The Baylor Problem

[Coach]

All I can say is, good lord.

That institutional is out of control, in a bad way.

What needs to be done to get it under control?

[Jerm]

Death. Penalty.

[TigeRRUppeRRcut]

Explains how RGIII ended up liking the white girls...

[Buehler445]

Did something new come out? Or is this still the Art Briles era stuff?

[GloucesterChief]

Art Briles era but a new lawsuit claims 52 rapes by football players in 4 years.

[Reerun_KC]

Link?

[Coach]

http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/18609288/art-briles-baylor-bears-assistants-buried-player-misbehavior-documents-say

Former Baylor coach Art Briles and his assistant coaches actively intervened in the discipline of football players, worked to keep their cases under wraps and tried to arrange legal representation for their players, according to a series of emails and text messages released by three university regents in a legal filing Thursday.

The document filed in a Dallas County court was in response to a libel lawsuit that former football director of operations Colin Shillinglaw had filed Tuesday against the school and several members of its senior leadership.

The regents' response alleges Briles and his coaching staff created a disciplinary black hole into "which reports of misconduct such as drug use, physical assault, domestic violence, brandishing of guns, indecent exposure and academic fraud disappeared."

Shillinglaw and former assistant athletic director Tom Hill were fired in May, after lawyers with Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton, hired by Baylor to assess the school's handling of sexual violence complaints, found systematic failures in the way Baylor responded to allegations of sexual assault and other violence by students, including football players. The investigation led to the firing of Briles, the demotion and eventual departure of university president and chancellor Ken Starr, and the sanctioning and resignation of athletic director Ian McCaw.

In an email to ESPN, Shillinglaw's attorney, Gaines West, called Thursday's filing "very unorthodox."

"It's really hard to discern just what it is these defendants assert. We are anxious for the complete truth to come out, instead of just a bunch of disconnected accusations," he wrote.

Ever since the university issued a summary of Pepper Hamilton's findings in May, there has been an outcry -- particularly vocal among supporters of Briles and the football program -- to release the specific findings from the investigation, with the belief by some that those details would exonerate the coaches.

On Wednesday, Briles dropped his defamation suit against three regents and Baylor vice president Reagan Ramsower, less than a week after another woman filed a Title IX lawsuit against the school, in which her attorneys allege there were 52 sexual assaults committed by "not less" than 31 players from 2011 to '14.

Among the information released in Thursday's legal filing is a description of what happened when the former girlfriend of Baylor defensive end Shawn Oakman reported that Oakman physically abused her. She made a report to Waco police, and brought a copy of it to Shillinglaw and "two other people she believed to be assistant football coaches." The response to the lawsuit states, "There was no evidence that Shillinglaw or anyone in the football program shared the report with Baylor officials outside of the Athletics Department. Worse, when Pepper Hamilton questioned Shillinglaw about the incident and showed him evidence of his involvement, Shillinglaw insisted he did not recall anything about it."

The woman, a Baylor student, declined to pursue the criminal case and left the state. She returned to Baylor in the summer and fall sessions of 2013 but withdrew after more encounters with Oakman. In January 2015, the woman and her mother met with a learning accommodation specialist at Baylor who, upon hearing her story, immediately contacted judicial affairs, the Title IX office, the student life office and the office of general counsel. The legal filing states the specialist wrote, "I haven't seen a student as scared and upset as she was in a long time. She mentioned that she lives in constant fear, 24 hours a day she is scared that [Oakman] or his friends will come beat her up. The mom also talked about Baylor protecting the guy because he is a Baylor football player and that he had an assault record before he was at Baylor."

According to the response, the first allegation of gang rape involving Baylor football players surfaced in April 2013, when a female student-athlete confided in her coach that five players raped her at an off-campus party in early 2012. According to the response, the woman told her coach that the incident "started with one football player and the other players were soon 'all over her.'" She identified each of the players who allegedly sexually assaulted her, and the coach wrote their names on a piece of paper.

The regents' response says the woman's coach -- Outside the Lines previously confirmed the coach was former Baylor volleyball coach Jim Barnes -- addressed the woman's allegations with McCaw, who told him to talk to Briles. The response says Barnes showed Briles the names of the players and he replied, "Those are some bad dudes. Why was she around those guys?" The response says Briles "offered no defense of his players and told the coach he should have his student-athlete inform the police and prosecute." McCaw allegedly told the coach that if his player didn't press charges, there wasn't anything the athletic department could do.

