But maybe naively, Grobe figured the drastic change at Baylor — Art Briles fired amid a sexual assault scandal, the school’s athletic director and president also making forced departures — represented a clear pivot point, that the school and its football program would move forward from scandal.

“I kind of thought people would say, ‘Good for Baylor,’ ” Grobe said. “‘They had this problem and they took strong action.’ ”

This was early Wednesday morning, after the Bears had finally completed a surreal season with a surprising victory against Boise State in the Cactus Bowl. After the 31-12 win, players and coaches and fans had mingled long on the field at a baseball park converted for the night into a football stadium. Now Grobe stood in a corridor, talking candidly of a trying seven months. “There was just so much turmoil,” he said.

The scandal kept drip, drip, dripping. Public sentiment did not even hint at a turn in Baylor’s favor. On the field, the Bears won their first six games. They lost their next six.

“The wheels came off for a little while,” Grobe said.

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When it was finally finished, there was elation — see Grobe and others talking about how much fun it was to watch the Bears enjoying themselves again.

“Our guys looked like kids out there playing,” Grobe said, “and that was fun.”

There was also defiance — see wide receiver K.D. Cannon, after a spectacular, 226-yard, two-touchdown performance, letting everyone know during the trophy presentation that the Bears wanted to “prove a point,” and dedicating the victory to “Baylor Nation and coach Briles.”

He meant Art, who was fired in May after the scandal boiled over. And he wasn’t alone. Afterward, several other players and coaches defended Briles. Inside the Baylor bubble, at least, there’s widespread belief their former coach was scapegoated. And whatever anyone thinks of Briles, there’s a nearly universal feeling that the reputation of many who weren’t involved in the scandal has been unfairly besmirched.

Grobe said he didn’t expect public outrage — he called it the “caustic attitude of the press” — to translate into calls for, as he put it, punishing people who hadn’t been a part of the scandal.

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“I had people telling me we should cancel the season,” Grobe said.

No surprise, then, that as the season ended, one of the emotions was relief — see the scene in a luxury suite high above the field. Next door, Baylor’s coaches — none of whom is expected to be retained, most of whom don’t yet have jobs — called plays that suddenly clicked again, like they had so often in the last few years. As the Bears streaked past Boise State, Baylor’s interim president David Garland, its new athletic director Mack Rhoades and a rotating group of boosters mingled with their new coach, cheering the action unfolding below but clearly waiting for a page to turn.

Accompanied by his wife Julie, Matt Rhule sneaked glances at the action while chatting casually. He did in-game interviews on ESPN’s TV and radio broadcasts, and he occasionally pulled one of two cellphones from his pocket, checking text messages. But the real work begins next week, when he’ll return to Waco with his staff.

“I don’t think (Baylor) could have hired a better guy than Matt Rhule,” Grobe said.

Rhule might pass Grobe on his way out of town, headed back to the Georgia lake house and the retirement that was interrupted last May by a call from former Baylor coach Grant Teaff. In hindsight, Grobe said, he’d do it all again.

“But I would spend a lot of time trying to think about how I could keep things smoother, how I could keep things calm,” he said.

It might not have been possible.

“He came into a lose-lose situation,” Baylor quarterback Seth Russell said.

With his injured left ankle propped up on a scooter — the fracture, against Oklahoma on Nov. 12, was a pivot point in the season — Russell called Grobe “a classy guy,” saying he had a lot of respect for the coach. Everyone should have. He made a few missteps along the way. But his job was somehow to thread a needle.

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Grobe was still doing it early Wednesday morning when he defended Baylor’s assistant coaches, calling them “good husbands and fathers,” and saying he hoped the hiring of offensive coordinator Kendal Briles, Art’s son, to the same position on Lane Kiffin’s staff at Florida Atlantic would open the door for other assistants at other programs. He said he understood their loyalty to Art Briles, even as he acknowledged disappointment over how they channeled their frustration, most notably a tweeted statement last month, signed by the coaching staff but not Grobe, disputing reports that the former coach had known of an allegation of gang rape by players.

He said they had emphasized staying away from social media to players, which made the coaches’ tweets — sometimes with the tone-deaf hashtag #Truthdontlie — that much more exasperating.

“I wish I could have been more of a calming influence between the university and the coaches,” Grobe said while acknowledging that the assistants “lost … focus” on coaching football, and it filtered down to the players.

“It spun out of control for a while,” he said, “and it affected all of us. I’m proud of our guys, because once we saw we’d gotten off track, we got back on track. … There’s really no road map to this thing. The coaches didn’t have a road map, the players didn’t have a road map, I didn’t have a road map.

“And so we were just trying to pull together and do the best we can.”

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It’s why Grobe was so happy to see the Bears play well against Boise State — but more than that, to play with a joy that had been missing. Late in the fourth quarter, as senior safety Orion Stewart waited out a TV timeout on the field dancing to the in-house music, Baylor defensive coordinator Phil Bennett just laughed. Moments later, Bennett was doused with a Gatorade shower. And then Grobe was, too — and that might have been even more meaningful.

“It’s been an honor for me,” he said, several times.

No one’s certain what comes next for Baylor, whether the end of the 2016 season and the impending arrival of a new coaching staff will allow the football program to recover. There is pending litigation, and the possibility that more scandal could be uncovered.

But wherever the program is going, Grobe did his best to point it in a positive direction.

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