Mount Vernon School Board Meeting When Art Briles Is Announced Video
Mount Vernon hasn't traditionally been a football town. Their loftier school team has enjoyed some recent success—they've made the playoffs the past three seasons—but many locals say this East Texas boondocks of two,750 has, in recent years, been more into girls' basketball, particularly since that team won state in 2018. Yet football has been the hottest topic of chat here for most of the summer, after the May 24 school lath announcement that Art Briles, the disgraced one-time football omnibus at Baylor Academy, would be named the high school's new head jitney.
The squad's beginning do of the year took place on a muggy, hot August day in Mountain Vernon, merely that didn't continue fans—and media—away. In lieu of a professional PA system you lot might find at a place like Baylor'southward practice field, someone pulled a pickup truck around the side of the field and cranked the stereo, and the young men ran blocking drills to the beat of Futurity's "But Similar Bruddas."
Offset Baptist Church pastor Pepper Puryear, who leads one of the town's largest congregations, stood away from the field, off in the shade. When I showtime met Puryear in June, he explained that, every bit a pastor, he's "in the business of redemption and second chances." Meanwhile, members of the Ramsay family saturday in camping chairs on the sideline. The Ramsays are one of the community's virtually prominent families—its members include the district chaser, a legendary canton judge , a former five-term state legislator, two Baylor law grads, and Briles's former banana head of campus recruiting during his time in Waco. When Mount Vernon officials offset reached out to Briles, they did so through the Ramsays.
When practice ended, Briles held his first and only press conference prior to the start of the season. The publicist hired past the school commune informed reporters that questions near annihilation that happened at Baylor were off limits. Instead, maybe a dozen members of the media, mostly TV reporters from local Eastward Texas stations, every bit well as a few from Waco and Dallas, were handed a letter from Briles'due south attorneys claiming that "what the public has been led to believe nearly Passenger vehicle Briles is flatly false." When one reporter asked Briles if he felt similar he owed anyone an amends, he responded, "If you're asking about Baylor, that'southward been addressed in a statement."
The Baylor fallout is how Briles landed at Mount Vernon, which plays 3A football. The types of programs that Friday Night Lights brings to mind—with multimillion-dollar stadiums, where the kids are looking to get football scholarships and the coaches hope to ascend the ladder to the college and pro level—are at the much bigger 6A level. That means in that location's a low ceiling on how much glory you tin win in a place like Mount Vernon, or how much a title can boost gate receipts.
In the aftermath of the Briles rent, a narrative coalesced in the national media: this was nevertheless another example of a football-mad Texas boondocks sacrificing its morals in pursuit of gridiron glory . Spend a piddling fourth dimension in Mount Vernon, though, and you'll observe that not anybody was on board with the decision to bring him to boondocks.
Lauren Lewis is a Mount Vernon native whose family unit has roots in the town dating dorsum several generations. Afterwards a decade in Austin, she persuaded her married man to go back three years ago. She missed information technology there, and loved the community she grew up in. When they learned that, of all the places Briles could take landed, he was going to exist coaching in Mount Vernon, it was a tough day. "At that place was an firsthand pit in my tum that nosotros had done this," she says. "It was an embarrassment."
At the get-go school board meeting after Briles was hired, Lewis was the merely fellow member of the customs who expressed opposition. In June, she spoke of her "concerns for the young women whose lives were forever altered by the actions of players under the guidance of Art Briles," and the message information technology sent to hire him, of all coaches. She was as well worried for the students she mentors every bit a volunteer at the high school. What would it hateful for them to see their schoolhouse portrayed as a bad guy in the national media?
Others worry that the players who take the field for the Tigers this fall are going to be in a tough position. They didn't have any say in who their jitney would be, but they're the ones on the front line dealing with the consequences. In fact, when Mount Vernon held its kickoff football practice, one of the team'southward best players was absent. Tony Grillo,* a returning star senior, had spent the summertime struggling with the idea of playing his senior year.