The response says the woman's mother later met with a football assistant coach at an off-campus delicatessen and provided him the names of two of the five players who allegedly sexually assaulted her daughter. The assistant talked to the players, who claimed it was consensual and "fooling around" and "just a little bit of playtime." The assistant coach said he contacted other Baylor coaches. According to the legal filing, their "apparent response was to engage in victim-blaming." The assistant concluded the accusations were in a "gray area," and Pepper Hamilton attorneys found that no one, including Briles, notified police, judicial affairs or anyone outside of athletics about the alleged gang rape.

Briles and other coaches would state that any failure to report accusations of assault or related behavior was due to the fact that Baylor lacked any clear instructions on what to do, noting that the university did not have a Title IX office until November 2014 and that none of the coaches received proper training. But the response filed Thursday would note that Briles should have been aware that judicial affairs had jurisdiction in investigating allegations of sexual assault because on April 23, 2013, "the very same day Coach Briles learned about the student-athlete's account of being gang raped -- he was forwarded a letter stating that Judicial Affairs had investigated and cleared another one of his players of sexual assault allegations."

The 54-page response to the lawsuit notes several other incidents that football coaches knew about but were never reported to judicial affairs. On Feb. 11, 2013, when a coach notified Briles that a female student-athlete complained that a football player had brandished a gun at her, it states that Briles responded, "what a fool -- she reporting to authorities." The legal filing then states the assistant responded, "She's acting traumatized ... Trying to talk to her calm now ... Doesn't seem to want to report though."

In one of the messages, dated April 8, 2011, the response notes that Briles sent a text message to an assistant coach, referencing a freshman defensive tackle who was cited for illegal alcohol consumption, "Hopefully he's under radar enough they won't recognize name - did he get ticket from Baylor police or Waco? ... Just trying to keep him away from our judicial affairs folks. ... "

In reference to a player who was arrested for assault and threatening to kill a non-athlete, a football operations staff member "tried to talk the victim out of pressing criminal charges," the document states. The correspondence from Sept. 20, 2013, quotes Briles in a text to McCaw, "Just talked to [the player] - he said Waco PD was there - said they were going to keep it quiet - Wasn't a set up deal ... I'll get shill [Shillinglaw] to ck on Sibley." (Sibley was in reference to Waco attorney Jonathan Sibley.) It states McCaw responded, "That would be great if they kept it quiet."

Briles again referenced having Shillinglaw contact Sibley on behalf of an athlete in an
Aug. 15, 2015, exchange regarding a player who was arrested for possession of marijuana. Briles texts an unidentified assistant coach and asks, "Do we know who complained?" The response to the lawsuit states the assistant coach responded that it was the superintendent at the player's apartment complex, to which Briles replied, "We need to know who (sic) supervisor is and get him to alert us first."

Some of the other exchanges were:

A September 2013 text from Shillinglaw to Briles about a player who allegedly exposed himself to a masseuse, who had a lawyer and was asking the athletic department to handle the situation with discipline and counseling. Briles responded, "What kind of discipline ...She a stripper?" and after Shillinglaw responded that the player was at a salon and spa for the massage, Briles texted, "Not quite as bad."

In October 2013, Shillinglaw and Briles corresponded about a player who was suspended for repeated drug violations. "Bottom line, he has to meet with [Vice President for Student Life Kevin] Jackson tomorrow morning. If Jackson does not reinstate President will," Shillinglaw wrote.

A May 2014 exchange showed Briles and an assistant coach arranging for a player who was caught selling drugs to transfer to another school, noting the offense was never reported to judicial affairs. The assistant coach is quoted as texting, "Him just hanging around Waco scares me. [Another school] will take him. Knows baggage."
The regents' response also claims Briles personally appealed to Starr on behalf of former Bears defensive lineman Tevin Elliott when he was charged with a second count of plagiarism, which made him ineligible for the 2011 season. After Elliott missed an April 2011 appeal deadline, according to the response, Briles "personally took up Elliott's cause more than two months later" in June.

"The coach notified President Starr in an email that Elliott wanted to appeal the suspension," the response says. "The unusual request by Coach Briles triggered concern among top Baylor administrators, who complained to President Starr and among themselves that overturning Elliott's suspension after the appeal deadline would send a message that athletes were above the rules."

The response says Elliott's appeal letter was suspect and "appeared to have been authored by an academic advisor in the Athletics Department. Nevertheless, President Starr ignored the decision of his Provost and overturned the suspension."

In another break with university policy, according to the response, Starr put Elliott under the probationary watch of the athletic department and not judicial affairs, which was responsible for overseeing enforcement of the school's honor code. Because of Starr's decision, the athletic department became the sole arbiter of whether Elliott was complying with the terms of his probation and what consequences he should suffer if he failed to adhere to them, according to the response.

