Even though he’s about to embark on his first college football season, that might not change.
After Griffin led the Bulldawgs to consecutive Class 4A Division I state championship games and then won the Big 12 Conference 400-meter hurdles crown as an early Baylor enrollee last spring, the Bears’ coaching staff believes he has a chance to be the starting quarterback this fall as a freshman.
“The thing about Robert is that he’s had a lot of success the past few years,” Baylor assistant director of football operations Beau Trahan said Monday during a press conference in conjunction with the Texas High School Coaches Association convention. “He led his team to the state championship game twice and up until the meet that followed the Big 12 Championships this spring, he hadn’t lost a hurdles race since his sophomore year in high school. And that’s what we like to see because we’re trying to change the mindset at the university to one that’s not afraid to succeed.
“If you walk into a room full of Big 12 coaches, there aren’t too many people who are going to say, ‘Hey look. There’s Baylor football.’ We want to earn some respect. When people come to play us, we don’t want them thinking it’s just a week off.”
Trahan is part of the first-year staff put together by new Baylor coach Art Briles, who came from Houston in November to replace Guy Morriss. The Bears gave Griffin, returning starter Blake Szymanski and senior Kirby Freeman - a transfer from Miami - equal opportunities to prove their worth during spring drills. Entering the fall, all three are listed as the starter.
“We’ve got some special guys at the quarterback position right now,” Trahan said. “We’re going to let them play it out. Whoever leads the team and whoever the guys jell with the best, that’s going to be the starter on opening day.
“We would like to redshirt everybody. But with Robert, he’s had a lot of success and it showed in the spring. When he stepped in the huddle, there was a presence there and the guys are following him. So it’s going to get interesting as to who gets the quarterback job.”
The Bears open the season Aug. 28 at home against Wake Forest.
Shooting from the hip
The Texas Longhorns enter the season off an up-and-down finish to their last campaign. The Longhorns suffered back-to-back losses to Kansas State and Oklahoma, followed by a sluggish November that featured less-than-dominant performances in wins over Nebraska and Oklahoma State and a second straight loss to Texas A&M.
But something changed between the end of November and the late-December romp of Arizona State in the Holiday Bowl, and Texas coach Mack Brown has a pretty good idea of what it was.
“I had more answers than I had questions in the weeks leading up to the bowl game,” Brown said. “I didn’t ask for as many people’s opinion because I didn’t like the way we played a couple of games at the end. I just felt like it was time somebody stepped up, and so I did.
“There weren’t a lot of touchy-feely meetings that month, let’s put it that way. We weren’t ‘Kumbaya.’”
The man who coached the Longhorns to the 2005 national championship was just as straightforward in his thoughts on how to improve the Bowl Championship Series.
“I would find out the eight best teams at the end of the year,” Brown said. “We should find a better way to be able to determine those eight teams rather than coaches who feel pressure voting, and media members from different regions voting and computers voting. In the modern day, we should be able to figure out who the best eight teams in America are. Then I would leave the bowl system just like it is, then have a playoff for those eight teams to find out who the best team in the country is.
“I would like for the fans who get excited about the Final Four, excited about the NFL playoffs and excited about high school playoffs to have the same feeling about the BCS instead of just having two teams that might have won a conference with eight wins show up in a BCS game. I don’t like the rule that no more than two teams can go to the BCS from one conference. If there’s five teams in that conference that are the best in the country, then let them go, and then distribute the money wherever you need to.”
The Longhorns kick off the season Aug. 30 at home against Florida Atlantic.
A different perspective
First-year Texas A&M coach Mike Sherman also provided a change of pace for the annual press conference, if for no other reason than the difference between he and former Aggies coach Dennis Franchione.
After five years of the stoic and tight-lipped Franchione, the Massachusetts-tongued Sherman tells it like it is. Here were his thoughts Monday on:
n An incoming freshman: “He needs to lose some weight.”
n A returning defensive player: “He and I have butted heads.”
n And his offensive line: “It’s suspect.”
And Sherman, an A&M assistant in the mid-1990s and the head coach of the Green Bay Packers when they won the NFC North three straight years (2002-04), even passed along something new he’s learned since becoming the Aggies’ 28th head coach.
“I’ve heard just about every excuse for missing class that you could ever imagine,” Sherman said while laughing. “That didn’t surprise me, but it’s creativity like you can’t believe. And I have five kids of my own, so I thought I had heard all of the excuses in the world, but they’ve even gone beyond them. I just put them all in a book or on a power-point in a team meeting and I say, ‘I’ve already heard all of these excuses. Grandpa can only die one time.’”
The Sherman era at A&M begins Aug. 30 at home against Arkansas State.
edrennan@temple-telegram.com
