I had a bad feeling that someone would sell themselves on Art Briles being a college passenger vehicle again.

Back in August 2021, the NCAA ruled that while Briles was at Baylor, he didn't violate their rules with his inaction. Of course, this is the NCAA. As in, the organization that refused to have function in Larry Nassar's investigation after his decades of corruption at Michigan Land, which ultimately led to a prison house judgement of up to 175 years.

In other words, you can't exactly autumn back on the NCAA to be the estimate, the jury or the executioner.

Well, unless you lot're Grambling State. You see, it was Grambling State who was willing to fall back on that even though a lawsuit confronting Baylor claimed that 52 rapes occurred by at least 31 football players from 2011-14 while Briles was head double-decker there. Never mind the fact that the Pepper Hamilton findings showed that Baylor "hindered enforcement of rules and policies, and created a cultural perception that football was above the rules."

Only hey, permit's see what Grambling State athletic director Treyveon Scott thinks about his historic football game plan hiring Briles at its new offensive coordinator.

"I'm rooted in fact," Scott told ESPN on Thursday. "I know a lot of things are said and done. We felt it [was appropriate] to give [Briles] a chance to really redeem himself after understanding where the facts prevarication."

Rooted in fact, huh.

Here'southward a fact. Go find the academy's release on Briles' hiring. I'll give you a minute.

Oh, you can't find it? That'due south considering it doesn't exist. What did be was instead an "exclusive" sit-down with Briles from local Goggle box station KTAL.

Why would a university allow a local news station introduce its new assistant instead of doing that itself, y'all ask? A few reasons.

By the mode, yeah, that is Briles seated in the tweet. He looks similar someone who spent vi years on a deserted island. He basically did, and with good reason.

Yous see, the facts are that Hue Jackson (at present the Grambling State head coach) tried to bring Briles to the Cleveland Browns every bit an offensive consultant in 2016 … until he left considering of local and national backlash.

The facts are that Southern Miss announced it was interviewing Briles for their vacant offensive coordinator position in 2018 and head coach Jay Hopson banged the drum for Briles to "get a second chance" … until public backlash from donors, fans and administrators forth with the pending NCAA investigation led to former interim athletic director Jeff Mitchell nixing the interview before Briles fifty-fifty stepped on campus.

The facts are that Hopson wanted to bypass these findings in order to add together Briles to his staff:

We've reached the office of the argument where someone says "everyone deserves a 2d chance."

Agreed. I've made countless mistakes. So have yous. We tin can all agree that nobody is perfect.

Simply there'southward a fine line betwixt being given a second chance at forgiveness as a human being and being given a second chance to return to a coveted job. Briles, by virtue of getting any college coaching job, gets the latter.

And some might say, "well it's not like he's taking over a program again" or "hasn't he suffered enough?"

To those people, I'd say let's not talk about Briles "suffering" as someone who was in a position of ability and admittedly did non follow proper protocol to report allegations of sexual violence over the grade of several years.

Being a college football game charabanc is a privilege. It'south something such a minor percentage of the profession will go to do. You deserve to lose that privilege by abusing power in the mode that Briles did.

Being a coach at an HBCU like Grambling State is a privilege. Information technology's something that a legend like Doug Williams takes peachy pride in.

Speaking of Williams, let'due south check in on him every bit 1 of the 5 Grambling State players who earned a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame.

"I'm having a problem with it considering other schools would non bite on it, then he'south coming to a Blackness school like we'll take him in," Williams told ESPN. "I have a problem with information technology, a major problem with it. I can't back up it that's for sure. That injure me to my cadre correct in that location. … I know [late] charabanc [Eddie] Robinson is turning over correct at present."

Williams hit on something primal right at that place. "Other schools would not bite on it."

Southern Miss tried, simply the backlash post-obit an official argument of just the interview squashed that (that's also exactly why Grambling Land didn't bother with an official statement before or after the rent). At the professional ranks, the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats tried to rent Briles, but the backlash forced them to rescind the rent less than 12 hours later (the team's possessor called it "a major blunder").

What those teams causeless was that as long as Briles wasn't in a position of power, it would OK. As in, it would be fine as long as it was no longer upwardly to him to go into living rooms and tell families that he'd put their child in the best position to succeed. They hoped they'd be able to maximize the best parts of Briles (his offensive acumen) while pretending that the worst parts of Briles (cultivating a culture of negligence of reporting sexual violence on a college campus) were all in the past.

It doesn't work similar that. Information technology should never piece of work like that.

To support that mode of thinking is, at the very to the lowest degree, downplaying why corruption of power is such a serious offense. That'due south why Briles had been banished from the sport he once dominated.

There's a reason why Briles' only 2 jobs in football since Baylor were in Florence, Italy coaching semi-pro football and in Mount Vernon, Tex. coaching high school football. In other words, a Texas high school was the just place in the western hemisphere that actually went through with hiring Briles in the last 6 years.

That is, until Grambling Country bit.

And boy, what a tough pill that is to swallow.