Art Briles out at Grambling, football world reacts

After a significant amount of backlash in the short time since he was hired, Art Briles will not be the offensive coordinator at Grambling State.

The backlash to Briles being hired was swift. To try to ease the tension, Briles gave an interview regarding the massive sexual assault scandal and coverup that happened while he was at Baylor, which led to his dismissal. Grambling coach, Hue Jackson issued a statement, as well. But none of that did any good. In fact, Jackson might have made matters worse for himself.

Hours after Jackson’s statement, Pete Thamel of ESPN reported that Briles will not be the Tigers offensive coordinator, after all.

 

While there were a lot of reactions to the news, most fell into one of two categories.

The first category was people who couldn’t help but laugh at Briles’ remarkably short tenure with the Tigers.

The second category was people who were critical of Jackson and Baylor, pointing out that Briles should never have been hired to begin with. There were plenty of those.

https://twitter.com/NicoleAuerbach/status/1498431610924015616

Grambling tries to news-dump Briles on the day of Mardi Gras break, also first day of a war.

Doug Williams blasts them in the Washington Post.

Hue Jackson's tax practices become public business

Proud program embarrassed. Middle finger to students.

Gonna be bad for Hue too

— Alex Kirshner (@alex_kirshner) February 28, 2022

it’s a good idea to keep art briles away from your program and if your head coach and athletic director try to sneak him in they probably go

— Brian Floyd (@BrianMFloyd) February 28, 2022

It was bad enough Hue Jackson brought Grambling bad PR when he created the mess with the Browns, and how tone deaf was he to even consider Art Briles? That arrogance led to even more negative attention w/Doug Williams – the school's best player weighing in. Way to go Hue…SMH.

— OGhoopsprguy (@exhoopsPRguy) February 28, 2022

This was a disaster in every sense of the word. If there’s one positive to draw from, it’s this. Despite the unavoidable news going on in Ukraine, the decision to hire Briles did not fly under anyone’s radar. It was noticed and criticized to a point that just days after he was hired, Briles left. Every other university (and any other football team, for that matter) no doubt took notice of this and saw how much scrutiny they got.

If any decision-makers for colleges or other football teams were considering hiring Briles, they now know the backlash that will come. More likely than not, that means that Briles will not be hired to coach football again. If he is, it will demonstrate even worse judgment than what Jackson and Grambling showed.

[Pete Thamel, ESPN]