Baylor acting head coach Jim Grobe has a tough tightrope to walk in 2016, as he follows the fired Art Briles as the Bears’ head man in the wake of an investigation that found systemic failures in the university’s response to sexual violence.
Bill O’Brien has excellent advice for Baylor, in light of his Penn State experience
Few coaches know more about the tricky work of bringing football into equilibrium with institutional failings.
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Texans head coach Bill O’Brien might have a better idea than anyone of the challenges before Grobe, thanks to spending two years at Penn State in the aftermath of the revelations about Jerry Sandusky’s serial sexual abuse of children that helped cost Joe Paterno his job and spark a similar cycle of investigation and self-reflection in State College.
He spoke to the Houston Chronicle, and offered Baylor and Grobe -- whose hiring he praised, calling him “an excellent coach” and “a great person” -- some clear-eyed advice.
“We didn’t try to distance ourselves from child sexual abuse,” O’Brien said. “I think, most importantly, in any situation that involves some things that are hard to talk about, you have to face it and think about the victims. The first thing you have to do – in addition to putting your staff together and connecting with your players – is to make sure people know there are things a lot more important than football.
”Whenever I spoke to our team, especially that first year, you couldn’t forget about what had happened. You have to express how important and how much bigger sexual violence is than football. That was an educational experience for me. Whether it was a media session or what, we never tried to distance ourselves from that.
”We went into the community and talked about it. We had a lot of meetings about how we’d handle it if it ever came up again. We had a blue ribbon game. Our players wore blue ribbons on their helmets to show our thoughts and feelings about victims of sexual abuse.
“To me, it’s a big thing to say, ‘This is football, but at the end of the day, we’re talking about victims. We have to understand how to solve that problem before we get back to winning football games.’”
That -- especially the parts about remembering the victims, and reinforcing that stamping out sexual violence means far more than football -- sounds just about perfect.
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