Art Ray Briles is an American football coach. Briles was the head coach of the Houston Cougars from 2002 to 2007 and the Baylor Bears from 2008 to 2015. His college coaching career ended with his dismissal from the team in 2015 as a result of the Baylor University sexual assault scandal.
Art Briles: Wiki| Resigns| Grambling| Out| Twitter
Wiki:
Arthur Ray Briles (born December 3, 1955) is an American football coach. Briles was the head coach of the Houston Cougars from 2002 to 2007 and the Baylor Bears from 2008 to 2015.
His college coaching career ended with his dismissal from the team in 2015 as a result of the Baylor University sexual assault scandal. He is the author of Beating Goliath:
My Story of Football and Faith (2014). He is the subject of a biography written by Nick Eatman entitled Looking Up: My Journey from Tragedy to Triumph (2013).
Resigns:
Grambling had received backlash after Briles, Baylor’s coach when leaders mishandled sexual assault accusations against players, was hired last week.
Art Briles, the former Baylor football coach who was hired last week as Grambling State University’s offensive coordinator, has resigned four days after being hired.
Grambling:
Even though a 2016 investigation conducted by an outside law firm hired by Baylor revealed that leaders of the school’s football program, on several occasions, covered up instances of sexual violence, an N.C.A.A. committee did not find Briles guilty of violating its rules.
Briles had not worked in college football since 2016 until Grambling State’s surprising decision to bring him onto its staff. He had recently been the head football coach at Mount Vernon High School in Texas before stepping down in 2020.
Out:
Grambling State, a historically Black college in Louisiana that plays in the Football Championship Subdivision, did not release an official statement about Briles’s hiring and had said it would not discuss its reason for bringing him back to college football, according to Brian Howard, a spokesman for the athletic department.
The school faced backlash on social media and from prominent figures in college sports, including Doug Williams, who starred at Grambling State and became the first Black quarterback to start and win a Super Bowl in 1988 with Washington.
Twitter:
Instead of discussing Briles’s history at Baylor, or how it planned to protect its female students going forward, Howard deferred to an interview Briles gave to a local television station last week.
When Briles was asked what he would do if he was made aware of a sexual assault allegation concerning one of his athletes, he said he would report it immediately to Grambling’s coordinator for Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex at universities; Hue Jackson, the former Cleveland Browns coach who was hired to lead the program in December; and Trayvean Scott, Grambling’s vice president for intercollegiate athletics.
