TCU Football: Briled Down

After a disaster of a season, one KillerFrog assesses the hiring of Kendal Briles

Sometimes it's a pain to be the one to state the obvious, that there's a giant elephant, not at all pleased, hanging out in the middle of the living room, but a thankless task though it may be, somebody's got to do it, and today, that somebody is me.  

In this piece, I will not be calling to fire anyone.  Rather, I'm going to pose a much more obvious inquiry:  what in the name of all that's holy was the TCU athletic department thinking when they hired Kendal Briles?  

When Briles' hire was announced, I opposed it on moral grounds, as I detailed here.  For those with too little time to read the article in its entirety, the thrust of the argument goes thus:  that while there is plenty of room to give Mr. Briles the benefit of the doubt that he genuinely didn't know what was going on during his tenure at Baylor, during one of the most notorious scandals in football history, he didn't exactly do anything right following the revelations--including convictions--of the depth of what happened.  When the level of wickedness became clear, no apologies were forthcoming, no acknowledgment of negligence of any kind, or missed leadership opportunities, or simple incompetence, no promises to prevent a second occurrence at any institution to which he would devote his services.  Further, he made no public attempts at restitution.  Nada.  His defenders will call this stoic discretion.  I call it callous self-interest.  

And while I am opposed to what I see as a de facto McCarthyism of late, whereby people's careers are ruined on the basis of mere allegation or hearsay, disallowed even a minimum of what could constitute due process of any kind, one has to face reality, and the reality is that Briles was always going to be a controversial hire at TCU.  And if one takes it upon themselves to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in the name of such a hire, the coach in question had better perform (God knows, he's being paid amply enough).  And in football, that means winning games. 

At 5-7, TCU just suffered one of the worst post-National Championship seasons in recent memory.  

First, there was the Colorado game, which we lost due to two interceptions that occurred in the end zone.  Evin Demirel, of Best Of Arkansas Sports, addressed being "cute in the end zone," when we passed in lieu of a successful run game:  "Arkansas fans know well the feeling . . . especially during a close loss to Texas A & M last year after Arkansas got out to a 14-0 lead.  Following a fourth straight three-and-out forced by their defense, the Razorbacks were — seemingly — on their way to delivering a knock-out blow. In his first game of the season, Dominique Johnson had just ripped off carries of 12, 8, and 7 yards to get Arkansas into Texas A&M territory. Rather than continuing to pound the ground game, Sam Pittman and Briles dialed up the Malik Hornsby package, as Best Of Arkansas Sports’ Andrew Hutchinson wrote. Three plays later, Arkansas had to punt it away because a pass to Hornsby fell incomplete, another pass to Hornsby resulted in a loss of 1 yard and a fumble on a double reverse to Hornsby resulted in no gain." 

It appeared that TCU had hit its stride in the three successful games that followed.  But two of those wins were at the expense of far inferior teams. 

Then came West Virginia.  During the third quarter, the TCU offense gained exactly one yard against a defense that is not exactly the strongest in the Big 12.  Sonny Dykes himself called it one of the worst offensive performances he had seen since he started coaching.  Granting the possible hyperbole, as the kids say, 'nuff said. 

After that, we played Iowa State and managed all of 14 points against a team that, last year, we beat 62-14.  Iowa State beat us by 13, despite our gaining 45 more yards. 

We had a bit of a happy comeback against BYU before being utterly and depressingly humiliated by Kansas State, losing 41-3.  That game was over before the end of the first quarter, and some of us may have been suffering from post-National-Championship-deja vu and depression.  

Our games against Texas Tech, Texas, Baylor, and Oklahoma were, for the most part, more competitive (we lost three). 

Defenders of Briles will point out that, at least after the Kansas State game, our offensive performance improved.  Against Tech, we managed 28 points (not enough to win against their 35), against Texas 26 (again, not enough to win against their 29), and against Oklahoma an admittedly impressive 45 (against their 69).  Our victory against Baylor was clean, and along with BYU, stands as one of the two games this season a TCU fan can be proud of.  

While it's true those games showed improvement, it's also true we lost all but one (which we were practically guaranteed to win in the first place).  I'm not persuaded that "at least we didn't get killed like we thought" is even a mediocre defense of the quality of coaching we saw this season.   

These results, by anyone with a team that went to the National Championship one year prior, leave much to be desired.  And while it's true we were missing Max Duggan, a great quarterback, possibly the greatest TCU ever had, and certainly the most important, he wasn't God.  And of himself, he wasn't a whole team.  We had a good team.  We have a good team.  They didn't perform.  And at some point, it would seem, the responsibility lies with the coaching. 

When it comes to the trust and good will of the fanbase, TCU took a huge risk in hiring Kendal Briles--even had we performed as expected.  That our performance was so lackluster only compounds our frustration.  I don't know how many defenders he still has (I suspect I'll hear from virtually both of them), but I think it's safe to say the season was a disaster.    

Perhaps we can do this by way of analogy. Just as it is perfectly possible Kendal Briles did nothing wrong, so it is with Kevin Spacey, who, more than having been "vetted" by coaches vested in the accused's interest (amounting to little more than a "take my word for it" gesture), actually faced a jury who determined he was guilty of no wrongdoing, and further, won a civil case against his accuser.  

What TCU has done, effectively, is played the part of a small movie studio making a massive Moby Dick epic costing around $200 million.  And they cast Kevin Spacey as Starbuck.

The ship sank, and Starbuck died.   

Our movie bombed, and Spacey gave a poor performance. 

Last January, TCU made a hiring decision.  And now we're all stuck with it.  

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TCU Football: The Heart Of The Matter

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