Grillo's mother, Lauren, is a survivor of sexual attack. "He said, 'I don't want to play considering I know what happened to y'all,'" Lauren Grillo told me. "'The people that did that to y'all weren't held accountable, and I don't think he's been held answerable, either.'" She was proud that her son was confronting the issue in such a grown-upwards way, but heartbroken, as well. Watching her son play football is one of her favorite things to do. "Teenagers tend to pull abroad, and that's ane connection Tony and I take," she said. (Grillo told me her son disliked "the circus" Briles brought to town and declined to exist interviewed himself.)
And so why bring Briles to town? Others who oppose the Briles hire point to local politics and religion as the reason. "Nosotros love the idea of giving someone a second chance: 'We're a practiced Christian community, and he's a good Christian man, so what improve identify than Mount Vernon for this redemption stage?'" Lewis told me. "It'south well-nigh connections, and a hunger for fame and celebrity, and a good ol' boy arrangement in identify." Mount Vernon ISD superintendent Jason McCullough told me that the people he spoke to well-nigh Briles's character emphasized the positive affect the omnibus has had on young men, likewise every bit his obvious overqualifications for the job. He'southward confident they landed the correct guy. "We believe that the coaching staff that's coming in hither lines up with our values and volition be a great add-on to our community," McCullough told me in June. "The outside national media has tried to paint that into a different moving picture, which is unfortunate."
Puryear, the Commencement Baptist pastor (who is likewise a former high schoolhouse football player and the son of a coach), described an even loftier vision for Mount Vernon'due south role in the Briles saga. "The story of Art Briles coming to Mount Vernon, Texas, is not about winning football game games," he told me, equally we sit in his part, which is heavily adorned with football game memorabilia. "The story of Fine art Briles coming to Mount Vernon, Texas, is a story almost redemption, and grace, and forgiveness—something nosotros all need, and none of u.s. deserve."
Hither'southward some of what Briles might be seeking redemption and forgiveness for: Briles recruited at least iv athletes who faced criminal allegations prior to coming to Baylor, had a number of instances where his players were accused of those things while under his leadership, and oversaw a system where it took years before anyone found out about it. A former Baylor student's parents say they called Briles'southward office several times to tell the omnibus that their daughter had been raped by Tevin Elliott, a Bears defensive end currently serving a twenty-yr prison judgement for the crime. (Briles had agreed to meet with her in 2016 to offer an apology, but never showed up to the meeting. ) A one-time Baylor athlete testified in courtroom that she was raped by Sam Ukwuachu, a pass-rusher Briles brought to Baylor. But a few weeks earlier that trial—afterwards Ukwuachu had been arrested and indicted, and suspended from playing at Baylor (though he still did workout with the squad)—one of Briles's administration talked to the media about how excited they were to have him back on the field. (Ukwuachu was initially convicted in August 2015; on entreatment, his confidence has been variously overturned and reinstated considering of a technicality regarding evidence . He's currently awaiting a new trial.)
Baylor never gave a clear explanation for why it fired Briles. (In a statement, the schoolhouse and Briles jointly acknowledged "serious shortcomings in the response to reports of sexual violence by some pupil-athletes" and "the delegation of disciplinary responsibilities with the football program.") The academy paid him a massive settlement—more than than $15 million—every bit part of his dismissal.
Briles was initially considered a hot coaching prospect, despite the scandal. When vacancies came upward at the University of Houston and Texas Tech, his name was floated. He spent the summertime of 2016 prowling NFL grooming camps as a guest of established caput coaches, but he ended up being well-nigh unemployable. He was out of the game for 2016, then briefly hired as an offensive assistant by the Canadian Football game League'south Hamilton Tiger-Cats in late 2017. The job offer was rescinded within 24 hours amid public outcry. Eventually, he went to Florence, Italy, to charabanc the Guelfi Firenze, an amateur team in a country where most people don't fifty-fifty know how American football is played. In early February of this year, he interviewed for the task of offensive coordinator at the Academy of Southern Mississippi, before a school official wrote to the head jitney , asking him to "please get in another direction for your OC hire."
