Golden: With Texas and Oklahoma soon leaving, Baylor is poised for a Big 12 takeover
ARLINGTON — Baylor’s Big 12 takeover attempt is underway.
One day — be it in three seasons or even earlier — the top spot in the Little Conference that Could will be up for grabs.
Oklahoma and Texas are a couple of high-revenue-producing lame ducks preparing to take their considerable financial muscle to the Southeastern Conference sometime around 2025.
In the meantime, Baylor football has become one of the biggest quick-turnaround stories in college football. In just two years, Dave Aranda’s Bears have gone from the hunter to the hunted, from a 2-7 debut in a pandemic-ravaged 2020 season to 12-2 with six wins over ranked opponents, a No. 5 national finish and a conference title for the first time since 2014.
Aranda arrived at Big 12 media days on Wednesday as the coach they’re chasing on the field, and if things continue to progress in Waco, Baylor also will be making more noise at the box office and at the cash register.
Winning sells tickets, loosens the deep pockets of donors, increases visibility and makes recruiting easier. With the league taking on a new face as BYU, Cincinnati, Central Florida and Houston show up for the 2023 season, schools like Baylor, Oklahoma State and Iowa State have the chance to rise to the top of the pecking order.
Given its recent football success under Aranda and his predecessor Matt Rhule, the Bears have as good of a chance as anybody.
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After spending four seasons as LSU's defensive coordinator, including the 2019 national championship campaign, Aranda has settled into a nice groove on a campus that houses the 2020 NCAA basketball champions and women’s hoops team that won three titles over 15 seasons under coaching legend Kim Mulkey.
The Bears made history last season, becoming the first school in Big 12 history to win the basketball regular season title and the conference football championship. Sure, Kansas’ dominance in hoops made it really tough to pull off that double, but Baylor stands on the cusp to laying claim as the preeminent power in the league, especially now that Texas and Oklahoma will be departing.
In Aranda, Baylor President Linda Livingstone has a great program leader who does it in a humane yet understated fashion. When discussing the spring decision to name Blake Shapen the starting quarterback over program veteran Gerry Bohanon — who subsequently entered the transfer portal — Aranda was visibly emotional.
“I think with Gerry, there is no me without Gerry, there is no last year without Gerry, there's none of that,” Aranda said. “You walk in my house, I've got pictures of my kids posing next to Gerry. It's just kind of a crazy thing. So it was very difficult to do.”
It’s that unmistakable humanity that makes Aranda different than many others in the profession. There is no secret sauce here, just Aranda rolling up his sleeves and attacking his craft with enthusiasm and transparency.
“I think it starts with the focus, with more focus on things that are outside of the sport, more focus on academics,” Aranda said. “‘Hey, we had this GPA this semester, right, and that was a record; let's do better the next semester. You had your personal best this semester; let's get a new personal best this coming semester. The focus on spiritual growth.’”
His boss understands the economics of the game and knows her school has a unique opportunity to be at the forefront of what’s happening in a league with four new members and incoming athletic director Brett Yormark.
Livingstone told me that college athletics becoming a big business is a reality and positioning is really important, both as a school and a conference. Translation: win and everything else will take care of itself.
“It starts with how you perform athletically and then you how build that brand,” Livingstone said. "I feel great about what we’re doing at Baylor. I feel great about what what’s happened across the conference. I think we will be really well positioned."
The Bears have already defied the odds. Picked to finish eighth in the league at this time last year behind Oklahoma, Iowa State, Texas, Oklahoma State, TCU, West Virginia and Kansas State, the Bears went 6-2 against those teams, including an avenging 21-16 win over the Cowboys in the Big 12 title game before spanking Ole Miss 21-7 in the Sugar Bowl.
True to Aranda’s defensive background, the Bears allowed no more than 16 points in six games and were really strong down the stretch, allowing only 14.2 points during a five-game winning stretch to close out the season.
It won’t be easy with road games coming up against BYU, Iowa State, West Virginia, Texas Tech and Oklahoma, and another 12-2 would be some repeat performance.
“Being our best when it’s the hardest will be a common theme for us, so I think that’s something we will continue to talk about and work towards,” he said.
What happens in fall drives the bus. Every athletic director wants success across the board, but football remains the ultimate needle mover with basketball a distant second.
With all due respect to Texas, which just captured a second straight Learfield Directors’ Cup after a torrid spring that included several national championships, the hunger for a return to football relevance ranks above all else, except for making money, of course. I say that because the Horns will soon be occupying a spot in the SEC minefield after going a decade-plus without a Big 12 conference title. It was a money move, pure and simple.
Aren’t they all?
To its credit, Baylor might not be kicking butt and taking names in rowing and women’s tennis, but the Bears will gladly take the way things have broken lately with Scott Drew’s hoops exploits and Aranda at the helm of a rising football power in the Big 12.
“I feel our culture speaks for itself," Baylor linebacker Bryson Jackson said. “As long as we get guys coming in who buy in, we’re going to have a lot of success in the future.”
Baylor has arrived.
And Aranda is just the man to keep them there.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Baylor football poised for Big 12 takeover under coach Dave Aranda
