Michigan Football Should Not Join Baylor In Satellite Camps

What’s been unfolding at Baylor is horrendously sad, and Michigan football should not associate itself with that program, including at satellite camps.

There are a huge number of outlets you can use to read about the (semi) specifics of the scandal currently unfolding at Baylor, the likes of which have only been seen once in the history of college football, so I’ll let you do that research for yourself.

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Essentially, a cadre of powerful men employed by Baylor University were found to be responsible for covering up sexual assaults and rapes committed by Baylor football players over the course of several years.

In fact, not only did those in power allegedly work in cahoots with the local police department to cover up crimes, they also allegedly made life a living hell for the victims who were considering bringing charges.

One of those men is former head coach Art Briles.

Satellite Camps: NCAA shoots down Michigan… Again

The Baylor satellite camp was a huge get a few months ago for Michigan football. Think about it: two of the most respected football minds in the game would meet up in a state that Michigan has traditionally had a difficult time recruiting (Texas); one of them a revolutionary spread-and-shred coach whose teams light up the scoreboard every week, and one whose offense—while complex—is grounded in the “three yards and a cloud of dust” ideology.

I mean, let’s just juxtapose this video:

And this one.

Spread vs. power, ground-and-pound vs spread-and-shred, etc. It would have been a perfect yin and yang of current college offenses, but alas, it should not happen.

I’ll get to the rest of the actual football reasons this camp shouldn’t happen in a second, but let’s take a moment to consider the moral implications of associating with a university that was just found to have hosted one of the most disgusting NCAA scandals ever.

The NCAA should rain down far more hellfire on Baylor than the Bears have on themselves, but who the hell knows if that happens. Sure, Briles was fired, and, to some extent, that’s a big deal, but we still don’t know what he actually did because the report was so vague.

This article over at Deadspin does a great job of explaining how this whole process—from the announcement of an investigation to the findings released the other day—is just obfuscation poorly disguised as (shamelessly self-congratulatory) transparency and accountability.

Also—and this is all conjecture—something tells me Briles wasn’t directly involved in the cover-ups and harassment; I certainly think he knew what was happening (otherwise the administration never would have made him fall on his sword), but if you think he was involved in the nitty gritty of intimidating college rape victims, you’ve got another thing coming.

That is to say, it would not be surprising if Baylor gets rid of the rest of coaching staff, or at least most of it.

But if the rest of the Baylor staff stays on and U-M continues on with the camp, then everyone from the top down at Michigan should be ashamed. Rape and its coverup is an epidemic in college football, and to pretend like the coaches currently on the Baylor staff weren’t complicit just because they didn’t get fired would be an act outside of character to an intelligent human being, which most at Michigan are.

Listen, it’s going to cost money, it’s going to cost pride, it’s going to cost Texas recruits, and it’s going to cost valuable practice/recruiting time to cancel the camp. You know what that pales in comparison to? Buddying up with a school with an ostensibly (and loudly projected) Christian mission that now holds the record for two of the three worst college sports scandals of all time (Baylor Basketball, Baylor Football, and Penn State Football).

“Michigan Men” like to think that we live on the moral high ground, but continuing on with this camp just because of some Waco Kabuki Theater would knock us down a peg equivalent to the Brendan Gibbons scandal or the Shane Morris debacle. (We don’t live on the moral high ground, but still.)

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Michigan is better than this.