Art Briles, Baylor Must Answer for Negligence in Dealing with Samuel Ukwuachu

On Thursday night, 22-yard old Samuel Ukwuachu was found guilty of second-degree sexual assault and sentenced to 180 days in prison and 10 years of probation. The conviction can perhaps bring some small amount of closure to what was a horrific event for a former Baylor women’s soccer player and punish a troubled young man with a history of violence against women, though not nearly as harshly as he probably deserves. With Ukwuachu headed to jail for the next six months, the spotlight now turns to the Baylor Bears football program and head coach Art Briles who harbored and protected Ukwuachu long after he should have been kicked off the team.

Jessica Luthor and Dan Solomon have put together a fantastic account of the events leading up to this point in the Ukwuachu story over at Texas Monthly, the details of which are too numerous and sordid to get into completely here. In short, here is what we know about the situation:

• Following the 2012 season, Ukwuachu (named a Freshman All-American that year) was dismissed from the Boise State Broncos following a serious of incidents involving violent outbursts towards his then-girlfriend and female roommate.
• Baylor, with every reason to suspect that the player was a danger to students at his previous school and could pose a similar danger to students at Baylor, take a chance to add the talented defensive end to their roster.
• In October of 2013, while Ukwuachu sat out a season due to NCAA transfer rules, a student accuses the player of sexual assault following the Homecoming game. The school’s investigation, with access to the same evidence that led to his indictment and conviction and with a significant lower burden of proof than a court of law, take no disciplinary action against Ukwuachu.
• In June of 2014, Ukwuachu is indicted on second degree felony charges. Baylor announces that he will not be available at the start of the 2014 season as he dealt with “some issues,” never acknowledging the seriousness of the charges he faced while allowing him to continue to participate in team activities.
• University and football program keep the indictment and pending trial under wraps with Waco sports media making no mention of the charges against Ukwuachu for nearly 14 months.
• Weeks before his trial was set to begin, defensive coordinator Phil Bennett told Baylor fans at a luncheon that they expected Ukwuachu on the field in 2015.

There are a lot of layers of institutional failure in this story, none more glaring perhaps than Briles and his coaching staff glossing over the heinous accusations levied against a player that they brought into the university, even going so far as to brush off a pending trial and act like a player facing rape charges was going to be on the field like it was an inevitability.

Briles went on the defensive almost immediately, of course, telling reporters that the team had no idea about Ukwuachu’s violent past saying “there’s no truth” to reports that Baylor had been informed about the player’s disciplinary record. That story was quickly refuted by Washington Huskies head coach Chris Petersen, Ukwuachu’s former coach at Boise State, who released a statement that said when he heard that his former player was interested in a transfer to Baylor, he reached out to Briles personally  and “thoroughly apprised” the Baylor coach of the circumstances surrounding Ukwuachu’s dismissal. In a response to Petersen’s comments on the situations, Briles remembers talking to Petersen but said that the former Boise State coach “did not disclose that there had been violence toward women” but admitted they discussed “a rocky relationship with his girlfriend.”

When push comes to shove, this story seems to go just one of two ways: either Briles and the Baylor football program was negligent in their investigation of a troubled transfer student, perhaps willfully ignoring numerous red flags to add a promising talent to the defense, or the head coach is lying about what he knew and knowingly endangered the Baylor student body in the pursuit of winning some football games. Neither is a particularly flattering look for the leader of one of college football’s budding power programs.

Following the news of Ukwuachu’s conviction, Baylor announced that the school would be launching its own investigation into the matter and will try to get to the bottom of who knew what and when. Could the answers spell serious trouble for Art Briles and the Baylor football program?

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