There are few more joyful experiences of Texas than cheering for the home team at a small-town football game. The shops and restaurants decorate to get ready, the band plays, cheerleaders and spirit squads make noise, teachers and moms sell Frito pie and other delicacies and it seems everybody shows up, even if their only connection to the school is paying property taxes.
Winning is a big deal to students and the town. There’s a spirit of community that needs to be felt to be understood.
We love this rite of Texas autumn because we’ve felt it. And because we’ve felt it, we also know it’s about so much more than the final score.
It appeals to something deeper and better in us. It has to, or it won’t be the same.
What the school board in Mount Vernon did when it voted to hire Art Briles as coach might help them win. But it won’t make their football program better. It won’t make their town better.
Mount Vernon is a dot of 2,662 people on the route to Texarkana. Briles is the disgraced former Baylor University football coach whom media reports and an internal investigation exposed for covering up accusations of rape aimed at players. Briles didn’t report the allegations to police or university leaders, allowing the alleged abuse to continue. Though he was not accused of any crime, his ethical choices were contemptible, putting the football program over victims and ultimately hurting everyone involved as well as Baylor itself.
Mount Vernon, which plays at the 3A level, announced on Friday it had hired Briles because, according to Superintendent Jason McCullough, “He is passionate about investing in the lives of young people and helping them to succeed both on the field and in life.”
It is hard to find evidence that is true. In fact, Briles’ time at Baylor is evidence of just the opposite. His failure to put students who were hurt or even were suspected of being hurt by his players above his desire to protect those players represents the sort of moral failure that should disqualify someone from being welcomed to a high school campus.
Winning is important, and no one doubts Briles is a winning coach. But if winning at any cost is the point of high school football in Texas, then you can keep it.
We believe the lights go bright on Fridays to teach our young people something more. They turn on to help them learn about grit, about playing to the end, about being part of a team, about struggling, sweating and giving all they’ve got to one another, and then, at the end, however it comes out, being able to walk across the field and shake the other team’s hands knowing they played hard and played fair.
That’s the sort of winning that is worth it. That’s the sort of losing that is worth it, too.
Whatever happens in Mount Vernon under Briles, whether they take home a state championship or go bust — it will be sullied. It won’t be the game the kids deserve.