In the fall of 2011, according to the response, Elliott had "attendance problems, was in danger of flunking his human performance class and was caught cheating on quizzes."

On Oct. 21, 2011, an athletic department employee wrote to McCaw: "Wow, what is this kid thinking?" McCaw replied: "Unbelievable!"

On April 1, 2012, a woman told Waco police that Elliott raped her at her apartment three days earlier. Two weeks later, on April 15, Jasmin Hernandez told police that Elliott raped her behind a pool house near one of his teammates' townhomes. When the coaches learned of the allegation, an assistant coach texted Briles and told him that Elliott "firmly denies even knowing the girl." But, after interviewing Elliott the next day, the assistant told Briles that Elliott "admitted he lied to us. He was with her and said when she said stop he did."

"Wow - not good - I'll call you later," Briles replied.

When the assistant texted Briles later and told him that Elliott had been contacted by Waco police, Briles replied: "Dang it."

On Jan. 24, 2014, Elliott was convicted of raping Hernandez and was sentenced to the maximum 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. His trial would reveal accusations by three other women that he raped them and a conviction of misdemeanor physical assault of another.

"The Athletics Department's unwillingness to crack down enabled Elliott to stay at Baylor and play football," the regents' response says.

But Thursday's legal filing notes that the messages were collected by the Pepper Hamilton law firm that was investigating Baylor's response to sexual violence. "There could be dozens more, but Pepper Hamilton believed it had compiled enough to support a conclusion that those in charge of the football program, including Shillinglaw, improperly covered up disciplinary problems other than sexual assault," it states.
The response to Shillinglaw's libel suit filed Thursday was on behalf of three regents he had named as defendants -- chairman Ron Murff, Cary Gray and David Harper -- who are represented by Houston attorney Rusty Hardin. Hardin said the regents felt compelled in defending themselves personally against the lawsuit to release the information, even though Hardin said it does expose the university even more in the defense of its six pending Title IX lawsuits, four of which include women who said they were raped by football players. The response reads less like a legal document and more like a narrative for Baylor's entire sexual assault saga, explaining why the regents had remained mostly silent but were pressured to release details of the evidence against Briles and the coaching staff in light of the groundswell of opposition to his firing -- widely seen this past fall at football games where people wore black T-shirts or carried black banners with the hashtag #CAB for "Coach Art Briles."

Thursday's legal filing recounts a meeting that Baylor alumni and donors had with regents, who were unwilling to share more details of the investigation, citing privacy concerns. It states that the regents tried to explain why they couldn't keep people whom they found responsible for Title IX failure because that would not uphold the "mission of the university." It quotes a donor as responding, "If you mention Baylor's mission one more time, I'm going to throw up. ... I was promised a national championship."

The response notes that the regents could no longer "allow Coach Briles' supporters to continue polluting the record," and had a "right and a duty to set the record straight."

"When a college football coach goes 6-7, 5-7, and 5-7 for three consecutive years, no one blinks an eye when the coach is fired. But when at least 17 women report sexual and physical assaults involving at least 19 football players, including allegations of four gang rapes, why is anyone shocked by his dismissal?" it states. "Contrary to some people's belief, Briles was not a 'scapegoat' for the University's larger problems -- he was part of the larger problem."

Briles' attorney, Ernest Cannon, could not be reached Thursday for comment and did not respond to a text message or email.

With social media reaction already calling for the NCAA to take action against Baylor in light of the new information, Hardin said Baylor should be commended for hiring Pepper Hamilton, releasing the highly critical results of the investigation and firing its head coach at a time when most other colleges confronted with such allegations would just quietly pay off the victims and not investigate further.

"At the end of the day, I'm hoping that the NCAA and others will recognize that instead of punishing Baylor, they ought to be saluted," he said. "I think they ought to be held up as a model for how to respond."

[GloucesterChief]

Here is the Dallas Morning News coverage (http://www.dallasnews.com/news/baylor/2017/01/27/new-baylor-lawsuit-describes-show-em-good-time-culture-cites-52-rapes-football-players-4-years)

[Jewish Rabbi]

Man we should pick up Shawn Oakman. Forgot about that dude.

[Reerun_KC]

Wow

[stumppy]

I only skimmed through that but JFC, what a bunch of scumbags.

[Pasta Little Brioni]

Eh only certain schools are allowed to sweep that stuff under the rug. Death penalty though...

