Has anything really changed for Baylor football?
— -- WACO, Texas -- Baylor returns to the football field tonight, but the fallout from the school's mishandling of sexual assault allegations is far from over.
Coach Art Briles, university president Kenneth Starr and other key Baylor leaders are gone, dismissed or having resigned after an investigation found the school ignored or failed to investigate several sexual assault claims. And much more change is expected as the university focuses on reforming its Title IX efforts and implementing 105 recommendations from Pepper Hamilton, the Philadelphia law firm hired last fall to investigate the school's handling of sexual assault complaints made by students.
That investigation reported widespread failures in the school's Title IX process and raised concerns about the "tone and culture within Baylor's football program."
And yet, as the Bears kick off the 2016 season Friday night against FCS foe Northwestern State, the football program looks a lot like it did before the disastrous offseason.
Though interim coach Jim Grobe will be pacing the sideline, the offense and defense will still be run by Briles' nine assistant coaches, two of whom are literally his family. His son, offensive coordinator Kendal Briles, and his son-in-law, running backs coach Jeff Lebby, remain on staff.
Two other coaches have worked with Briles every day since he took over the program in 2008.
Grobe, whose contract only runs through the end of this season, said he kept Briles' assistants because they weren't accused of any wrongdoing in the Pepper Hamilton report.
"If you look at what happened at Baylor, we lost our president, our athletics director, our football coach and some operations people," Grobe said. "It was dealt with pretty harshly, I think, and why would they stop with the head coach if others did something wrong? Trust me, if I knew anybody else did anything wrong, they wouldn't be here."
But now Briles' image has been removed from McLane Stadium, where he transformed a Big 12 doormat into a national championship contender. His influence and connections, however, cannot be escaped.
Just ask the new coach.
"Our coaches were very loyal for Art. Our players loved him," Grobe said. "He did great things here. And so going forward, I will never diminish anything that's been done here in the past on the field."
But it's what happened off the field that haunts Baylor and raises so many questions about its future. And its lingering connections to Briles keep returning.
Not long after his firing and contract settlement, Briles had a private luncheon for friends and family on July 13 at Torchy's Tacos, a restaurant just a few blocks from Baylor's campus. Current and former Baylor players attended, as did the assistant coaches.
Briles was mingling and dining with his former staff and starting quarterback less than a month after his attorneys accused the school of making him the scapegoat for its scandal. He's still a co-defendant, with Baylor, in a federal civil lawsuit filed by a former Baylor student. Briles might have been paid $15 million to $20 million to go away, but his ties to the school still linger.
Grobe, who didn't attend the lunch, didn't object to the former coach meeting with players and coaches.
But still the question lingers:
Can Baylor's culture change even if the key football leaders are mostly the same? The school's interim president, David Garland, seems to believe so, saying the coaches are "honorable men" who would benefit from education and support through a better Title IX program.
When Grobe was hired, deputy athletic director Todd Patulski said: "I really relied on our Board of Regents and the report they provided. Ultimately, the directive was to create stability within our coaches and keep them."
That's not what most observers will be watching when Baylor's season kicks off, with an expectation that a talented roster will again roll up points and wins all fall.
Alison Kiss, executive director of the Clery Center for Security on Campus, whose mission is to work with college communities to create safer campuses through advocacy, education and collaboration, said she believes restoring campus safety and repairing trust in the university begin with transparency, which includes releasing the full Pepper Hamilton report.
"If you're going to build the trust within your community and your students -- all of your students -- is to be transparent about it," Kiss said. "Until that's released, there's going to be a lot of speculation. There's value in doing that. You're certainly airing out your dirty laundry, but if you're ever going to change, the one thing we hear from students across the country is they want transparency and fairness. If you're going to build that trust, there's got to be transparency."
For Garland it is simpler. It's about the university understanding the priorities need to be changed, even at the expense of football success.
"I don't think there's any balance," Garland told the Waco Tribune in July. If you have sexual assaults, it's unacceptable. I don't care if we go 0-12 -- we cannot have sexual assaults."
Baylor's season begins today, but these bigger questions remain: Do the school and football program understand the magnitude of the problem? And is the entire Baylor community committed to changing the culture?
