Unanswered Points: Something Rotten in Waco

A Skeptical Interpretation of Baylor’s “Unapologetic” Christianity

Photo: © Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

“Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.”

--Exodus 23:2

As everyone in Texas knows, Baylor will be facing Ole Miss at the Sugar Bowl this Saturday. As everyone in the world but Baylor knows, they probably shouldn’t have a team to play there. As everyone including Baylor knows, they cannot continue to have such a team and call themselves an “unapologetically Christian” school. It is a logical impossibility on par with the term “mercenary pacifist.”

I write this with a heavy heart, which was not my intention. My original intent was to condemn the whole school straight to Hell in the circle of the Hypocrites—a la Dante. The piece I envisioned began with the line “Baylor fans be warned: I don’t intend to throw bombs so much as to launch nukes,” and I even had a map drawn of Dante’s Hell where I could delineate exactly where the Baylor administration landed by a fair interpretation of their crimes (for the record, I still feel that way about the administration—but not the school).

Now, my intent is simply to remind those Baptists of conscience living in Waco of who they are. You see, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, I too was a thoroughly committed, thoroughly devout Baptist. I maintain my love for the many friends—dear, loyal friends of indubitable moral character—I made during my association with that church. Indeed, I count three among them the dearest friends I have ever had and will ever have, and while Cody, Brady and JD never attended Baylor, I know they know people who did whom they think of as fondly as I do them. So I would like this to be as much a love letter to the gentle as a condemnatory epistle of the wicked.

What brought this on? The other day, Ryann Zeller, fearless leader, mentioned a friend of hers was considering sending her college-age son to—you guessed it— Baylor University. Her reasoning: Baylor is an “unapologetically Christian” institution. To that: she’s half-right. Relative to their having been embroiled in two of the biggest scandals in college athletics history, both within the last twenty years, Baylor University is distinctly unapologetic.

I’m assuming everyone reading this knows about the 2016 Baylor sexual assault scandal, which resulted in the convictions of two football players and the peremptory removal of head coach Art Briles, president Ken Starr (yes, that Ken Starr of Clinton impeachment notoriety—see “hypocrite,” QED), and athletic director Ian McCaw. To those who are uneducated on the matter, be warned: researching the details does not make for pleasant reading.

What few people seem to remember, and of which I was ignorant, is 2016 constitutes the second grievous offense against their students caused by Baylor’s athletic program. In 2003, after the murder of Patrick Dennehy by teammate Carlton Dotson, investigations revealed the second blade in Dennehy’s tragic murder: he should not have been on the team in the first place. He had no athletic scholarship. Rather, his tuition, as well as that of teammate Corey Herring, was paid personally by the impossibly named head coach Dave Bliss, in direct violation of NCAA rules.

At the time, Baylor recommended its own disciplinary redress, which the NCAA deemed insufficient, taking punitive measures that neared but did not quite equate to, the death penalty.

Thus, two consecutive generations of Baylor students were disgraced by the authorities entrusted with their interests, authorities who maintain Baylor is an “unapologetically Christian” university.

There is an advantage in being, as I like to call myself, “a sports ignoramus.” I can address underlying moral implications with some degree of objectivity. True, I graduated from TCU, but I’m hardly partisan. Consider SMU. By my association with TCU, it may be assumed I would gloat in any misfortune that comes their way.

I do not.

Their football program received the death penalty in 1987 for what? Paying players under the table, exactly as Baylor basketball did, in violation of NCAA rules. Their death penalty so crippled the SMU football program, they are just now recovering thirty years later (I do not know if SMU considers itself an “unapologetically Christian” school).

Then there is Penn State, whose child rape scandal remains the most discussed of the many sins these institutions have committed—and their crimes were terrible. But at least they were not committed to fostering a false Christian image. Unlike Baylor, “unapologetically Christian.”

A certain kind of Baylor fan will object: 2016 is five years ago, and people were punished. By that argument, in 2016, 2003 was 13 years ago. And who was punished? Briles, Starr, and McCaw. But Briles, being in football, had nothing to do with offenses committed by the basketball program, Starr was not hired until 2010, nor McCaw until 2003, the year the basketball scandal occurred. So, I argue, there is a culture at Baylor that needs to be addressed for, if nothing else, the welfare of its students.

This is not lost on everyone, not even Baylor’s own. In a fine article published in 2018 in the Baylorlariat, John Abel writes that the deposition of Patty Crawford (Baylor’s former Title IX coordinator) “shows the failings of Baylor’s administration are a direct product of its emphasis on our program’s prestige . . . Our failure and our deliberate unwillingness to protect the most basic dignity of our students shows that Baylor has forgotten its purpose” (in context, Abel is arguing for Baylor’s death penalty.

But the death penalty is not what’s called for at an “unapologetically Christian University.” Sacrifice is. Either scandal would have warranted any school with its students’ interests at heart to reconsider its athletic program—never mind an “unapologetically Christian” one. After the second scandal, Baylor’s administration should have scrapped its athletic program entirely and sent letters of apology to students and alumni, begging their forgiveness. Then the school may have made amends enough to qualify as an “apologetically Christian university.”

Instead, a mere five years after incriminating themselves for the second time in as many decades, Baylor university, unapologetically Christian, will attend the Sugar Bowl in disgrace and dishonor. May the bears of Elisha greet their administrators.

The author of this piece would like to credit his friend, Jade Power, for suggesting the phrase “unanswered points.”

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