Baylor University has dealt with controversy in the past, but this new controversy is something else entirely (Source: Baylor University)
Remember Super Bowl 50? The Denver Broncos hoisted the Lombardi Trophy that Sunday after a game that featured the vaunted Denver defense shutting down Cam Newton and the explosive Carolina Panthers and made them look like the Cleveland Browns, causing havoc, forcing fumbles, and just embarrassing the regular season MVP. Sure, there were discussions regarding the Hollywood ending for Peyton Manning, winning what turned out to be the final professional football game of his illustrious NFL career. Defensive coordinator Wade Phillips got some praise for being the conductor of one of the most dominant defenses the NFL has ever seen. Cam Newton faced a ton of questions regarding his mental toughness and whether he should have dove for that fumble in the fourth quarter. However, as much as we have analyzed and will continue to analyze the game, there was a much darker story that first broke that day, but did not nearly get enough media coverage. Baylor University, located in Waco, Texas, is the center of yet another horrific story of a major university brushing aside major allegations aimed at their star athletes and, if you are hearing about this for the first time, then the media is not doing their job.
Baylor has been involved in a controversial scandal before. 2003 saw the murder of Patrick Dennehy, a member of the Baylor Bears’ men’s basketball team. Dennehy had transferred from the University of New Mexico in 2002 and sat out a year due to the rules that the NCAA has for underclassmen who transfer to a new school. While at Baylor, he became friends with Carlton Dotson, who played at the University of Buffalo and Paris Junior College before transferring to Baylor in 2002 as well. The two lived in the same apartment complex and felt that they were in danger due to apparent threats made at Dotson by two teammates. Dennehy and Dotson bought two pistols and a rifle for protection and spent time at a shooting range, a place where Dotson murdered Dennehy. Dotson claimed that, since he was “Jesus, the son of God,” people would be trying to kill him. Dotson said to the FBI that, on June 11, 2003, he and Dennehy went to some gravel pits for targeting practice when Dennehy aimed his gun at him, but the gun jammed so Dotson fired back at Dennehy and killed him. Dotson was deemed incompetent to stand by trial in 2004, so he was sent to be evaluated at a mental hospital, where he made claims of seeing hallucinations and hearing voices. Dotson then unexpectedly pled guilty to murdering Dennehy on June 8, 2005 and was sentenced to 35 years in prison, with the possibility of parole in 2021.
Former Baylor Bears basketball coach Dave Bliss: a man who portrayed a murder victim as a drug dealer (Source: Erich Schlegel/USA TODAY)
The NCAA had some concerns over how Dennehy could be a member of the Baylor basketball team without having an athletic scholarship for the 2002-03 basketball season, so an investigation took regarding the matter. The circumstances surrounding Dennehy’s murder only amplified the seriousness that the NCAA took when delving into how Dennehy was able to be a member of the team. This gave way to the fall from grace, if you could call it that, of head coach Dave Bliss, who was involved in a lot of illegal activities while being the head coach of the Bears. More evidence surfaced that Bliss and assistant coach Rodney Belcher were present at a pickup game featuring a Baylor recruit, considered an “illegal workout” according to the NCAA. Rampant drug and alcohol use was reported by a mother of one of the players and Melissa Kethley, the estranged wife of Carlton Dotson, but largely ignored by Bliss and his staff. Even more startling was the fact that Bliss was already involved in illegal activities back in the 1980s with Southern Methodist University, a school which has had its fair share of sanctions leveled against it by the NCAA, but you can read about that here. Shockingly enough, the NCAA showed mercy on the program since the school already was dealt the death penalty, but Bliss left before any discipline could be taken against him.
