ARLINGTON – TCU head coach Sonny Dykes defended the hiring of Kendall Briles, the son of former Baylor head coach Art Briles, as his new offensive coordinator during the first day of Big 12 media days.
Kendall was the offensive coordinator for his father at Baylor when a sexual assault scandal rocked the football program. Art has only coached in Italy and at Mount Vernon High School – about 100 miles east of Dallas – since he was fired from Baylor.
Kendall wasn’t cited by the NCAA for any wrongdoing in the scandal, though a 2017 lawsuit alleged that Kendall “used sex to sell” the football program to potential recruits. Kendall denied the allegation and the lawsuit was settled out of court between Baylor and the plaintiff.
Kendall has been the offensive coordinator at Florida Atlantic, Houston, Florida State and most recently Arkansas since the Baylor scandal. This offseason, Dykes hired him to replace Garrett Riley, who left TCU to become the offensive coordinator at Clemson.
“Certainly all of those things were things I considered when I hired Kendall,” Dykes said Wednesday. “I knew it was going to be an unpopular hire in some ways because of some things that had happened, but at the same time, I was very confident from knowing Kendall from the time he was 13 years old and just talking to people that were directly involved in that situation.
“There was a tremendous amount of due diligence.”
