I used to get an annual checkup from Dr. Michael Williams at Brackenridge Hospital in Austin. After scanning the various diplomas and certificates on his wall, I realized that he was a graduate of Baylor University. That was enough to spark a series of discussions about the state of Baylor athletics. He knew I was a University of Texas guy, so we were in quite different positions.
Dr. Williams agonized about how his school was struggling, and generally failing, to keep up. BU, a private, Baptist institution founded during the era of the Republic of Texas, was not rich. The budget of the athletic department was $7.5 million in 1995, a relative pittance for UT and other mega-universities. Its facilities (especially the football stadium) were nothing special, and the list of problems went on and on. The suspicions about how and why Baylor was included among Southwest Conference schools that joined with the Big Eight to form the Big 12 were well founded, in my view. If the governor, Ann Richards, had not been a BU alumnus, they would have been sent packing along with SMU, Rice, TCU and Houston. The good doctor was almost apologetic about his school having Big 12 membership.
Baylor suffered an awful shock in 2003. Two members of the men’s basketball team, Carlton Dotson and Patrick Dennehy, had a conflict that resulted in Dennehy being killed, and Dotson convicted and assigned a number by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. To compound matters, the BU coach, Dave Bliss, tried to posthumously frame Dennehy as a drug dealer to cover his own backside. Sanctions were imposed by the NCAA.
Without conducting in-depth research, I can assert that Baylor has been a bit player on the college sports scene from the early days. Attendance at home games in Waco were mediocre or worse. Except for an occasional rise to the top on a regional scale—nothing. BU had a few all-Americans, an occasional big win and an SWC championship here and there. With the formation of the Big 12, the green and gold was beaten more often than a rented mule (six conference wins in its first nine Big 12 seasons). Baylor was simply unworthy of national attention.
It was not all doom and gloom, however. Michael Johnson, a 1990 Baylor grad, went on to have a star-studded career in the track and field world; he won four gold medals in the 200 and 400 meters at the Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney Olympics. Maybe it began with the fabulous Johnson. Slowly, little by little, the Bears became competitive in various sports. Leaving aside the girls’ junior-varsity tiddlywinks team, which undoubtedly provides full scholarships to meet the requirements of Title IX, let’s see what BU has been up to in recent years.
Ian McCaw became the athletic director in 2003, so a lot of the credit goes to him. An AD has to juggle finances, choose coaches, and please varying constituencies such as students, alumni, administration and media. The days of the football coach retiring to the cushy position of athletic director are long over, and McCaw seems to have proven himself.
He did not hire Mark Kroll, who had been on the scene since 1997. His men's tennis team won the Big 12 championship every season but one from 2002 to 2009. In the middle of that lovely run of success, the Bears won the 2004 NCAA title. Benedikt Dorsch and Benjamin Becker, a couple of German imports, were the stars of the team.
The men’s basketball program has climbed out of the pit of incalculable disgrace of nine years ago. Coach Scott Drew had the Bears in the Elite Eight of the 2012 NCAA tournament, and Perry Jones III was a first-round pick by the Oklahoma City Thunder of the NBA.
The BU baseball team, coached by Steve Smith, has reached the NCAA tourney 12 times since 1998 and made it to the College World Series once. Seven former Baylor players have reached the major leagues since 2000.
The women’s basketball program is now, almost incredibly, the best in the country. Kim Mulkey has lifted the Bears to two national championships—2005 and 2012. The 2012 team, led by Brittney Griner, went 40-0. Griner, a 6’ 8” center, appears to be one of the most dominant players in the history of distaff hoops. Titanic programs like Tennessee and Connecticut have been surmounted by Baylor.
Now we come to football, the king of sports in Texas and the USA as a whole. The Bears, coached by Art Briles, rose so slowly as to catch me by surprise. They beat my Texas Longhorns each of the last two seasons, and quarterback Robert Griffin III won the Heisman Trophy. This is a shocking development—a guy from Baylor winning the Heisman? Yes, and now the university is planning to erect a $250 million stadium on the banks of the Brazos River. Due to open in 2014, it is being informally called “the house that RG3 built.”
I have long since lost touch with Dr. Williams, but I have no doubt that his somewhat melancholy air has been cast off. He is probably walking with more spring in his step these days. Like me, though, he may be wondering how the Bears did it. Such a transformation cannot have been achieved without cutting a few corners; Drew and Mulkey recently had their hands slapped by the NCAA for making too many recruiting calls. The academics-athletics balance may have been shifted too far to suit some purists, but for what school is that not the case? Perhaps it would be improper for me to point out that BU's rise has coincided with Jerry Sandusky's reign of terror at Penn State. I do not wish to end on such a sour note, so I will simply say that Baylor University has against all odds become a sports powerhouse.
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