The NCAA, on Wednesday, revealed the punishments given to Baylor University athletics, the result of a sexual assault scandal that resulted in the firing of football coach Art Briles, and resignations from athletic director Ian McCaw and BU President Ken Starr.
In a somewhat surprising move given the seriousness of the charges, Baylor received probation and what were referred to as “relatively minor sanctions”. The NCAA said they had difficulty in deciding on the ruling, with the allegations, generally centered on poor conduct on the part of student-athletes at the Waco school, never before seen by the Infractions Committee.
Baylor did admit to the NCAA panel of “moral and ethical failings” in handling numerous reports of campus violence, many related to sexual assault allegedly committed by the school’s student-athletes. In perhaps the most important statement related to Baylor seeming to get less punishment than what was expected, the NCAA claimed that “whether Baylor athletes accused of sexual related violence were given ‘extra benefit’ in the form of more lenient treatment than other students, the answer is no”. That statement seems to give a more harsh look into the general campus environment than in the athletic department itself at the time.
Baylor University, a member of the Big 12 Conference, is the largest Baptist university in the world. Chartered in 1845 in Waco, approximately one hour south of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, BU enrolled 19,297 students last fall, and had a successful athletic year, highlighted by the Bears men’s basketball team winning its first ever national championship.
