I don’t understand how Baylor University still has a football team. I don’t understand how they still have an Athletic Department. I don’t understand how Baylor is still part of the Big XII. They are an embarrassment to the academic institution of Baylor University.
Now, Baylor is no novice to disturbing scandals within it’s athletic department. Remember Patrick Dennehy? If you don’t let me remind you whom that is. Mr. Dennehy was a basketball player at Baylor in 2003. Why is this important? Because he was murdered in the summer of 2003 by Carlton Dotson, another Baylor basketball player. If that wasn’t bad enough, the Baylor coach, Dave Bliss lied to authorities saying that Dennehy was a drug dealer and that is why Dennehy was killed. Bliss lied, to hide the fact that Bliss, had paid Dennehy’s tuition and put a down payment on a car Dennehy had just purchased.
We have all read about the disgusting events that have been surrounding the Baylor Football program under Art Briles. There seems to have been a culture around the football team where, it seems that it was okay to engage in sexual assault. We all have heard about the 52 rapes over a span of 4 years. And yesterday there was another Title IX lawsuit by a Baylor female Volleyball player saying that she was gang raped.
The lawsuit claims that rape was used as “bonding” for football players. The lawsuit claims that not only did they gang rape her, that after she reported the incident to the Waco Police Dept., the players retaliated against her by breaking into her apartment stealing money and ransacking her home. It should be noted, that no charges were filed in this case. However the lack of charges does not mean nothing happened. At worst the players engaged in questionable behavior and at worst, they gang raped a young woman and harassed her until she left the University.
This is VERY different from the Penn St scandal. In my opinion, the NCAA had no legal standing in that case to take action. Jerry Sandusky was not employed by the University of the time of the assault that Mike McQuery walked in on (we can discuss the allegation revealed at Sandusky’s trial that Penn St. knew going back to 1976, but that is conjecture). Penn St covered up an assault by a former employee on it’s campus and did not, in my opinion deserve the reduction in scholarships and bowl ban imposed upon it.
This Baylor situation is completely different. These were active football players, they were engaged in activities that are sickening. This was not 10-12 years ago, this newest allegation states that the incident happened 5 years ago. Again, there seems to have been a culture at Baylor that allowed players to engage in questionable behavior. But as the allegations keep coming in and players are being named, arrested, investigated, charged, and sometimes convicted in these cases one has to think something is wrong at Baylor. As we sit here, I have not heard of the NCAA being on campus to investigate the Baylor football program.
That is the most damning and saddest part of this whole story. We have Title IX after Title IX lawsuits being filed, and the NCAA enforcement staff is sitting on it’s hands in complete silence! After the Laremy Tunsil press conference, when there was allegations that Hugh Freeze paid his electric bill, the NCAA went back to Ole Miss and reopened the investigation! However, when reports of rapes and sexual assaults by a football team are plastered all over the front pages we don’t hear word one from the NCAA.
I hope that the NCAA is not more focused on players getting illegal benefits and $100.00 handshakes, while football players are sexually assaulting fellow students on campus. But the silence coming out of Indianapolis is deafening!
Baylor deserves to lose it’s football team for at least a year. I would say more, but it seems as though the NCAA has it’s head in the sand, and it doesn’t look like they are that interested in digging it out any time soon…..
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