A new report is circulating that re-examines Baylor's dismissal of Art Briles amid the school's sexual assault in the spring and summer of 2015.
The report was commissioned by John Eddie Williams, Jr., managing partner of the Houston-based Williams Hart Law Firm and a major donor to the athletics department. Williams hired Joseph Hunt of the Atlanta-based law firm Alston & Bird to investigate the investigation into Briles and the Baylor football program. The 20-page report was published on Wednesday. FootballScoop obtained a copy, which is embedded below.
There is little attempt to hide the intent of the report. "The purpose of our review, as we understand, is to assist others in determining whether Coach Briles might be a candidate to coach football again at the collegiate level," Hunt writes.
"My goal is to purse redemption and fairness," Williams writes in the introduction. "Coach Briles deserves a better hearing than he got, and is getting, about his tenure as Baylor's head football coach. There is no reason someone as talented as Coach Briles shouldn't be coaching at the collegiate level."
The Hunt Report is primarily an investigation of the Pepper Hamilton investigation which, Hunt notes, did not produce a written record and did not interview Briles or any Baylor football players. The thesis of the case is essentially that Baylor scapegoated Briles and Black players within the football program in an attempt to protect the university's flow of tuition money.
The Hunt report also drew upon documents and testimony drawn from litigation pursuant to Baylor's sexual assault cases and subsequent lawsuits, most notably a May 23, 2017 letter from BU general counsel that said "at this time we are unaware of any situation where (Briles) had contact with anyone who directly reported to you being the victim of sexual assault or that you directly discouraged the victim of an alleged sexual assault from reporting law enforcement or University officials. Nor are we aware of any situation where you played a student athlete found to be responsible for sexual assault."
"Could that be any clearer?" Williams then writes.
The Hunt Report also makes the case, first outlined in the 2017 book Violated, that Baylor University was unequipped to handle a large case load of sexual assault reports campus-wide, with untrained staff and no dedicated Title IX office until 2014.
The report's findings are of secondary importance to its existence. For those who would like their school to hire the coach who took former doormat Baylor to back-to-back Big 12 championships, there's enough there to convince one of Briles's innocence. For those against it, there's enough their to argue Briles does not deserve another shot at leading a college football program.
Briles was dismissed by Baylor in 2015. He signed a separation agreement worth a reported $15 million that included a non-disparagement clause against Baylor.
The 65-year-old is now the head coach at Mount Vernon (Texas) High School. His team faces Tuscola Jim Ned in the Class 3A Division I semifinals on Friday.
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