THREAD: Going through this report that is attempting to exonerate Art Briles. Problem is, without discovery at Baylor, it is impossible to totally exonerate him...we simply don't know what we don't know.

The report does paint a compelling picture based on publicly-available info

2/ If you want to be convinced that Art did nothing wrong, then this will convince you. It certainly raises reasonable doubt. However, if you want to believe that he is a monster, there is still enough latitude for you to fill in what we don't know with a lot of nefarious things.

3/ The report alleges that out of 100 sexual assault/harassment complaints made over a 3 year period at BAY, only 5 were presented to the Board of Regents, & all 5 were football players. In fact, it alleges, only 8 cases out of the 100 involved football players. Here are the 5:

4/ This is Sam Ukwuachu. He was the genesis of this whole scandal when @TexasMonthly reported that he was on trial for sexual assault and the public was totally unaware:

5/ This is Tevin Elliott:

6/ This is Shawn Oakman:

7/ This is Shamycheal "Myke" Chatman:

8/ This has been reported-on at length (more here: https://www.statesman.com/news/20170517/baylor-volleyball-player-i-was-drugged-gang-raped-harassed-by-football-players) but for the first time we have a denial of the much attributed Art Briles quote, "those are some bad dudes...why was she around those guys?"

9/ The report also quotes former Baylor Athletic Director Ian McCaw testifying under oath that the regents, "intentionally set the football program on fire to deflect attention away from their own failures."

and

"Briles was made to be the scapegoat"

10/ The report refers to cases where law firm Pepper Hamilton, retained by Baylor in the aftermath of the scandal breaking, focused on race in their investigation. Asking a coach "so you're the big black guy we've heard about" or "why are there so many black players on the team?"

11/ McCaw: "[there was an] elaborate plan that essentially scapegoated the black football players and the football program for being responsible for what was a decades-long, university-wide sexual assault scandal."

12/ McCaw continues: "the entire focus was on a very small percentage of the sexual assaults involving black football players...this was a campus-wide problem, and all of the attention was on black football players."

13/ McCaw: "[Regents felt like] they could get the media off their back if they focused the attention on the football players, took some decisive action, and that the media would not keep digging and find out the scope of the scandal."

14/ Phil Stewart, former BAY regent: "to this day I have seen no reason or basis upon which [Briles] should have been terminated...I don't believe that Art Briles should have been terminated for the reasons that have been noted."

15/ Now onto the notorious text messages released by Baylor as part of a lawsuit filed by a former athletic dept official Colin Shillinglaw. For the first time (as far as I am aware) Briles addresses these text messages:

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23/ The report begins to wrap up by stating that the firm did not have access to all relevant materials and could not compel testimony, and had no access to materials from the ongoing NCAA investigation...so their conclusions are limited to information voluntarily provided..

24/ It quotes Baylor testimony from various other cases, stating that Briles did not violate any university policies:

25/ The report concludes with this:

"...we are not aware of any conduct on the part of Coach Briles that should serve to foreclose consideration of him as a candidate to coach football again at the collegiate level."

26/ If you want to read the whole thing, @jayleeson has uploaded it here: https://twitter.com/jayleeson/status/1337152457437302790?s=20

27/ To be clear: I am not making a case for Briles here, just trying to pull the highlights from a 20 page doc and allow people to make their own decisions. I will follow-up later with some personal thoughts on it. /thread