It’s back to work for Baylor University football with a new coach in place as Ken Starr who was the chancellor has been demoted. The university can begin recovering from the Art Briles era– a time of winning football, a new $266 million stadium and a few sexual assault cases that were ironically never investigated. Ken Starr is also the federal independent counselor who headed the investigation of President Bill Clinton’s dealings of Clinton ally Vince Foster who committed suicide. He then moved onto a Clinton real estate deal known as “Whitewater” and somehow ended up probing an affair between Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. The blue semen stained dress and the impeachment of Clinton back in the 1990s are both items of extreme familiarity to Starr.
Briles came to Baylor in 2007 and turned a losing program into a winning program. That counts for something in college football despite the fact that NCAA President Mark Emmert and the like argue that football has never been the most important aspect of a school. Regardless of opinion, big time college football is arguably the most important aspect of a school.
The school hired an outside law firm to handle the investigation of the allegations which came back with a finding that led to the dismissal of Briles. The big time college sports industry is filled with coaches put on pedestals for their ability to recruit the best players and win consistently. The NCAA, the governing body of college sports, seems to make up rules as it goes with one thing in mind which is to protect the school and the program and not worry about the players. The term “student-athlete” itself is a dodge, made up so colleges could deny workman’s compensation to injured players. Briles won a lot of games which is all that counts, even Ken Starr knew that. Briles is gone but football will continue as it did at Penn State after Jerry Sandusky’s crimes against young boys.
By Evan Weiner for The Politics of Sports Business.
This article was republished with permission from the original publisher, Evan Weiner.