Art Briles, the former Baylor football coach who was fired in 2016 after a university investigation found that he and other coaches botched sexual assault accusations levied against football players, was hired Thursday as Grambling State University’s offensive coordinator, school officials said.
Briles had not coached in college football since his ousting from Baylor, but he was the head football coach at Mount Vernon High School in Texas before resigning in 2020. Briles, 66, also coached football in Florence, Italy, in 2018.
Briles’s hiring at Louisiana’s Grambling State, one of the most popular historically Black colleges in the United States, immediately raised questions about the program’s culture under Hue Jackson, the former Cleveland Browns head coach who was hired to lead the university’s football program in December.
Brian Howard, a spokesman for the athletic department, said it would not formally announce the hiring of Briles or discuss its reasons for bringing him back into college football. Howard added that Briles was interviewed by a reporter from a local television station and discussed some of the controversy surrounding his time at Baylor. The segment featuring Briles was scheduled to air on Thursday evening.