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Ken Starr believes Baylor and the media treated Art Briles 'totally unfairly'

Former Baylor chancellor and president Ken Starr defended former coach Art Briles during a keynote interview at the 2016 Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Saturday.

During the one-hour interview with Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith, Starr said the media, mostly ESPN, did a “grave and grievous unfairness” to Briles during its reporting of the sexual assault scandal at Baylor.

Former Baylor President Ken Starr believes the media painted Art Briles in a poor light.
Former Baylor President Ken Starr believes the media painted Art Briles in a poor light.

“Art Briles was not fired for cause. That’s key,” Starr said. “And I think in fairness to coach Briles, coach Briles is an honorable, decent man who devoted his life to helping mold and shape young men. ESPN can mock that all that they want, but they have done a grave and grievous unfairness to someone.”

When asked whether Briles, who was fired by the university, was treated unfairly, Starr replied: “Totally unfairly.”

Briles was fired after a university investigation found “a fundamental failure by Baylor to implement Title IX,” which included a “lack of strong institutional management” and “specific failings within both the football program and athletics department leadership, including a failure to identify and respond to a pattern of sexual violence by a football player, to take action in response to reports of a sexual assault by multiple football players, and to take action in response to a report of dating violence.”

Starr was reassigned and ultimately left the university. He told Smith he plans to release a book that would detail his thoughts on the Baylor scandal. A scandal, he added, that was made bigger than it should have been. Starr said he didn’t think the sexual assaults at Baylor were part of a cultural problem.

“It’s horrible, it’s tragic, it may be a crime, is it something that suggests it may be a cultural issue?” Starr said. “And I mean by that, a coaching staff that is turning a blind eye or is this somehow an indirect way much less direct way encouraging an unhealthy culture? I have great confidence to this day in coach Briles. I believe he’s an honorable person.”

While Starr said multiple times throughout the interview that he was “not privy to all the facts,” he did stress that the problems at Baylor were no different than the issues at other universities across the nation.

Starr also called for the full release of the Pepper Hamilton report, which he has not seen. The lack of a full release, he said, was the reason he and the university decided to part ways.

However, Starr still defended the university, which he called, “a very happy place.”

“Baylor is such a good place and it’s a very happy place,” Starr said. “Voted again by the faculty and staff this past year, in the middle of the unpleasantness, best college to work for. We’re a very happy place.

“The point is there’s this meta-narrative out there and you are echoing, which is your job, and then there’s the reality on campus and within Baylor nation. So the frustration is we just don’t know all the facts.”

The entirety of Starr’s interview can be found here.

For more Baylor news, visit SicEmSports.com.

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Graham Watson is the editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at dr.saturday@ymail.com or follow her on Twitter!