Even in the midst of one of the worst scandals in college football history, Art Briles still got paid.
It had previously been reported that Briles and Baylor had reached on an agreement on a contract settlement, although the dollar amount involved wasn’t disclosed. Friday night, citing Baylor’s IRS filings, Chuck Carlton of the Dallas Morning News is reporting that, one month after Briles was fired as the university’s head football coach Memorial Day weekend of 2016, BU paid the disgraced head coach a $15.1 million settlement. That figure, as obscene as it is given the controversial nature of his departure, is actually a bargain for the university as Briles still had eight years and $39 million remaining on his contract when he was dismissed amidst a sexual assault scandal involving his Bears football program.
In late January of 2017, damning details in one of the handful of the lawsuits facing the university emerged, with that suit alleging that 31 Bears football players had committed 52 acts of rape over a period of four years beginning in 2011.
Not long after, a legal filing connected to the libel lawsuit filed by a former BU football staffer produced emails and text messages that paint a picture of Briles and/or his assistants as unrestrained rogue elements concerned with nothing more than the image of the football program off the field and its performance on it. The details in a damning document dump included allegations that Briles attempted to circumvent BU’s “judicial affairs folks” when it came to one player’s arrest… and on Briles asking, in response to one of his players brandishing a gun on a female, “she reporting [it] to authorities?”… and asking “she a stripper?” when told one of his players expected a little something extra from a female masseuse… and stating in a text “we need to know who [the] supervisor is and get him to alert us first” in response to a player who was arrested on a drug charge because the apartment superintendent called the police.
In reference to a woman who alleged she was gang-raped by several Bears football players, Briles allegedly responded, “those are some bad dudes. Why was she around those guys?”
While Briles parted ways with the program May 26, his termination wasn’t official until a month later. In a press release sent out on June 24 of 2016, Baylor announced that it and Briles “have mutually agreed to terminate their employment relationship.” In the release, the university mentions “[b]oth parties acknowledge that there were serious shortcomings in the response to reports of sexual violence by some student-athletes.”
Still considered a pariah by many, Briles has not held a coaching job since that “mutual termination” nearly two years ago.
In August of last year, it was reported that Lane Kiffin was informally using Briles to help him with his Florida Atlantic offense; the very next day, the FAU head coach very publicly stated Briles is “absolutely not a consultant” for his team. In September of last year, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the CFL raised eyebrows, among other things, when it announced that Briles had been hired as the team’s offensive coordinator; a few hours later, the team announced that “Briles will no longer be joining the Hamilton Tiger-Cats as a coach.” In January of this year, it was reported that Briles would be one of the guest speakers at the annual American Football Coaches Association Convention in Charlotte; the next day, following a wave of criticism over the impending appearance, the AFCA did a 180-degree turn and canceled Briles’ session with the coaches in attendance.