prison. One was convicted and is on probation. Fifteen women have cases pending, all these years later. Baylor hired a law firm to conduct its own investigation and then told that firm to issue its report to the school orally.

No written record. Since then, the alleged victims have been fighting in the courts to get the notes and details of Baylor's investigation. A federal judge ruled that Baylor has to give it all up. Baylor keeps fighting it.

Briles supporters think the report will show that he should be cleared.

Are we really down to saying that a coach has to only stay one inch above the line of the law? A coach should mean more. The Twitter mob, the courts, and the NCAA aren't ever going to get to a reasonable finish line.

It's a battle for loopholes, not truth. Briles needed to go. He built a program from nothing to a national power. The success led to a shiny new stadium, and Baylor's conscience melted under the lights.

The AD and president Ken Starr are gone, too. Briles was the head of a program that everyone acknowledges was out of control and unsafe for young people.

Someone had to take the fall, even if he is "completely exonerated."

Couch: Baylor sex-scandal ruling proves Mark Emmert and the NCAA have long outlived their usefulness



Back around 1980, a popular TV show called "WKRP in Cincinnati" had an iconic episode. The show was about a radio station with a bumbling boss named Mr. Carlson, "Big Guy." He wanted to feel useful, so he created a Thanksgiving promotion that turned into a disaster. Along the way, he comically tried to figure out what his own role was at the station. He called his program director to his office to ask.

"You're the station manager," he was told.

"Aha," he said. "That's what I am. But what do I DO?"

"Well," he was told. "You're the boss. And you do … boss stuff."

Mr. Carlson was popular in American culture because everyone could identify with having an amicable do-nothing boss. Today's real-life Big Guy is Mark Emmert. He's the president of the NCAA. Aha, but what does he do?

It doesn't seem so comical when you're the head of a large governing body in our education system. The NCAA's enforcement ruled Wednesday in the Baylor sexual assault scandal, something you might not remember because it happened so many years ago. The ruling was that the NCAA said it had no power to make a ruling.

Boss stuff. That's what Emmert does. That's really all the NCAA is about. Emmert should be fired. When? How about before lunch? This Baylor decision, added to the Supreme Court's recent ruling that all-but shot down amateurism – the defining tenet of the NCAA – shows that the NCAA has no purpose any more, nothing to do other than to host a nice basketball tournament in March.

That, and boss stuff.

The truth is the system has outgrown the old NCAA system of punishment. The world has moved past Emmert and the NCAA.

Baylor already admitted to pretty much everything and fired everyone. Its own self-investigation ruled that former coach Art Briles looked the other way any time an allegation was brought to him.

The athletic director was ousted, the school president forced out in shame. Briles was fired.

Briles' defenders think he was railroaded as a PR move by the university and that Baylor acted too quickly, as social media requires a swifter form of justice – lynchings. With everyone fired, what more was there for the NCAA to do?

I'm not trying to re-litigate here, but only to say that a governing body cannot just throw up its hands and say that it has no power or course of action.

On Wednesday, the NCAA Committee on Infractions described Baylor's action as a crime, saying "young people were hurt" and that there should be actions to penalize.

If you're still looking for justice for the women who allegedly were harmed, well, this is all you got:

"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 said in its release. "Ultimately, and with tremendous reluctance, this panel agrees."

Goodbye, Mark Emmert. Goodbye, NCAA. You have no purpose any more.

The Baylor scandal was so widespread and so shocking back in 2016 that the school's own university regents said, according to the New York Times, that at least 19 players had been accused of sexual misconduct and that it had been covered up.

Briles built Baylor from an afterthought to a national power, with Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III. With the success, Baylor was able to open an expensive new stadium. And with all the success and attention Baylor was getting, the NCAA committee said, Briles had "failed to meet even the most basic expectations of how a person should react …"

Contrast that to 2012 and the Jerry Sandusky rape scandal at Penn State. Sandusky, longtime assistant football coach to Joe Paterno, eventually was convicted of his pattern of sexual assaults. He's in prison now.

At the time, Emmert got tough and announced major fines and penalties – including $60 million and a four-year ban on the football team going to the postseason – saying football would "never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people."

Never again.

I'm not arguing innocence or guilt in these Baylor assault allegations. But if the NCAA thinks crimes were committed and Baylor does, too, and everyone was fired, then why can't the NCAA do anything? And if the rules aren't written to give it any power, then surely Emmert should have been able to correct that since his strong power play nine years ago.

If the NCAA, which is leaving Baylor's case entirely to the legal system, is that powerless, then why are people wearing suits and sitting in offices? What do they do?

In the end, after legal fights, many of Emmert's penalties against Penn State were reduced. The NCAA said it was because of good behavior. The other major case recently was the North Carolina academic scandal. The NCAA did nothing on that one, either, saying that the sham classes athletes were taking were also offered to non-athletes, so there was no extra benefit for athletes.

The NCAA can't even legislate to protect amateurism any more. Yet somehow, Big Guy Emmert was given a contract extension this spring to keep him sitting in an office through 2025, doing boss stuff.

You can check out the full WKRP turkey episode on YouTube. Spoiler alert: The promotion Mr. Carlson came up with was to give away free turkeys at a mall. He did it by flying overhead in a helicopter and dropping the birds.

"As God is my witness," Big Guy said at the end of the show, "I thought turkeys could fly."

It's not so funny in real life, when women were allegedly hurt.

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