THE EYES OF TEXAS ARE UPON … • Three Bears the Horns will have to keep close tabs on today: TERRANCE GANAWAY, RB The senior who followed coach Art Briles from the University of Houston had a couple of pedestrian seasons before exploding for almost 1,200 yards and 14 touchdowns, with two games to go in 2011.
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Texas vs. Baylor: Three Bears the Horns will be watching
Filed under News by on Dec 3rd, 2011. Comment. 
When it comes to his football team, Art Briles has tunnel vision. When he was asked Monday about Saturday being the final home game for seniors, he didn’t see what it had to do with getting his team ready for Texas and its ninth-ranked defense.
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Bears finally have the confidence, results of a winner
Filed under Football, News by on Nov 29th, 2011. Comment.
WACO, Texas — Robert Griffin III whirled spirals to sprinting receivers for touchdowns five times on Friday night. He sprinted shortly after to congratulate them. He’s the spokesman for the team, but Griffin’s best show of leadership in Friday’s 50-48 win over No. 14 TCU came when he was physically unable to speak. A Griffin fumble set up a TCU go-ahead field goal that turned a 24-point, fourth-quarter lead into a one-point deficit with just more than four minutes to play. Griffin said he was on the sidelines “in a hole.” His receiver, Kendall Wright , encouraged him through his tears on the sideline. “I didn’t want my team to lose because of me,” Griffin said, despite tallying 359 yards and five touchdowns on 21-of-27 passing. It didn’t. Griffin took the field, but the offense sputtered. Facing a third-and-10, Griffin whipped a pass to Wright, a former high school quarterback, near the sideline and then Griffin raced up the middle of the field. “I’m about to get hit. Real hard,” Griffin says he thought as soon as the play was called. “As soon as I threw it, the middle opened up, but I saw the safety eyeing me, so I turned, and I knew he was going to knock the crap out of me.” He did. The hit caught Griffin in the back and knocked the wind out of him. He remained on the ground before being helped up by teammates. Except he couldn’t talk and was struggling the breathe. The answer? Have running back Terrance Ganaway call the next few plays while Griffin made fake gestures to his teammates as a decoy. “If you get slapped around, you either fight back, or you go in a corner,” coach Art Briles said. “We weren’t going to go in a corner.” Briles was talking about his team. He might as well have been talking about Griffin. Despite the respiratory drama, Griffin never left the field. Briles gave his quarterback a break with a pair of run plays following the big hit, but Griffin’s play and what followed spoke much louder than anything he could have said at any point earlier in his career, which is now in its fourth year at Baylor. “When you take shots, and you get up and still make plays? That’s leader quality,” said Ganaway, who finished the night with 120 yards and a touchdown on 24 carries. “A quarterback has to possess those qualities, and Robert Griffin has them.” He used them to move Baylor down the field and into position to kick a game-winning 37-yard field goal that later prompted a field storming, which once upon a time, was a rarity in Waco. “Those are classics,” Briles said of Friday night’s win, highlighted by the drama-filled fourth quarter. After Friday night and last year’s win over Kansas State that clinched bowl eligiblity, these Bears are becoming field-storming veterans. “He’s a winner
Filed under Football by on Sep 3rd, 2011. Comment.
On Tuesday, the Big East wrapped up the last set of media days in college football, so it’s time to take a look back at what we learned from the Big 12’s annual event, as well as what we still have to learn. What we learned from Big 12 Media Days The Big 12’s coaches weren’t excited to see high school games on the Longhorn Network. Almost a week before media days, Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe put a hold on the Longhorn Network’s plans to broadcast high school games, but the league’s coaches voiced their displeasure at the possibility in various ways, none stronger than Missouri’s Gary Pinkel. “It’s a lack of common sense there to think that the network, the university network, can have high school games,” he said. Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy said his “antenna went up when I started to hear that information.” Baylor’s Art Briles was the only coach who said it didn’t bother him, but on Monday, the league announced it would declare a one-year moratorium on broadcasting high school games, allowing the issue to be further examined by the NCAA. Mack Brown knows what he wants from his quarterbacks. Brown said summer workouts helped Colt McCoy separate himself from Jevan Snead the last time Texas had a quarterback battle, and he’s hoping the same thing happened this summer. Brown wants leadership from his quarterbacks above all, but he wants them to take care of the ball second for a team that ranked 116th in turnover ratio in 2010. Garrett Gilbert has the experience and is the most vocal of the group, but he threw 17 interceptions to 10 touchdowns last season. Case McCoy , Connor Wood and David Ash were supposed to spend their spring and summer mostly learning Bryan Harsin’s new, complex offense. Now, it’s time to focus on competing. The separation could happen fast, and Texas opens fall camp on Friday. Art Briles narrowly edges out Tommy Tuberville for the league’s most entertaining coach. Tuberville poked at the Big 12 on his way off the stage , but Briles earned a few more fans with a solid collection of one-liners, including one about Ahmad Dixon that somehow got overlooked. “I take a lot of pride in being able to guess how much a male weighs,” Briles said of the 206-pounder. “If you looked at him, you’d say that guy looks like he weighs about 183. He’s put together pretty good.” Briles also argued that talking trash was “in the ear of the beholder” and compared his quarterback to famed hurdler Edwin Moses. Oklahoma will be fascinating to watch.
