Baylor’s new head football coach inherited a program that has been the worst in the Big 12 Conference since the league started 12 years ago. Five of the last six Bears coaches - dating to 1969 - lost their first game.
The present doesn’t seem to be of much help, either. Briles’ Baylor debut comes tonight against No. 23 Wake Forest, which is ranked to start the season for the first time in program history.
Briles says he’s all about the future and a win would make it seem a heck of a lot brighter.
“Every game is a big game (but) Thursday is a big chance for us to showcase nationally what we certainly hope to be about as a football program,” he said.
His staff and players need to look no farther than Wake Forest for an example of how a major conference program can turn things around. The Demon Deacons have gone from Atlantic Coast Conference also-rans to league champions under coach Jim Grobe and have won 20 games during the last two seasons.
That’s the kind of success the Bears have been dreaming of for years. It’s what Baylor was looking for when it hired Briles away from Houston, where he took a team that was winless in 2001 and molded it into a Conference USA champion by ’06. Baylor hasn’t had a winning season since 1995 (under Chuck Reedy) and was 3-9 last year with Guy Morriss.
So what prompted Briles to leave Houston for the dead-end program of the Big 12?
“My daughter told me not to take it,” Briles said.
“The biggest challenge, without a doubt, is I feel like when people haven’t had a lot of success, a lot of times they’re scared of success,” he said. “We can’t be a university that’s scared of success. I like to walk down paths nobody else wants to.”
One of Briles’ first challenges simply was picking his lineup. After a three-way battle at quarterback between true freshman Robert Griffin of Copperas Cove, senior and Miami transfer Kirby Freeman and returning starter Blake Szymanski, Briles said Tuesday he had picked a starter but was keeping it a secret.
Syzmanski started 10 games last year and passed for 2,844 yards. Freeman started seven games in his career with the Hurricanes before he transferred for graduate school.
All Briles would say is that he expects to use more than one quarterback tonight.
Wake Forest has the unusual challenge of trying to live up to high expectations. After the 2006 ACC title, Wake started last season 0-2 before it rebounded to finish 9-4.
“People are just throwing names and number out there before anything has happened,” Wake quarterback Riley Skinner said. “Before you even play a down of football, you feel like you should be handed a trophy. I think being on both ends of the spectrum has really helped us stay grounded. We know that we can’t let that stuff get to us.”
This year, the Demon Deacons return nine starters on a defense that held six opponents under 20 points and scored eight touchdowns on turnovers. On offense, Skinner runs the show. His 72-percent pass completion rate was best in the country last year.
“With the expectations through the roof for this football team, I think there’s a little bit of pressure,” Grobe said. “I hope we handle it better than we did last year.”