Despite all that, the most damning discovery was how, after Dennehy’s memorial service, Bliss met with the administration and was told that they found out through Dennehy’s girlfriend that Bliss paid for the tuition of both Dennehy and another teammate, Corey Herring. This was the final nail in the coffin and, on August 8, 2003, school president Robert B. Sloan forced Bliss to resign. However, Bliss was not going to just lie down and accept this decision, so he decided to try and win the public back by making the most shameful accusations I have heard in a while. Bliss denied paying for Dennehy and Herring and instead made the claim that Dennehy was a drug dealer paying his own tuition, which was discovered after assistant coach Abar Rouse recorded the conversations Bliss had with his players to go along with the idea because Bliss threatened to fire Rouse. The damage was done, and Bliss not did not coach another college basketball game until this past season, when he was hired by Southwestern Christian University of the Sooner Athletic Conference.
Art Briles may have brought Baylor back into national relevance on the football field, but his non-actions may have undone all that work (Source: Tommy Gilligan / USA TODAY Sports)
You would think after all that nonsense that Baylor University would get it together, but now we are in the midst of yet another controversy, this one even worse than the last if you can believe that. 2008 was the first season that the Baylor basketball team had a winning record since Bliss was ousted as head coach, which was the same year that the Baylor football program hired Art Briles, who had spent five seasons as head coach of the Houston Cougars football team, to be their next head coach. While Briles had his fair share of struggles coming out of the gate, the situation got better thanks to quarterback Robert Griffin III, who became the first Heisman Trophy winner in the history of the program. Briles and RGIII helped bring Baylor back to the national spotlight for the first time in 25 years and, while Nick Florence and Bryce Petty did not bring the same dynamic style of play that Griffin III produced, the Bears were still relevant in the national picture. However, this is not an article of heaping praise on a program, but rather the seedy underbelly of it. That is all thanks to a former defensive lineman named Sam Ukwuachu, a transfer from Boise State University, who is the guy who lit the powder-keg and caused the ensuing explosion of revelations of the misconduct that occurred under the “watchful” eyes of Briles.
The various incidents involving Baylor football players goes as far back as 2009, Briles’s second season as Baylor head coach, when Tevin Elliott sexually assaulted a female Baylor student while she was intoxicated and passed out in her apartment, an assault that Baylor judicial affairs officials were very aware of in 2011. Baylor had a freshman named “Tanya” report that Elliott sexually assaulted her twice at a party, despite not even knowing who he was. When she attempted to get help from campus police a few days later, she was told that counseling was unavailable despite being assaulted by a fellow student. Her grades suffered, she was placed on probation, and she subsequently left Baylor in 2013. Two weeks before “Tanya” had her encounter with Elliott, a Baylor athlete named “Kim” went to Waco to inform them that Elliott had sexually assaulted her too. “Kim” and her mother eventually met with Bethany McCray, the chief judicial officer at Baylor. McCray informed the two that “Kim” was the sixth woman who reported an incident involving Elliott and, according to “Kim,” Briles was aware of all six accusations. Briles suspended Elliott due to a “violation of team policy” and Elliott was later arrested and charged for sexual assault, for which he was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
While all the drama involving Elliott took place, Shawn Oakman, a member of the Penn State Nittany Lions football team, was kicked off the team due to him trying to steal a sandwich and an ensuing confrontation with a female employee. Oakman then transferred to Baylor, where he sat out the 2012 season due to the transfer rules that the NCAA has. The beginning of 2013 saw police respond to an incident of domestic abuse involving Oakman and his ex-girlfriend, and incident that Baylor was fully aware of and did nothing in terms of discipline, a fact that was revealed two years later. Other than that incident, Oakman kept his nose clean of any wrongdoing and seemed like he had his head on straight. Then, after having graduated in December 2015, Oakman was arrested last month for sexual assault, stemming from an incident April 3 in which Oakman and a Baylor student left a nightclub and went to Oakman’s duplex, where the sexual assault took place. The female student then went to the hospital, where she was looked at by a sexual assault nurse examiner. Needless to say, Oakman, a player who was hoping to be taken somewhere in last month’s NFL Draft, was avoided due to that arrest.