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Questions and answers from media days
Filed under Football by on Aug 3rd, 2011. Comment.
Time to pass out a few awards from Day 1 of Big 12 Media Days. Before we do, here’s the schedule for Day 2 (all times ET): Texas Tech: 12 p.m. Kansas: 12:20 p.m. Iowa State: 12:40 p.m. Kansas State: 1 p.m. Oklahoma: 1:20 p.m. Players and coaches will be made available for one-on-one interviews later in the afternoon, and commissioner Dan Beebe is scheduled to address the media along with the coaches at 4 p.m. On to the awards: Best one-liner: Art Briles, Baylor Briles, on his quarterback speaking confidently about his team and perhaps turning opposing fans off in the process: “You know, talking trash to my nephew or talking trash — you talking trash to your nephew might be two different things. It’s kind of in the ear of the beholder.” Second-best one-liner: Mack Brown, Texas A reporter began his question with “So much has been made of this Longhorn Network and maybe some high school games–” and was interrupted by the Longhorns coach, who interjected with a, “Really?” Third-best one-liner: Art Briles, Baylor I asked Briles about Robert Griffin III ’s reputation for speaking his mind (confidently), and the Bears coach responded with a comparison to famed sprinter Edwin Moses, capped by asking yours truly if I knew who the gap-toothed track star was (I did, and do). “He’s not low stepping when he’s crossing that finish line. His knee’s up and he’s stepping long and he’s stepping pretty,” Briles said. “Robert talking trash is to me just being a confident athlete that has reality to back up what he’s saying. I mean, shoot, he’s not worried about what people are thinking about what he’s saying; he’s worried about producing on the football field. And he’s a mature enough person to understand that what he says he has the ability to back up, which he does.” Best dressed: Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State While some of his other coaching brethren fell back on turtlenecks and team polos, Gundy broke out a pinstripe suit with an orange tie, complete with an orange pocket square. Strongest gesture: Texas A&M The Aggie brass has voiced its disapproval of the Longhorn Network in the past week, and on Monday, coach Mike Sherman and his five-man player contingent declined an interview request from the network, which was shooting interviews in a separate room like other national television channels such as ESPN, ESPNU and Fox Sports. “We didn’t see a need to take care of them on a separate basis,” said Texas A&M spokesman Alan Cannon, who noted that they spoke with media from Norman and Oklahoma City in the media room designated for local TV. He added that he felt speaking with the Longhorn Network “wasn’t appropriate.” Baylor also didn’t speak with the network, but Bears officials said they were prevented from doing so because of time constraints. Weakest gesture: Tommy Tuberville, Texas Tech These are crucial days for the Big 12, and the league unveiled its branding initiative early Monday evening by introducing each of the Big 12 coaches and a slogan around the Big 12’s new tagline, “How We Play.” Tuberville, however, was the only coach in the league not present. He was at a golf event elsewhere in the metroplex with Texas Tech alumni. Texas A&M is the central figure in the most recent Big 12 dustup, but the league could have used a truly united front.
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Big 12 Media Days: Best of Day 1
Filed under Football by on Jul 26th, 2011. Comment.
Briles was named the head coach at Houston in 2003 where he led the Cougars to a 34-28 record over five seasons and… Source: Bleacher Report
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College Football: Is Every BCS Coach’s Best Years Ahead of or Behind Him?
Filed under Football, News by on Jul 5th, 2011. Comment.
