Art Briles Sues Baylor Officials For Defamation And Conspiracy

Former Baylor head coach Art Briles has filed a lawsuit against three Baylor University regents and a school vice president. The suit claims that Baylor committed libel and slander by falsely claiming that Briles knew about but failed to report alleged rapes committed by his football players. The suit also claims that university officials have conspired to keep him from getting another coaching job.

Briles was fired by the university in May after an investigation into the school’s failure to properly handle sexual assault cases revealed “specific failings within both the football program and Athletics Department leadership, including a failure to identify and respond to a pattern of sexual violence by a football player, to take action in response to reports of a sexual assault by multiple football players, and to take action in response to a report of dating violence.” More details about exactly who knew what and when they knew it are unavailable, as the law firm that conducted the investigation, Pepper Hamilton, never actually produced a full written report of their findings.

Baylor went about filling in some of those blanks in the weeks after the investigation concluded. The university released a statement in which Briles and former athletic director Ian McCaw were called out for not reporting an alleged gang rape committed by football players. Two weeks before that, several school regents told the that Briles knew about at least one alleged assault committed by his players, but failed to notify any authorities.

Update (6:44 p.m.): We’ve posted the entire lawsuit below, but we’ll drop some of the more interesting excerpts here.

It starts out, of course, with a quote from the Bible:

The suit takes particular aim at the aforementioned Wall Street Journal story, which Briles believes was placed by the school’s “junkyard dog” PR firm, G.F. Bunting + C0.:

The suit also claims that Briles is a private citizen:

And here’s Briles claiming that the school’s actions caused him emotional distress:

You can read the full lawsuit below:

[ WaPo]