Bernstein: Seriously, Baylor?
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) If money talks, Art Briles stays. And his sex-predator factory gets to power up again in 2017, female Baylor students and women of the greater Waco area be warned. We found out Monday morning that the coach responsible for the marauding rapists and let go last month was only mostly fired.
HornsDigest.com reported that Baylor's board of regents is meeting Monday to vote on redoing things as one-year suspension of Briles -- an effort driven by the deep-pocketed donors largely responsible for the $300-million stadium that opened two years ago. They're reportedly threatening to withhold further funding unless Briles is reinstated after a wrist-slap.
Briles was initially suspended with "intent to terminate," according to Baylor's announcement, which also included a statement from the same regents that said, "We were horrified by the extent of these acts of sexual violence on our campus."
Except not really, it turns out.
Even the fact that it has gotten this far is an insult, regardless of whether the board can muster the votes. USA Today has reported that the faction behind the proposal is a "small minority" and "on the margins," but that anyone at all in a position of influence at Baylor would want this is offensive.
Briles reportedly met with school officials Thursday to discuss the plan, a clear indication that the lessons of the scandal have gone entirely unlearned by a school that had pledged to start to try to care about all the students getting attacked by football players.
This is astonishingly depraved, a message to the women raped and assaulted by players protected by Briles that they don't matter and practically don't exist at all. Raping is just part of football at Baylor, at least to the big spenders wrapped up in ensuring more Big 12 championships and big-time bowl games. The ruined lives of female Baylor students are acceptable as long as the wins keep coming.
Strike up the band to drown out the screams, shine the bright lights back on the field instead of illuminating a culture that routinely treated female students as less than human. Some felt empowered to speak out about their horrors only after Briles was fired, a steady chorus that has only reinforced the findings of an internal investigation.
Victims be damned, again, just as they still are at Penn State, where school officials care more about whitewashing the evil actions of a dead, venerated coach more than confronting the truth. From Happy Valley to the banks of the Brazos River, the absurd world of college football keeps sinking to new, sick depths.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