Briles's attorneys noted in the statement provided to media after his get-go Mount Vernon practice that Baylor'south general counsel issued a alphabetic character in May 2017 expressing support for the coach. At that time, though, university officials were under heavy force per unit area to practice so. A grouping of high-contour, big-money donors—folks who take statues on campus and stadiums named after them —had formed an organization to demand "leadership reform" at the university in the wake of the coach'southward dismissal. They held multiple press conferences to call out the administrators and regents who got rid of Briles, with one high-dollar donor, John Eddie Williams, suggesting that he might withhold future donations as a result of the board'southward deportment .
Gale Galloway was one such high-contour donor. In June, the 89-twelvemonth-former erstwhile energy executive and onetime chair of the Baylor Board of Regents went so far as to attend the Mountain Vernon schoolhouse board coming together to help Briles out. In that location, Galloway told locals that "not merely are you getting an outstanding Christian, a man with ideals higher up and beyond reproach, he just happens to be the best coach in the U.s.a.."
He declared Briles a "scapegoat" for a academy-wide trouble, and so concluded his statement with a theatrical flourish: "I swore to tell the truth, and nothing merely the truth, and so aid me God," he intoned. "If anything I take said is non the truth, the good lord can strike me dead right now."
At the end of August, the Mount Vernon Tigers opened their season at Bonham Loftier School. Information technology wasn't a particularly notable matter. There were plenty of reporters in attendance, and the Bonham side of the bleachers was crowded. But the Mountain Vernon side was less densely packed—the editor of the Mount Vernon Optic-Herald told me in the press box before the game that it looked thinner than usual, which she attributed to a ticket advisory announced past Bonham that may take scared off some spectators who didn't want to fight a oversupply.
Bonham High Schoolhouse banned signs during the game, a one-week dominion it implemented for the match with Mountain Vernon, presumably to discourage protests. Prior to kickoff, the journalist advised fans that this would be an atmosphere of friendly contest—booing the opposing team would non be tolerated.
When Mountain Vernon players took the field, Lauren Grillo's son, Tony, was amidst them. After sitting out the get-go week—a week during which, Grillo's mom says, Briles collection by their firm several times looking for the histrion—Grillo says that her son'due south onetime coach, who's now leading Mount Vernon'due south chief rival, persuaded him to rejoin the team. "He told him that in life, nosotros have to deal with a whole lot of people we don't necessarily agree with or like," she told me shortly before the game. "But he knew that Tony was a competitor, and if he was going to vanquish Mountain Vernon, he wanted to beat the best team on the field, and that wasn't going to happen unless Tony was at that place."
His mom is happy that she'll get to see him play brawl ane more yr, but she hates that he and his teammates had to agonize over the choice in the first place. "They shouldn't have to deal with this," she told me. "None of them should."
Mount Vernon scored offset but played sloppy ball for much of the first one-half, committing 4 turnovers. Ultimately, though, the Tigers stomped Bonham 44-16, a widely predictable outcome. Since then, they've gone on to trounce Farmersville l-twenty, and to clobber Canton in their first home game 57-0. Nobody, after all, doubts that Briles is expert at coaching football.
And yet, no affair what side they're on, most no 1 in Mount Vernon talks about the decision to hire Briles in terms of winning championships. Sure, it'd be fun, his supporters say, only it'due south unlikely given the 2 years he has on his contract. "Do I anticipate Mount Vernon being the last stop for Art Briles? Probably not," Jason McCullough told me.
For his part, Puryear says he hopes that Briles will autumn in love with the community. Simply when I asked him how he thinks people would feel if his stop in Mount Vernon is a brief one—if he gets offered the caput coaching task at, say, Florida State or Ole Miss after a year—he laughed. "I don't know if I can answer that," he conceded. "At least we provided the place that he got his foot back in the door."
Briles will well-nigh certainly become another shot at a big-fourth dimension higher plan. And the next athletic director who considers Briles will have to reply one big question: Can they weather the PR storm that comes with hiring him? If nothing else, they might exist able to point to a tranquility time in the minor town of Mount Vernon every bit a reason to say Briles has put the past backside him.
*Some names have been changed at the request of those interviewed.
Source: https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/art-briles-high-school-football-mount-vernon-baylor/