Sam Ponder calls out Art Briles for his apology on College GameDay
After Tom Rinaldi’s interview with former Baylor head coach Art Briles, ESPN’s Sam Ponder questioned how legitimate Briles’ apology was after what happened led to his termination.
Art Briles was rightfully fired from Baylor this past May for the scandal that discovered he and the school hid cases involving football players under Briles and women on campus. Despite his chance at truly apologizing for it, many others — including ESPN’s Sam Ponder — took issue to the “apology.”
On Saturday during ESPN’s College GameDay, Briles was interviewed by Tom Rinaldi about what happened at Baylor that led to him being fired. Despite the public platform, Briles didn’t appear to seem that apologetic in the interview and that rubbed Ponder the wrong way.
Briles said that he “lost some of his soul” after being fired from Baylor and there’s “no place in society” for women being assaulted by anyone.
When the part that was televised on GameDay ended, the folks on set gave their opinion on the matter, including Ponder.
"“What I’d always liked about Art Briles before is he seemed like a straight shooter, in all my time with him. I respected that. But in this interview, I didn’t think he was a straight shooter,” Ponder said.“He did not say what he was sorry for. How can you accept an apology from someone if they don’t say what they did? There’s a huge difference between saying, ‘I was in charge and I didn’t know what happened and didn’t do anything, because I didn’t know what happened,’ and ‘I was in charge, I was told, I knew about the accusations and didn’t do anything.’ I don’t know which it is yet, and he hasn’t owned up specifically. I don’t know how you hire a guy or accept the apology of a guy who hasn’t told you why he’s apologizing.”"
Briles did address the victims (when Rinaldi asked what he would say to them), but Ponder’s correct in her analysis of what was shown on GameDay. What is Briles really sorry for? The fact that he hid defenseless women being attacked by some of the young men he coached from the world?
You can be sorry, but you need to why you’re sorry, especially when so many others were affected by the situation.
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You can read more about Rinaldi’s interview with Briles here. The rest of the interview will be shown on Monday’s edition of Outside the Lines on ESPN.