Baylor Settles With Art Briles To Avoid Wrongful Termination Suit

Baylor University has reached a settlement with former head football coach Art Briles, according to a school regent, a move that heads off Briles’s potential wrongful termination suit that would have exposed thousands of internal records about the college’s investigation of its handling of sexual assault cases.

Briles on Thursday lashed out at his former employer, claiming he was just the fall guy as “camouflage to disguise and distract from its own institutional failure to comply with Title IX and other federal civil rights laws” and filed a motion to no longer be represented by Baylor’s lawyers in a Title IX lawsuit brought by a sexual assault victim. A day later, he withdrew that motion.

The terms of the financial settlement were not disclosed; Briles would have been owed $40 million on his contract were he not found to have been fired with cause. There was a major push by wealthy Baylor donors to restore Briles to his job, and one school regent says he received hate mail over the move.