Art Briles is returning to college football.
The former Baylor coach will take over as head coach at Division II’s Eastern New Mexico, the school said Monday.
Baylor fired Briles in 2016 amid a major sexual assault scandal; the school’s president and athletic director eventually resigned over claims that they helped cover up claims of sexual assault by football players.
This will mark Briles’s first gig in college football since being ousted from Baylor. Since then, he has coached two stints in Italy’s football league and at Mount Vernon High School in Texas in 2019–20.
The Canadian Football League team, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, hired Briles to their staff in 2017 and then reversed the hiring shortly after fan backlash. Then, in 2022, Briles was offered the offensive coordinator position at Grambling State, but did not end up taking the job after the school received negative press.
“He is an excellent coach, and I look forward to the future of Greyhound football,” athletic director Kevin Fite said in a statement Monday.
Briles was fired from Baylor after allegations surfaced that multiple football players committed acts of sexual assault or violence, and that football coaches and other athletic department officials didn’t properly report the allegations or even covered them up. The school paid Briles a $15.1 million settlement after his ouster, tax returns revealed in 2018.
An NCAA investigation released in 2021 said Briles “failed to meet even the most basic expectations of how a person should react to the kind of conduct at issue in this case.” Briles avoided any serious NCAA punishment, though, because the NCAA did not have any bylaws around sexual assault investigations. At the time, Briles’s attorney Scott Tompsett said the report “completely exonerated” him and “clears the way for Mr. Briles to return to coaching college football.”
Then, in 2023, a federal judge dismissed claims of “gross negligence” brought against Baylor, Briles, and former athletic director Ian McCaw.
Now, Briles is set to return to college coaching for the first time in almost ten years. When asked for comment about Briles’ history at Baylor, a spokesperson for Eastern New Mexico did not comment, pointing FOS to the university’s release announcing his hiring.
