Re: Baylor needs to hire some good lawyers (Update: Art Briles fired)
I don't want to sound like the wet blanket here, and I'm in agreement in general with the sentiments expressed.
However.....before overly praising Baylor, let me ask the unasked question - "Did they really have any choice in the matter here?"
You don't get points for bravery from me for doing what you had to do anyway. It's like someone 'coming clean' under oath in a trial. Well, duh - like you had much choice. So not to sound cynical or angry - and I AM glad they've done this because I'm a tad bit surprised.......if you didn't have any choice anyway let's not go too hog wild with the praise, either.
Btw - I wanna make a point here. Maybe I'm naïve but I am of the belief that IN THE LONG RUN if you come clean with stuff even really BAD stuff and take the public relations hit but correct it, I firmly believe you wind up better although it may take decades to restore the reputation to something closer than before.
Alabama had some problems awhile back with the football program - to a certain degree - wagging the proverbial dog of the school in the DuBose era. We paid a MAJOR price for it (pardon the pun as you'll see in a moment). We were hurt badly and wounded in the PR department. We canned Dubious and hired Fran, who - if we'll be honest - was way down the list of candidates. Fran jilted us and we were again mocked with tones of, "Y'all are a bunch of cheaters, what did you expect?"
Then came what to my mind was the moment of truth for this great university and its football program: the FIRING (not the hiring) of Mike Price. For those who don't remember what all went down at the time, we were AGAIN mocked for Victorian moralities and being 'backwards' and Stewart Mandel tore us up in a column where he mocked us and said Price ought to be glad he's getting out of a place where everything is backwards and folks are more concerned with what some long dead coach might think and all the other clichés.
But for those who don't know - Price's misdeed that was exposed was NOT the first time. It was the first time it happened so publicly. If Price had stayed here, we would now be the Kentucky Wildcats of the SEC West. Price was a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen, and the school bit the bullet despite it being the month of May and did the right thing and stood up for all the potential victims of Price wanting to score with 18-year old coeds.
(Side note: in 2006, I bought my house from an Alabama alum, a set of parents whose son was an attorney working with the athletic department. The mom told me that her son had said VERY EXPLICITLY that when Price was hired, he was sat down and informed of his OBLIGATIONS to be HONEST with any questions put to him. In fact, after the DuBose scandal, they made crystal clear to Price AND EVERYONE ELSE that you don't answer a query in that office with the old lawyer's trick of answering just the question and nothing else (e.g. how you deal with the IRS 101)).
We were ripped, we were mocked, we were tormented - oh, and then they hung the label 'racist' on us for hiring the unqualified white guy with the big name over the slightly more qualified black guy, neither of whom had head coaching experience. We were racists, obsessed with sex, cheaters, and all the other things we got called.
Look at us now - we are now who everyone wants to be.
And while I don't think that Arkansas will attain our level (because who ever has - ever?), I DO think that in the long run their firing Bobby Petrino laid down a marker of virtue that was important and that WILL help them in the long run. It might be the coach after Bielema just as it was the coach 'after' Shula that restored the rep.
The people who have my sympathy? The people with Baylor on their degrees who have to deal with the smirks and snide comments over things they no doubt don't approve. Same thing with the Penn State folks who had no idea and who now.....what's the FIRST thing you think of when you think of Penn State? It's gonna be that way for a long time folks. (It might help them to destroy the football program and do something else).
I know, I've gone on but my point is simple: if you do the right thing then IN THE LONG RUN it will help. Maybe not now, maybe not a decade from now. But it WILL help eventually. Take the loss now and rebuild your rep.