WACO, Texas — The goal was simple for the three coaches that preceded Art Briles at Baylor: reach the postseason. Dave Roberts and Kevin Steele couldn’t do it. Neither could Guy Morriss. Briles did it in his third season. He won seven games with four of them in Big 12 play, the most for Baylor ever since the conference’s inception. “It’s kind of like, we finally got to a bowl game and everybody’s like, ‘Now what?’” said junior quarterback Robert Griffin III . Now, the rebuilding continues. The questions regarding the 16-year bowl drought (“Honestly, I don’t know,” Briles said of the previous time Baylor reached the posteason, “Somewhere in the mid-90s.”) are over and new ones can be asked: How good can Baylor eventually become? “You’ve got to do more than maintain and sustain,” Briles said. “What we’ve got to do is build on what we’ve done.” Briles is “not big on hitting a lot of firsts.” The firsts will come with the program’s growth, but simply achieving a first isn’t good enough. “We’ve got to make sure we establish ourselves as a program that’s got to be dealt with year in and year out, and we can’t be hot one year and cold the next,” he said. “We’ve got to stay hot all the time. Our guys understand that, we understand that, and that’s our goal to fulfill to it.” The next logical step is to win a bowl game. The Bears made it after last season’s 7-5 campaign, but were beaten soundly by Illinois, 38-14 in the Texas Bowl. The Illini led 24-0 at one point and ran for 291 yards in the game. “Bad taste in my mouth. That’s what I take away from it,” Briles said. “Embarrassment.” Griffin says he felt the team balanced the work and play of their first bowl trip well, it just didn’t show up on game day. “You look back at maybe things that you could do differently, from a game management standpoint to a preparation standpoint,” Briles said. “Anytime things work out well or not so well, you need to evaluate what you did and how you can do it better. So from that standpoint, we’ll evaluate everything we’ve done, which we already have.” Once that was done, it’s officially “next year.” Briles shook up his defensive staff and brought in new coordinator Phil Bennett from Pittsburgh. The move was to help shore up a unit that ranked 104th nationally and 11th in the Big 12 in total defense. “We’ve got to make people respect us a little more,” Briles said. “We don’t feel like we have quite the respect that we need to earn at this point.” Getting to a bowl game isn’t enough to do it, especially a bowl game that ends in a lopsided loss. Said Griffin: “[Briles] came here for more things. I know I did. It’s our job as leaders to make sure the rest of the team sees that.” The Bears have the talent to do it, and there are plenty of firsts on the board within reach of the program. To stay “hot,” as Briles put it, is to make sure those firsts don’t become lasts. “We’ve got to win a bowl game and there’s two or three universities that we haven’t had a chance to turn the lights on against around here yet,” Briles said. “We’ve got some unfinished business with a lot of folks.”
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Baylor readying for ‘unfinished business’
Filed under Football by on Mar 18th, 2011. Comment.
Best program turning win The 30-22 win by Art Briles’ Bears, their first in Austin since 1991, signifies a program on the rise.
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Texas-Baylor: Bests and worsts
Filed under News by on Oct 31st, 2010. Comment.
“It is a growing point for our football team and for Baylor nation in general,” Briles said. The last time the Bears were ranked for more than a week was 1991, when they were still part of the Southwest Conference. To match that, they’ll likely need to… Source: Buffalo News
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Baylor in AP poll at No. 25, 1st ranking since ‘93
Filed under Football, News by on Oct 24th, 2010. Comment.
Texas Tech hasn’t had a losing season since the inception of the Big 12, the only team in the Big 12 to hold that distinction. Baylor hasn’t had a winning season over the same period, beginning in 1996. Texas Tech has been to a bowl every season since 2000. Baylor hasn’t seen the postseason since 1994. But take a look at ESPN’s bowl projections and you’ll see Baylor on both lists and Texas Tech missing on one. Saturday in the Cotton Bowl, the two will meet at a neutral site in Dallas, but at a crossroads. Win, and the Bears are 5-1, with a spotless 2-0 conference record atop the Big 12 South. A loss for Texas Tech would mean a 2-3 start, but most importantly an 0-3 start in Big 12 play and a frustrating spot alone at the bottom of one of college football’s toughest divisions, an unfamiliar place for the Red Raiders, who have never finished lower than fourth in the South. Worse, considering two of those three losses would come to Iowa State and Baylor, two teams most Texas Tech faithful penciled in as wins when the season began. Suddenly, Saturdays have become even more important very early in the season for both teams. The hard part is making sure that doesn’t affect either team’s preparation. After a 45-10 loss to TCU earlier in the year, coach Art Briles stressed that his team would be judged after 12 games, not three. His stance is the same after Baylor dismantled foe Kansas, 55-7, for the most lopsided conference win ever, a performance that ranked among the best of Briles’ tenure. “It’s just one win on one Saturday. We’re certainly experienced enough to understand that as a staff and as a team,” Briles said. “We’ll be judged at the end of the season, by the complete season, but right now we’re just trying to break it down and play one game one week and focus on the small picture.” Texas Tech rebounded from a 24-0 deficit against Iowa State, but lost 52-38. It fell in a 14-0 hole in the first quarter against Texas and lost, 24-14. “We just keep starting slow,” coach Tommy Tuberville said. “We can catch up because we can throw the ball pretty well, but we have to be able to keep that consistency going.” Transitioning Texas Tech will face a Baylor team building on two years under Briles and brimming with confidence after the Kansas win. “It just feels right,” quarterback Robert Griffin said of the 4-1 start. “We’ve been working hard for three years to get where we are right now. We’ve just got to keep working hard and not get happy, not get satisfied. This team, it can be great, but it’s up to us to make sure that it happens.” That “right” feeling was the same one Griffin got looking up at the scoreboard on Saturday. But he told his teammates the same thing: Don’t get too high on winning. Baylor’s goal when the season started wasn’t to win four games. Texas Tech beat Baylor by just a touchdown in each of the past two seasons, and Griffin missed last year’s game. He ran for 99 yards and two touchdowns when the Bears lost to then-No. 8 Texas Tech in 2007. “It’s a new team. I know everybody wants to talk about the past few years against Tech and how close we’ve been, but it’s a new team.
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Texas Tech and Baylor meet at crossroads
Filed under Football by on Oct 5th, 2010. Comment.