[big nasty kcnut]

baylor need to die in a fire!

[New World Order]

More Dave Bliss controversy?

[kcchiefsus]

I also believe there's no way a little piece of shit school like Baylor has skyrocketed in terms of its programs in basketball and football without a lot of shady business going on.

[Red Dawg]

Dear lord that is incredible. How can so many all be so insane and be in the same place. Baylor? I mean really?

[HemiEd]

They have had their share of problems. Remember this?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/28/sports/college-basketball-death-and-deception.html
COLLEGE BASKETBALL; Death and Deception
By MIKE WISEAUG. 28, 2003


When a basketball player at the world's largest Baptist university was shot twice in the head near an old gravel pit and his former teammate was arrested and charged with pulling the trigger, the event seemed dramatic enough to open a beach holiday page turner.

And then the story unfolded, layer by layer, to expose the lying coach, the cheating program, drugs, secret tapes, clandestine meetings and an attempted cover-up at Baylor University.

Patrick Dennehy is dead -- his life to be celebrated Thursday at a final memorial service on campus. His former teammate Carlton Dotson sits in a Maryland jail cell. On Wednesday, a grand jury here indicted Dotson in Dennehy's murder.

Dave Bliss, the Baylor coach who used to dispense life-affirming advice to his players on topics like ''what it is to be a man,'' has resigned and may face criminal charges based on contents of the tapes.


Bliss, caught on tape by an assistant coach, tried to persuade others to portray Dennehy as a drug dealer, ostensibly to save his program and his reputation as one of the winningest active coaches in Division I basketball. That way, payments from the basketball office to Dennehy might not be traced back to Bliss and the murder could look like another young African-American claimed by the drug culture.

As the country now knows, an assistant coach with a conscience and a hidden tape recorder blew the cover-up and Baylor University staked its place as the site of perhaps the most shocking scandal yet in intercollegiate athletics.

The question is always the same now: ''We ask ourselves, 'How did it happen?''' Robert B. Sloan Jr., the embattled Baylor president, said on Aug. 21 in a conference room outside his office as some faculty members publicly called for his resignation. ''But it did happen here.''

Those left behind are bewildered. ''Maybe the devil is working here, trying to push us down a bit,'' said Matt Sayman, one of the few basketball players who have yet to flee Baylor. ''Not saying people weren't at fault, but the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making us believe he didn't exist.''

Bliss's plan seemed foolproof last summer. Two rangy, athletic forwards from opposite coasts with shared hoop dreams would come to Baylor and help jump-start the aging coach's stalled program.

Dennehy and Dotson would join other second-chance athletes and transfers trying to show they could play at the major-college level so that the National Basketball Association might one day make them rich.

Bliss, entering his 28th year of coaching, would earn back the reputation he built by winning more than 500 games, placing him 13th in career victories among active coaches at the Division I level.

Dennehy and Dotson came from broken families, and they bonded quickly over rap music and action movies. Dotson was a transfer from Paris Junior College in east Texas and eligible to play his first season. Dennehy, because of National Collegiate Athletic Association eligibility rules, had to sit out a year after transferring from New Mexico, where he had been kicked off the team after storming out of practice.

On the surface, a 158-year-old Baptist university did not appear to be the ideal setting for his redemption. Baylor is the last major university to require chapel, and its ban on dancing was not lifted until 1996.

But by last summer, Dennehy had made a religious and personal transformation, said Jessica De La Rosa, whom he dated for nearly two years. He could not wait to play this season against Kansas and Oklahoma in the Big 12 Conference, she said.

Bliss saw his stuck-in-neutral program turning the corner, too. Friends and associates said he believed Harvey Thomas, a 2003 junior-college transfer, was the missing link in a team that could get him back to the N.C.A.A. tournament for the first time since he took New Mexico there in 1999.

He did not view Dotson as part of that plan, Dotson told friends. Bliss had told Dotson he would play little during the coming season, and Dotson planned to transfer again.

Dotson moved in with Dennehy in April after his marriage of eight months had fallen apart.

It all unraveled quickly after that. On June 2, the two bought and registered guns to protect themselves, they told friends.

Baylor officials said Dotson and Dennehy went to different coaches to say that they had about $300 stolen from their apartment and had been threatened by teammates. On June 7, after the five-day mandatory waiting period, they picked up the guns.

Dennehy's family has said that Baylor coaches did not take the threats seriously and did nothing to help Dennehy. ''They were being threatened and they went out and got these guns after the coaches blew them off,'' De La Rosa said.



University officials insisted at the time that neither player had complained about threats.

