By the time Jarrett Stidham acknowledged it officially on social media Thursday, murmurs that Baylor’s quarterback of the future had a foot out the door were already a couple days old. It wasn’t much of a surprise.
Then again, would any defection from Baylor be truly surprising at this point?
Six weeks removed from the school’s decision to remove Art Briles, the exodus of talent has been pronounced and steady.
Seven members of Baylor’s expected 2016 recruiting class — all highly-recruited players — were released from their scholarships and have landed at places like Texas, TCU, Oklahoma and Auburn. And now Stidham, who was in line to be the next great Baylor quarterback following Robert Griffin III, Nick Florence, Bryce Petty and incumbent Seth Russell, is now officially a transfer.
Obviously, football success is the least important piece of fallout at Baylor after years of neglecting its institutional responsibility in handling sexual assault complaints. When the dramatic decision was made to remove Briles, athletics director Ian McCaw and school president/chancellor Kenneth Starr all at once, it was a tacit acknowledgement that the culture of deferring to the best interests of the football program could no longer be tolerated on a campus where it resulted in young women becoming victims.
Having said that, the football program is going to go continue. There will be an interim coach this season and a new one in 2017 accompanied by questions about whether Baylor can once again rise to relevance while adhering to standards and principles more in line with the mission of the university.
Already, though, it’s apparent how difficult that path will be.
In a world where schools can only have 85 players on scholarship, it essentially takes two years of good recruiting to make up for one lost class.
Baylor football was so stocked with talent that the Bears may very well remain a top-20 team in 2016 if it can stay healthy and mesh with interim coach Jim Grobe during this awkward seven-month purgatory.
But beyond that? It seems inevitable that the next Baylor coach is going to start in a deep, deep hole.
Like it or not, part of the job from here on out is going to be image repair. There can be no corners cut or risks taken when it comes to character or off-field baggage. The kinds of second-chance players on which Briles built so much success are no longer going to be acceptable, making the recruiting landscape doubly difficult in Waco.
At some point this fall, Baylor will launch a national search. When the next coach arrives in December or early January, he will have roughly a month to salvage recruiting in the class of 2017, for which Baylor holds just one verbal commitment. (Given the fact Baylor will have new coaches next year, it is simply impossible for the current staff to recruit.)
Combined with the 2016 class falling apart, it means Baylor’s new coach will inherit freshman and sophomore classes that are low in both numbers and talent. Which means when those players are juniors and seniors in 2018 and 2019, it’s going to get really, really ugly.
It would have been a huge positive for the next era of Baylor football to have Stidham as its anchor. He would have at least given the new coaching staff an elite talent to work with at quarterback and fans some hope of remaining competitive in the short term.
Now that he’s gone, it’s becoming clear that Baylor is going to pay a significant price on the field for Briles’ misdeeds off of it. Maybe that’s how it should be.
The reason Baylor now has to navigate this mess is that winning intoxicated too many people into granting too much autonomy to a coach who made too many reckless decisions.
Fixing Baylor’s football problems aren’t nearly as important as making sure there’s real change on campus in the attitude toward sexual assault. If the latter improves, the former won’t matter at all.
Still, Stidham's departure Thursday shows just how difficult a road lies ahead for the football part. And it may get a lot worse before it gets better.
