Corn Flakes: How Long Can Baylor Be This Stupid?

You can Google "How To Handle a Public Relations Crisis" and come up with all sorts of ideas on what to do if you're Baylor. There are loads of articles, plans, and tips, and most of them, like this one, never use the worth "truth", although he does start out by stating, "the days of playing ostrich are gone" and maybe that's close enough.

One contains this tip:

you should not react to a PR crisis if you don’t know exactly what happened and why it happened

It's a tip that would have been very helpful to Ken Starr, who will forever be associated with the phrase "veil of ignorance" after

The more I read through articles about how to handle a public relations crisis, the more I get the feeling that professional public relations people might be your own worst enemy.

Most of these articles are about control, and Baylor has long since lost control of the situation. Maybe that's because their crisis is beyond the level of crises as considered in most of the "PR Tips" articles I looked at.

Here's how I'd think it would work:

• You're caught doing something incredibly stupid, unethical, or illegal.
• You lay everything out on the table. You come clean with all the facts.
• You admit your own stupidity and ask for forgiveness in hopes that the court - whether civil, criminal or public opinion - will actually forgive you.
• If they do forgive you, you are the luckiest sonofabitch alive. Act like it.

There are definite problems with my plan. The most obvious is that lawyers would descend on me or my organization, tearing it apart with their injunctions and lawsuits. The next obvious? Public relations people wouldn't make any money on selling me their services, and in retaliation would work to make sure I was never forgiven.

Baylor would be better off following my advice at this point. The longer they delay, the dumber they continue to look. They're going to have to release the full report done by the law firm Pepper Hamilton. They'll need to clean out their athletic department and their administration. They might even need to publicly execute a member of the Board of Regents.

Then they might get to some level of of forgiveness and get back some level of control.

Unfortunately, it's clear they're still pretty far away from that.

Can you get any dumber than this?

UNL team to probe social networks by phone | UNL Today | University of Nebraska–Lincoln

We’re trying to turn the phone into a sociologist. That’s a step forward because the phone is there all the time the way a sociologist never could be.

U.S. Department of Education receives Title IX complaint about how Baylor University handled sexual assault and violence allegations

The U.S. Department of Education has received a Title IX complaint about Baylor University's handling of allegations of sexual assault and violence by students, including athletes, Outside the Lines has confirmed.

Baylor's Ken Starr Is Full Of Shit

This is the power that comes with not releasing the facts: in an information vacuum, everyone gets to make up their own narrative. On Thursday, it was Baylor’s Board of Regents offering empty talking points, saying they were sorry without admitting to any details of what specifically they were sorry for, or who specifically at their university was responsible for making life hell for women who said they were raped. They said they had "charted a course of action." Or had they?

I'm only so much of a Deadspin fan, but I feel like this article is right on the money.

Ken Starr's tone-deaf ESPN interview shows why Baylor needs to cut ties with him - SBNation.com

Starr said that he wasn't aware of any on-campus rapes, basing that lack of knowledge in part on being behind a "veil of ignorance," and implied that part of the reasoning for that was that Baylor is a "dry" campus on which alcohol is prohibited.

This is exactly what I was talking about when I said that the "doesn't happen here" attitude has to go away.

Arizona basketball recruiting: In-state prospect Saben Lee's recruitment heating up - Arizona Desert Swarm

In addition to those four, Nebraska has also offered along with Pepperdine, San Diego State, Pacific, and Weber State, amongst others.

Nick Saban: "It's called compliance, folks" - Roll 'Bama Roll

The head man is speaking for a lot of people that want a regulated recruiting environment.

Satellite Camps are Turning Nick Saban and Jim Harbaugh into Idiots - And The Valley Shook

What is it about this issue that causes everybody’s IQ level to drop?

Verne Lundquist to say farewell to SEC on CBS - Dawg Sports

"Uncle Verne" Lundquist is turning the 2016 SEC football season into a farewell tour.

The NCAA would be terrible on The Price is Right - Red Cup Rebellion

Take this quiz to find out if you're as awful at pricing items as the folks who investigated Ole Miss!

It's not really about the amount of money involved, but this is interesting anyway.

Oklahoma football: Baker Mayfield denied extra year of eligibility - OUDaily.com: Sports

Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield was denied a final year of eligibility by the Big 12 Conference's faculty representatives, Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby announced Wednesday evening.

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby wants an expansion decision by end of summer - Burnt Orange Nation

Given the nature of the conference, perhaps it wasn't surprising that the real news was the relative lack of big news.

Minnesota Wrestling head coach J Robinson placed on administrative leave - The Daily Gopher

With the announcement that Coach Robinson is on paid leave, let's recap what we know and what it might mean.

Rookie DT Maliek Collins Suffers Broken Foot During Cowboys’ OTAs | Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys’ pass rush has suffered another setback this offseason, as rookie defensive tackle Maliek Collins has been sidelined with a broken right foot.