The last known communication from Dennehy was June 14. On June 19, he was reported missing. Dotson showed up in Maryland a few days later. Dennehy's sport utility vehicle was found abandoned in Virginia.

Dotson was arrested in late July after calling 911, saying he needed help because he was hearing voices. According to a recent report in The Washington Post, several of Dotson's family members were growing deeply concerned about his emotionally unstable behavior.

The Waco police said Dotson had told F.B.I. agents in Maryland that he shot Dennehy after the player tried to shoot him. Dotson told The Associated Press that he ''didn't confess to anything.''

Either way, a McLennan County deputy first spotted Dennehy's badly decomposed body hard off Junction 3400, a quarter-mile down a dirt road and a few miles southeast of the Baylor campus.

An autopsy report revealed that Dennehy had been shot twice above the right ear, a fact that Dennehy's family and friends say ruins the theory that the killer was acting in self-defense.

Within a few weeks, a university inquiry found that Bliss had been directly involved in paying tuition costs and other expenses for Dennehy and another player. It also found failed drug tests by players had not been properly reported, days after Bliss insisted he had been running pristine programs for 30 years.

But the most startling bombshell came soon after Bliss shook the hand of Dennehy's stepfather at a memorial service on Aug. 7 in San Jose, Calif. Bliss resigned the next day.

Abar Rouse, an assistant coach, made secret tape recordings on July 30 and 31 and Aug. 1, and turned them over to The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Fearful that he would lose his job if he did not go along with the plan, Rouse captured Bliss on tape coaching two players to dramatize their statements about Dennehy to university and police investigators.

Bliss said on tape that Dennehy could not refute the accusations because he was dead. He suggested the two players could tell slightly different stories. ''It doesn't have to be the same story,'' he said on one tape. ''It just has to have the same ending.''

In fact, the ending to the story is still being written.

As of late August, a tribute to Bliss's 500th victory in November 2001 still resided in the trophy case of the Ferrell Center. A plaque awarded to him by the National Association of Basketball Coaches is titled ''Guardians of the Game.''

When Bliss was last heard from publicly, he was going around apologizing to players for the frame-up, with tape recorder in hand. One player's father, Richard Guinn, interrupted Bliss to get his own recorder, just in case.

De La Rosa and members of Dennehy's family, including his mother, Valorie Brabazon, and his stepfather, Brian Brabazon, wear Dennehy's ashes around their necks. They were placed in matching silver crosses with glass backing, ''so we could see Patrick,'' De La Rosa said.

She and Dennehy went shopping for his wedding ring early last spring. ''I remembered that the day I picked out his urn,'' De La Rosa said.

The gossip and intrigue has seeped into every nook and cranny of Waco, from the Baylor quadrangles to the neon beer signs at George's, a popular bar near the football stadium.

''They try to act like they don't do no wrong at that school, but then you see what happens behind the curtain,'' said Brent Dodd, a local resident who showed a visitor the site where Dennehy's body was found. ''It's just sad, real sad.''

Scott Drew is the lone ray of light now. Drew, the former Valparaiso coach, was hired on Aug. 22 to clean up the mess. He likened the job at hand to David versus Goliath, but one local columnist said that at least David had a rock. Drew joked at a news conference that he thought student interest in the basketball team would grow ''because we're going to have people who are normally in the stands out here playing.''

Sloan, the Baylor president, spoke during the welcome picnic for freshmen and transfers. He assured parents like Alan and Retha Shepherd that their 18-year-old daughter, Melanie, would be safe at Baylor -- no matter what had happened with the two basketball players and the calculating, desperate coach who hid the truth.

''Many of you will meet people over the next few years who will greatly enrich your life,'' Sloan said.

[Prison Bitch]

Baylor has prob 100,000 alums. Only a few committed these alleged crimes. Remember: if only a few bad Muslims don't ruin Islam, the same has to apply here

[Hydrae]

Good Christian (Baptist) based private university. :rolleyes:

[notorious]

Is Baylor the most corrupt university in the nation?

Jesus, this shit is far worse than SMU

[Pasta Little Brioni]

Is Baylor the most corrupt university in the nation?

Jesus, this shit is far worse than SMU

Maybe, but ALOT of shit gets buried at certain universities. Baylor simply is not allowed to do that.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Dave Bliss
Art Briles
David Koresh
Mack Rhoades
Ken Starr

Nuke it from orbit.

[Buehler445]

I just heard it on the radio, but once the text messages and stuff hit public, Briles pulled all of his lawsuits.

ROFL

NO Not guilty at all!