The four Baylor football players at the center of this new scandal: #18 Tevin Elliott (Source: Cooper Neill/Icon Sportswire), #92 Sam Ukwuachu (Source: Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports), #2 Shawn Oakman (Source: Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News), and #41 Tre’Von Armstead (Source: Mo Khursheed/TFV Media via AP Images)
Then there is the 2013 case involving Tre’Von Armstead and Shamycheal ‘Myke’ Chatman, where police were once again informed of an incident involving Baylor football players. This time, witnesses told police that there were noises heard that sounded like an assault was taking place and, based on police observations at the scene, it was pretty evident that an assault took place. Further observations at the hospital via a rape exam showed that the woman assaulted had bruises, a bite mark, and scratches on her body. All of this was critical in proving Armstead and Chatman committed this act, but the assaulted woman declined to press charges against the two due to the fact that she was too intoxicated to fully remember the events that transpired. The police ended the investigation, but not before informing Baylor officials of the incident. The police then told the woman that Baylor officials would contact her regarding what would happen next, yet the woman heard from anyone at Baylor. The case is forgotten until two years later when the victim, after being coaxed by a friend who attended a sexual assault prevention training program, asked Baylor officials about the status of her case. The officials finally get their act together and look into the incident involving Armstead and Chatman and, following the conclusion of their investigation, kick Armstead off the football team due to a “team rules violation.”
Despite all those instances of sexual assault I just listed, the worst involved Sam Ukwuachu, a player who was kicked off the Boise State Broncos football team following a 2013 altercation with his then-girlfriend and roommate. Then Broncos head coach Chris Petersen, who is now the head coach for the Washington Huskies, allegedly informed Briles of just what kind of a person Ukwuachu was. How much information Petersen knew regarding Ukwuachu and his troubles may never be fully known, but Petersen had to know at least something, which is why he warned Briles in the first place. Boise State did not support Ukwuachu’s waiver to play, so he sat out the 2013 football season, but that decision was overshadowed by a report involving Ukwuachu and a sexual assault on a Jane Doe, who went to the hospital and, after being administered a rape kit, filed the report. Months passed, the Jane Doe was diagnosed with PTSD, and after a mandatory investigation, Baylor concluded that the alleged sexual assault never happened. However, the Waco district attorney determined that there was enough evidence that warranted an indictment of Ukwuachu on sexual assault charges. Ukwuachu did not play for the Bears in 2014 while the Jane Doe was told to alter her schedule to avoid any possible confrontations with Ukwuachu until she eventually transferred a year later. Ukwuachu stayed on the team due to his status as a graduate student and was expected to play until he was arrested for another sexual assault incident and was placed on probation for ten years.
All of this has led to today, where school president Ken Starr was stripped of his position as president and his subsequent relegation to the role of chancellor, Briles was fired as head coach of the football team, and athletic director Ian McCaw was sanctioned and placed on probation. This situation is eerily reminiscent of the nightmare at Penn State involving Jerry Sandusky and how much Joe Paterno, Graham Spanier, and Tim Curley knew of his abuse. The disturbing accounts of what happened at both Penn State and Baylor and the sheer heartlessness of the people in charge who would rather prioritize the status of their football programs instead of the safety of their students and anyone close to the universities. Pedophilia and rape are two of the most despicable criminal offenses that one can commit, and the fact that both Penn State and Baylor pretended that nothing ever happened is wrong on so many levels. the Nittany Lions are 30-24 since Paterno was ousted as head coach and, while they are nowhere near as feared as they were in the past, that storied history benefits the program, as tainted as it is now. The Baylor Bears are not even in the same atmosphere as the Nittany Lions in terms of football success. Briles seemed to be the guy who could help him get over the hump, but now that is not going to be the case. Dave Bliss was the coach at Southern Methodist, whose football program was dealt the death penalty and has been unable to fully recover ever since. It is a matter of time to see whether the same fate awaits Baylor.
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