Bowlsby: Some in league feel Baylor scandal ‘sullied’ image

In May, an investigation commissioned by Baylor found a “fundamental failure” by the university, its athletic department and football team to respond appropriately to a series of sexual-assault allegations against football players.

Bowlsby said the Big 12 board of directors executive committee – Oklahoma president David Boren, Texas president Gregory Fenves and Kansas chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little – chose to go public with the news that they were demanding information from Baylor and that the school wasn’t complying.

“We are very committed as a group of 10 schools to eradicating sexual assault on our campuses”, Bowlsby said at the start of football media days. “It nearly goes without saying that when you combine alcohol and drugs and raging hormones and the experiences of 18-22 years old, it’s probably unrealistic to think that these kinds of things are never going to happen”.

The Big 12 board – presidents and chancellors – will meet with Baylor leadership on Tuesday in Dallas. The more Bowlsby addressed the media, however, the less clear it seemed on how forthcoming Baylor has actually been. Bowlsby described that as an “ongoing process” and it was too early to know what action, if any, the league’s board could take against the private school in Waco, Texas. Bowlsby stressed that the Big 12 has no prerogative in telling its schools who it can and can’t hire. He said Big 12 officials have had access to only a summary of the report and “findings of fact” that Baylor officials released to media and the public in late May.

“We haven’t talked about it to ask specifically, but I haven’t heard anything along those lines from the NCAA or from Baylor”, Bowlsby said. There was an in-person meeting June 23 between Bowlsby and Baylor officials, including interim president David Garland and board of regents chairman Ronald Murff. “It isn’t going to go away soon, and I don’t know how to characterize it other than that”.

“It isn’t going to be completed tomorrow, but I think that we will take a big step down the path and I think we will also have the opportunity to get a little more information about where the rules violations, if there are any, might intersect at the Big 12 level and also at the NCAA level”.

Bowlsby also admitted he knows more than the public now does about the situation, but later contradicted himself by saying “I know what you know”. Bowlsby said conference composition is part of the board’s agenda Tuesday. “I think we have to be good listeners”.