Art Briles lands CFB head coaching job at DII program, per reports
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Art Briles is reportedly back in college football.
Briles, 69, is set to become the new head coach of Division II program Eastern New Mexico. Former KRIV sports director Mark Berman was the first to break the news. National outlets, including ESPN, are reporting the same.
In 2016, Briles was fired as Baylor’s head coach after an investigation into the program’s handling of sexual assault allegations. The Eastern New Mexico job will be his first in college football since his firing from Baylor.
In recent years, Briles has received multiple favorable rulings connected to the Baylor sexual assault scandal. In 2021, Briles did not receive penalties when the NCAA handed down its ruling in the Baylor case. The panel, though, notably found that 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.”
Though Briles’s attorney boasted his client was completely exonerated, the NCAA ruling did not change public opinion on the former Baylor coach. In 2022, Grambling State briefly hired Briles as offensive coordinator. The move generated so much controversy that Briles quickly resigned, stating he did not want his presence to be a distraction to Hue Jackson’s team.
A federal judge ruled in 2023 that Briles was not negligent in a case involving a female Baylor student who reported being assaulted by a football player in 2014.
Oklahoma addressed the presence of Art Briles on the sideline in 2023 when his son-in-law Jeff Lebby was a Sooners assistant coach. Lebby is now the head coach at Mississippi State.
Briles and Eastern New Mexico athletic director Kevin Fite previously worked together at Houston. As a college football head coach, Briles has a record of 99-65, going 34-28 at Houston (2003-07) and 65-37 at Baylor (2008-15). Since being fired from Baylor, Briles has coached Guelfi Firenze in the Italian Football League and at Mount Vernon High School in Texas.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
