Houston's Briles to take Baylor job
FORT WORTH, Texas -- Houston coach Art Briles is next to take on the task of pulling Baylor out of the Big 12 basement.
Briles confirmed he was leaving in a news conference Wednesday at Houston after meeting with his players.
Baylor spokesman Nick Joos said a news conference was scheduled later in the day on the Waco campus to announce the school's new football coach.
Briles led Houston to four bowls in his five seasons. He was offered the job Wednesday, a day after meeting with Baylor athletic director Ian McCaw in Dallas.
"Life is full of decisions. Sometimes, you have to look at things from a professional, personal standpoint," Briles said. "Professionally, [Houston] ... is great university with a situation I'm proud to be a part of. Personally, the move allows a person of my nature a little more security. When you're getting up in my age, that's an important factor in life."
The Houston Chronicle reported on its Web site that Briles will get a seven-year contract for about $1.8 million per season. Briles, who turns 52 Monday, had four years left on his Houston contract with a base salary of $900,000 annually.
Briles replaces Guy Morriss, who was fired Nov. 18 after five seasons. Morriss' firing came the day after the Bears (3-9) completed their 12th straight losing season with their 12th consecutive Big 12 loss, 45-14 to Oklahoma State.
Houston (8-4) has already accepted an invitation to play in the Texas Bowl on Dec. 28 in Houston against an undetermined opponent. The Cougars won the Conference USA le last season.
Briles was 34-28 in five seasons at Houston with only one losing season. Before his arrival, the Cougars had only two winning seasons in the previous 12 years.
Before going to Houston, where he was a four-year letterman as a receiver and played in the 1976 Cotton Bowl, Briles spent three seasons as running backs coach at Texas Tech. His previous head coaching job had been at Stephenville High School, where in 12 seasons he was 136-29-2 and won four Texas state championships.
Morriss was 18-40 overall, 7-33 in conference games. The Bears were 0-8 in the Big 12 this season.
The leading candidate initially was Mike Singletary, the assistant head coach for the San Francisco 49ers. But the Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker and Baylor icon took his name out of consideration after a lengthy meeting with McCaw last week in California.
Briles was also on Baylor's short list, along with Houston Nutt, who resigned at Arkansas on Monday and was named Mississippi's new coach Tuesday.
Baylor's 12 consecutive losing seasons have come under the four coaches since Grant Teaff left in 1992 after 128 victories and eight bowl appearances in 21 seasons.
The Bears are the only Big 12 team without a bowl appearance since the conference's inception in 1996. Only two teams from Bowl Championship Series conferences have gone longer without a bowl, but Indiana (7-5) is expected to play its first postseason game in 14 years. Vanderbilt (5-7) lost its season finale to miss making its first bowl in 25 years.
There were some positive accomplishments under Morriss, a 15-season NFL lineman who was 9-14 in two seasons at Kentucky before taking the Baylor job.
Baylor beat two-time defending North Division champion Colorado in Morriss' conference debut in 2003. The coach also delivered the first Big 12 road victory, in 2005 at Iowa State, and then in 2006 the Bears won three Big 12 games in the same season for the first time.
Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press
I just heard this at work. Suck.
Football was the one thing that seemed to be improving and pushing UH back up there to national recognition, and now Briles is leaving. I hope it's not another 0-11 season like we had before Briles.
Anyone know who might replace him?
Good move for Baylor. He's not that far removed from coaching 4A Stephenville to back-to-back state championships. Recruiting-wise, it should benefit the Bears to have a coach that has proven ties to Texas high school coaches.
Is Baylor really a better job than UH?
They doubled his pay from UH - 900k to 1.8 mill per/7years. but, in answer to your question, probably not.
Briles was always obsessed with the Big 12, everyone knew that his goal was to coach there...I guess it didn't matter even if it was Baylor. He's not even coaching UH in the Texas Bowl either.
Believe it or not, as terrible as BU is they still have some decent home game crowds for football. It seems like they are one of those schools that is just happy to HAVE an athletics program. Everyone thinks it is the black hole of coaching, but I think someone could do a decent job there. Of course the down side is having to play UT, uo, OSU, ttek and atm once a year.
The 2 coaches I have seen talked about for the Houston job are Joe Deforest from OSU and Kevin Sumlin from uo. Deforest was Rival's recruiter of the year a few years back and is well known in Houston. He was also an assistant at Rice in the 90s.
From Rivals:
"DeForest's success in Houston is bordering on legendary, and he came through again. Seven of the Cowboys' 28 commitments are credited to DeForest, including three Texas top 100 prospects."
Yeah, they had full capacity for Aggie game...over half the stadium were Aggies, but they sold out.
I would not move to Waco and coach at Baylorfor 900K pay raise. I would not live in Waco for 1 million dollars...this was a bad move for Briles, who would have gotten a much better job offer at a much better locale in the next month, I'll bet.
I don't see anyone succeeding at Baylor anytime soon. But I suppose Briles wanted a chance to coach a BCS team.
Ok, well I'm not saying Waco is the most desirable of locations, but it could be worse. Just think, if he has ANY success at all at Baylor, in the toughest division in all of football, in a BCS conf, he will be a huge demand for another BCS program trying to bust out (for example like a UCLA or arKy or Ore St). Coaches like him would be Barnett at NW'ern - take a doormat and give them legitimacy, even if it was only for 2 years, and everyone wants you to work for them (until you try to discount the victim in a rape allegation).
The only way they can get to a Bowl game is to schedule 4 sisters of the poor in the non conf schedule and somehow win 2 of the 8 Big 12 games. can they do that? That is questionable.
Well, my respect for him went way down when I found out he wasn't going to coach the Texas bowl game.
Dude. Finish your committments. I would be pissy about the fact that we got a top Texas quarterback to commit to UH, but he will likely with Briles to Baylor, and therefore not be in my college after all, but I got a new job with a different college on campus, so meh.
Once you accept a new job, your school will not allow you to have anything to do with yuor program anymore.
Baylor damn near went to a Bowl in 2005. They had 5 wins and lost to atm in OT and uo in 2OT.
It could be Fayetteville...
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