I’ve seen cynical desperate college athletics hires in my time, but nothing beats what Grambling – site of two very recent on-campus murders – has done in hiring coach Art Briles. At Baylor, Briles “repeatedly cover[ed] up allegations of assault, sexual and otherwise, perpetrated by multiple Baylor football players.” “[H]e presided over a culture with rampant sexual violence toward women, including a former student’s lawsuit alleging at least 52 acts of rape committed by 31 football players from 2011 to ’14.” Many of them were players he recruited, though he knew before he recruited them that they were very dangerous people.
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So maybe what’s going on at Grambling is a kind of unprecedented college product-placement. Lots of people like violence, and some of those people, while being violent, would also like to be educated. At Grambling you’re guaranteed to be living near one of America’s most outstanding murder capitals, with a mass shooting not long ago at one of the school’s homecoming events; you’re also guaranteed an ethos – embodied by Coach Briles – of tolerance of sexual violence and physical assault more broadly.