Jim Grobe could have ignored the phone call.

He could have walked into the Publix with his wife Holly and returned to life as a successful retired coach living near Lake Oconee in Reynolds, Ga. When former Baylor coach

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Grant Teaff called before Memorial Day weekend, Grobe could have run away from Baylor like almost everybody else.

Of course, Grobe answered. Holly would be floored by the call after “two years out of the fire.” The Grobes took a night to think about the last two years. He tried a year as an analyst at the ACC Network. A few jobs didn’t line up the next year. Grobe thought he was out. The couple had several family trips lined up in the next year.

Teaff, however, was able to pull Grobe back in, just like he did so many times on committees for the American Football Coaches Association.

“I felt like I could come out and not look past this one year,” Grobe said. “I don’t need to look beyond this. I’m one of those guys who can come in with a one-year motivation.”

It was the right choice for the 64-year-old Grobe and an even better play for Baylor. Interim athletic director Todd Patulski said as much in Grobe’s introductory press conference as interim coach on June 3. Patulski didn’t need more than 10 minutes after Grobe looked at him with a simple mission.

"I'm here to help,” Grobe told Patulski. “I want to be part of the solution."

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The high-visibility problems at Baylor are far from over. The Bears fired coach Art Briles after a report detailed the school’s mishandling of sexual assault allegations involving players on the football team.

That’s where Grobe has been most active since coming on. The school will have more Title IX training. Brenda Tracy, the victim of a brutal gang rape that involved Oregon State football players in 1998, will speak to the team. Learning and prevention have been enhanced in response.

“We’ve done that in the past here but the focus on the current issue – domestic violence – is enhanced,” Grobe said. “That’s what we’re doing here.”

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The shadow of Briles’ on-field success still hangs over the program, the latest coming with quarterback Jarrett Stidham’s decision to transfer this week. That’s the latest reason to run from Baylor.

Grobe’s arrival was met with outside criticism, too. He decided to keep the rest of the coaching staff intact because he saw no reason to change. Recruits from the 2016 class were not immediately released from their commitments, but that wasn’t Grobe’s intention. The school released those players, and seven have moved on to different schools.

“I think they’ll look back and realize this would have been a great place for them,” Grobe said. “But to be honest, I got tired of dealing with the decommits. I wanted to deal with our players.”

So Grobe got to know those players through a familiar practice at his previous coaching stops – the 6:15 a.m. morning workouts. He’s learning all the players and names and still working with the assistant coaches.

But have things really calmed down?

“It’s getting better,” Grobe said.

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This isn’t the first mess Grobe has walked into. Grobe’s first head coaching stop was at Ohio, where he inherited a program coming off an 0-11 season. The Bobcats had won two games or less in eight of the 10 seasons before his arrival.

Ohio was a .500 team by his second season. The Bobcats threw scares into Kansas State in 1997 and N.C. State in 1998 before knocking off Minnesota in 2000. Grobe left for Wake Forest in 2000, and he left Ohio with a .500 record.

Wake Forest made five bowl games in school history before Grobe’s arrival and was coming off a 2-9 season. Grobe led the Demon Deacons to five bowl games in 13 seasons, including the ACC championship in 2006. He finished with a 77-82-1 record, but that record hardly tells the story.

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Grobe redshirts most incoming freshmen. He runs practices with a service academy feel; lessons learned from his stint as a linebackers coach at Air Force from 1984-94 under Fisher DeBerry. Class and respect are two words closely-associated with Grobe, maybe because those were the first two words he spoke of with how he wants this interim tenure to go.

“The key at both places – whether it was Ohio University or Wake Forest – the No. 1 priority was kids,” Grobe said. “We want the best kids, but you want five-star kids who might be a three-star athlete. The five-star kid you can work toward making a five-star athlete.”

Grobe left both Ohio and Wake Forest in better shape when he left. That’s the tricky part when it comes to Baylor.

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Here’s the interesting part. Grobe has more talent and resources to work with at Baylor then he’s ever had. That includes $266 million McLane Stadium, a high-scoring offense that led the FBS with 48.1 points per game last season and a Heisman Trophy candidate in quarterback Seth Russell. The Bears are more than capable of winning the Big 12 and making a run at the College Football Playoff.

Baylor can still have a successful program, but that depth has been tested with the transfers, decommits and medical disqualifications. Grobe said his biggest goal is to make an impact on recruiting so that the Bears don’t lose that momentum after he’s gone. That’s one challenge. Addressing the never-ending depth questions is the other.

“We’ll have to get creative with the way we practice,” Grobe said. “We’re down to 70 going into the season and we’re going to have to get lucky and stay healthy.”

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While it might not seem like it, Grobe says he’s in a good spot, something that almost all coaches say when they’ve been out of the game for a few years. Yet with Grobe, it’s the same-old honest approach, even in the face of another ugly college football scandal.

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“A lot of the things I’ve been doing have been outside of football,” Grobe said. “For me, we can’t get to August soon enough, but we have to learn from past mistakes.”

The same goes for Grobe, who’s spent the last two years wondering if this shot would come. Grobe didn’t finish at Wake Forest the way he wanted too, and that stuck the last two years, in the television booth and even while waiting for one last opportunity.

Those family trips have been put on hold, at least for one year. It came with that call in the Publix parking lot and a move that Holly’s now on board. She’s shuffling back-and-forth between Georgia and Waco, Texas, and she’ll be there before the regular season starts.

That’s when the real referendum begins. Will this one-year interim stint be the next part of the deconstruction? Or will Grobe be behind a turnaround both off and on the field that puts Baylor in the national spotlight for the right reasons? It might land somewhere in between, but the wins off the field are just as important as the ones this time.

That’s Grobe’s greatest challenge, and he answers that in a way you’d expect from someone who took a call most others wouldn’t answer. Everything might seem wrong at Baylor right now, but bringing in Grobe couldn’t be more right.

“I think I’ll do a better job than I’ve ever done before,” Grobe said.

So don’t be surprised if the program is in a lot better shape when he leaves.