Southern Miss is reportedly interviewing former Baylor coach Art Briles for its vacant offensive coordinator position. The Biloxi Sun Herald reported Monday that Briles was on campus to interview for the position that's been open since Shannon Dawson left to join Dana Holgorsen's staff at Houston last month.
Obviously, hiring Briles would be a controversial decision for Southern Miss coach Jay Hopson. Briles has not coached at the college level since he was fired in May 2016 after Baylor conducted a third-party law firm investigation of its athletic department, and its handling of misconduct in the athletic department, including allegations of violence against women. The results of that investigation found that Baylor football coaches did not report complaints against its players. The NCAA is still currently investigating the Baylor athletic department, and the school has settled five Title IX lawsuits over allegations from former students.
One such lawsuit filed against the school alleged 52 "acts of rape" were committed by 31 different Baylor football players from 2011-14 during Briles' tenure at the school.
Briles has most recently been working as the head coach for a team in the Italian Federation of American Football. In 2017, he was briefly hired by the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats as an assistant but was let go after the franchise received criticism for making the move.
As a head coach, Briles has gone 99-65 at Houston and Baylor, winning three conference titles and scoring a lot of points along the way. His track record of success on offense is no doubt the reason Southern Miss is interested in him as a possible offensive coordinator, but one has to wonder if the chance of scoring points on the field will outweigh the criticism the program would no doubt receive off of it for making such a move.
