Hold your applause for the Big 12

It is easy to read Wednesday’s headlines and applaud the Big 12 for finally taking action in response to everything that has happened at Baylor. In fact, an “about time,” was probably muttered by people who saw that an action had been taken.

For clarity, The Big 12 announced Wednesday that its Board of Directors voted unanimously to withhold 25% of Baylor’s portion of the conference’s revenue distribution. Essentially, it means that the Big 12 is holding on to a little over $6–8 million it would have otherwise given to Baylor this year.

It’s an impressive move by the conference on the surface. After all, the easiest way to significantly effect an organization is to affect its financial bottom line.

But here’s the thing. The conference isn’t holding on to that $6–8 million forever.

The Big 12 fully plans on giving Baylor those dollars when a third-party organization verifies that “proper institutional controls are in place and sustainable,” according to Big 12 Board of Directors chairman David Boren.

So what, exactly, is the punishment? Do what everyone is expecting you to do, do what you have already said you were going to do, then you’ll get this money. Interesting.

Now, sure, this strategy works when disciplining children. If the kid is misbehaving, you take away a toy or two until the behavior changes. Then, the kid gets the toys back. It’s simple, effective, and absolutely an age-appropriate measure to take. It is not, however, a strong enough response to the tragedies that occurred on and around Baylor’s campus.

52 allegations of sexual assault against 31 football players from 2011–2014. Two former Baylor football players are already in prison. Another has been indicted. Art Briles probably deserves a permanent show-cause penalty after recently released text messages revealed his horrifically flippant responses when being notified that his players had been accused of a variety of crimes.

These things deserve something more than just “holding on to a bit of your money for a minute.”

Additionally, we shouldn’t overlook the statement released Wednesday by interim University President David Garland. In part, it read:

Baylor already had planned to hire an outside auditor to audit the implementation of our enhanced practices, and we welcome the Big 12 Conference’s request of an independent review. While the withholding of conference distributions is an unexpected financial event, we do not deem these actions to materially impact the overall financial position of the University. We pledge our full cooperation, and we will work with the Big 12 Conference to conduct the audit as expeditiously as possible.

First, good for Baylor that they’ve already had plans to do what the Big 12 is asking them to do. In the midst of all this, knowing that a third-party evaluator needs to participate in a review of this nature is a small thing, but a good one nonetheless. (on a sidenote: now that this is something the Big 12 wants Baylor to do in order to get their $6 million back, who picks the third-party? The conference or Baylor? I think this is an important question.)

However, the bold portion of the quote above is the piece that is bothersome to me. Garland is admitting quite freely that the financial punishment levied by the Big 12 will have virtually no effect on the University.

Which leads us again to the question, “is this really all that the Big 12 is doing?”

$6 million is a drop in the bucket for a private university such as Baylor, so taking it in the first place is relatively insignificant. Giving it back a few months down the road makes it even more insignificant, so let’s not applaud the Big 12 for it.

But what if the Big 12 had taken 50%? Or 75%? Or, say they were so bold as to say they were taking all $30+ million of Baylor’s revenue distribution for 2016–17 and the university wasn’t ever going to see it.

That would be a real punishment, and Big 12 could do a lot of good with that money. They could give it to RAINN, an anti-sexual violence organization, or PAVE, or any number of non-profits dedicated to caring for victims of sexual/domestic abuse.

Perhaps the conference could have taken a larger portion of Baylor’s 2016–17 distribution with a promise to do the same in future years if standards weren’t met, or if what Baylor promised today doesn’t come to fruition by a given deadline.

But none of that will happen now, because the Big 12 took the toothless route. The “action for action’s sake” path.

And I can’t help but wonder how this action from the Big 12 impacts what, if anything, the NCAA was planning on doing.

Can the NCAA sit back now and say, “it looks like the Big 12 has this one handled,” while continuing to do nothing? It’s clear the NCAA is hesitant to wade back into the fight against sexual violence in a post-Penn State world, which saw them sued after they heavily penalized the Nittany Lions football program for it’s actions (or, rather, inaction) while now-convicted serial child molester Jerry Sandusky ruined the lives of so many children.

It’s yet to be seen whether or not the NCAA will get involved and take action, but their current inaction when it comes to Baylor raises a question: do they care more about the welfare of young boys than they do about that of college-aged women?

I’d like to take a moment to address two arguments I’ve seen a lot lately from Baylor folks. First, the “why punish the whole when it was a select few” argument. It wasn’t a select few. It was a systemic silencing of sexual assault victims of proportions we have never seen before. The president, athletic director, and head coaches weren’t fired for no reason. I’m shocked, frankly, that the rest of the coaching staff wasn’t fired along with Briles. And “we have to field a football team” isn’t an excuse for keeping them around. That’s exactly the excuse that got Baylor in this position.

Big crimes deserve big punishments, and Baylor’s big punishment, beyond a tarnished reputation, still hasn’t been handed down.

The second argument is that of the “extremely deluded” variety. That is, that the media, and especially media from rival universities, have blown this out of proportion to take Baylor down. To that I simply say: No. Stop.

Over the past few days the calls for Baylor to receive the death penalty have grown louder. It won’t happen, and we can argue about whether or not it should, but something has to be done. And even if the NCAA doesn’t do anything, and the Big 12 stops with what they have already done, there’s still something that can happen. We can refuse to send our children there.

I never thought I would agree with Stephen A. Smith, but here we are. Watch the video below, as Smith calls for parents to stand up against the University, and let me know what you think about all of this in the comments.