On Thursday, heads started rolling at Baylor University. Proceedings were announced to fire the school's president, athletic director, and head football coach. (The athletic director has since saved the school the trouble by resigning.)
As you've quite possibly heard by now, the terminations were carried out in response to a report from a law firm investigating allegations of sexual abuse against female students at Baylor, many (but not all) by members of the football program. The university's Board of Regents issued a Findings of Fact report which speaks to nothing less than institutional failure, particularly regarding Title IX and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization of 2013, both for the university as a whole and the athletic department and football in program in particular.
Predictably, the story has spawned a great deal of pontificating, high-minded speculation about culture change in college sports, and predictably self-interested tweets from Baylor players and ship-jumping by recruits. In the meantime, the university has named an interim president (who I think was once a New Testament professor of mine, not at my most recent seminary stop) and an acting head coach, Jim Grobe, once of Wake Forest. This is an interesting hire; Grobe, who retired from Wake just a couple of years ago, looks like a true interim hire -- someone who will not, and quite possibly does not want to be, considered for the permanent position, but will get the team through the coming season.
Grobe also has a track record, albeit not as impressive as that of fired coach Art Briles, of success at a school not accustomed to it. His overall record wasn't great, but Jim Grobe coached Wake Forest to an ACC championship and an Orange Bowl bid. That remains one of the most impressive "wait, what?" accomplishments in athletic history.
Briles's success at Baylor looks similar, with the exception of apparently being more lasting. The school's football team now plays at a shiny new stadium that would never have happened without the success of recent seasons there, with players like Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III and a lot of attention to the program and, by some remote extension, the school.
The allegations, which were being investigated for almost a year by the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton, have rained all over that success like a particularly nasty Plains thunderstorm.
Where this case stands apart from so many others is this:
Baylor University is a Christian institution of higher education. Its website will tell you so.
As a former student at a Christian college and a former professor at a Christian university, that does make my ears prick up in this case. Unchallenged sexual assault doesn't really go very well with such a self-description.
A university Board of Regents (or trustees or governors, as they are variously named at different schools) can be a vexing thing, making prescriptions about educational matters in which they have no ability or expertise or, in the case of a Christian institution of higher education, expecting the school to serve as little more than an extended Sunday school.
In this case, I am trying to read events at Baylor optimistically. The Board of Regents at Baylor, I am hoping, really valued Baylor being a Christian institution (whatever that means), even at the expense of all that football glory.
Much of the commentary around the Baylor case has not commented on this aspect of the school's identity. A few have, but many have not. This may be why what has happened at Baylor won't really be a sign of general culture change after all. Most of your big-time football franchises in the NCAA don't have that particular pressure to live up to Christian principles, even if their coach is barely concealed preacher-wannabe. If pressure comes to clean up a situation like this one, it comes mostly through threat of legal action. (Sadly, the desire to do right by the university's female students doesn't really seem to register at most universities.)
So no, I'm not looking for any kind of culture change from this situation, outside of Baylor at minimum. As for Baylor itself only time will tell.
*Some commentary after the fact has suggested that Briles saw himself as a guarantor of second chances, for players who had gotten into trouble at other schools. Well, if you're going to give out second chances, you are obligated to put in place a system of oversight to make sure those second chances don't end up bringing harm or assault to others. If you don't, your gracious second chance starts to look awfully opportunistic. There is zero evidence that any such oversight was ever put in place in these cases.
**I'm going to forego the wide-open opportunity for schadenfreude that the university's president, a man who made his reputation zealously pursuing what he saw as a sexual misdeed, is now losing his job over failing to pursue charges of sexual assault at all. At least I'm mostly going to forego it.
Where this becomes challenging for us is in the conflict between Baylor's much-proclaimed Christian identity and its increasing desire for success in the cutthroat world of college football. What had looked like a great story rapidly denegerated into a story of soul-selling, looking the other way in the face of one of the most vile and unchristian, not to mention criminal, things that one human being can do to another. Whether Baylor's football team will ever regain its lofty heights is pretty doubtful. What Baylor would be willing to do in order to get there, we shall see.
I don't, despite the title of this blog, hold to the notion that football (or any other sport) is a religion. I am beginning to wonder, however, if sport is a belief system. And I am beginning to wonder if that belief system is at all compatible with the following of Christ that is the call of any self-proclaimed Christian. (And yes, this does bear implications for the usual subject of this blog. We'll get there.) On this, I am less optimistic. And while football may be the place where the belief system of sport and the Christian walk are most in conflict, I fear what it may mean for the relation of the Christ-follower and the big-time sport that so fills up the culture in which we live.
An image from Baylor's website.
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