Every time a Baylor story hits the news cycle — no matter what that story says — three general thoughts will proliferate within your timeline.

“Give Baylor the death penalty! Close down the football program! Burn the building to the ground!”

That’s one way to handle the aftermath of the scandal that cost Baylor coach Art Briles his job. The university mishandled sexual assault cases on a face-palming level, and new details surrounding allegations that women who might have reported assaults were silenced are mortifying. They are repulsive. They are a problem. It's difficult for any of us with daughters to look at the school without some level of contempt.

COUNTERPOINT: NCAA should make an example out of Baylor

Baylor needs to be punished at some point for what it did wrong. Briles shouldn’t be allowed to coach in the FBS again. The death penalty, closing down the football program and burning it to the ground are not real solutions, however. That's not productive. The general theme of the "burn it down" chorus is less about helping the victims and preventing this from happening again, and more about giving Baylor “what it deserves.”

Maybe, people should instead give interim coach Jim Grobe and athletic director Mack Rhoades a chance to clean up this mess. If you can take five seconds, put down a pitchfork and give Grobe that opportunity.

Yes, Grobe had a rough press conference at Big 12 Media Day. Baylor announced Tuesday that Grobe will be the only coach who will talk to the media this season. The general public response to both?

“Give Baylor the death penalty! Close down the football program! Burn the building to the ground!”

It’s important to remember Grobe could have chosen to stay retired after a well-respected career at Ohio and Wake Forest. Anybody could run away from the Baylor situation; Grobe ran in. He has been at the school for less than two months. You can penalize him for one awkward press conference, or you can let him do his job. He actively wants to be part of the solution, as he told SN in an interview.

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Shielding the other coaches from the media is a 50-50 proposition. Baylor wasn’t going to trot offensive coordinator Kendal Briles (Art's son) in front of the media every week for a lose-lose press conference, but it wouldn’t have hurt to get him and the other assistants out there before the season starts to answer some of those questions. If Syracuse coach and former Baylor assistant Dino Babers has to field questions — which he did at ACC Media Day — then these guys should, too.

The anger isn't going away for a while. The pitchfork response is a result of the nebulousness around possible sanctions. Will they come from the school? The Big 12? The NCAA? Legal means?

It's certain some quantitative punishment is needed. The rest becomes a futile exercise. It’s pointless to try to figure out if this is just as bad as Penn State. Both are egregious. Baylor got caught up in its own success, and like many schools tried to fall back on the “dealing with 18-to-22-year-olds” excuse. That’s where Grobe got into trouble at his press conference. That’s an excuse for college mistakes, not sexual and domestic assaults.



Again, though, the death penalty is not the answer. The NCAA has used it once, and SMU is 97-215-3 since, essentially a non-competitive program. The NCAA could do that to Baylor, or it could hand the school a punishment similar to Penn State's. Bill O’Brien and James Franklin did an admirable job navigating the Nittany Lions through the Sandusky fallout, even if a few court documents reminded us the pain from that is far from over. That’s the road Baylor faces.

MORE: Franklin ready to exorcise Nittany Lions' demons

No matter the punishment, there’s an opportunity here for the players, the administrators and the football program. They can help the school move on. This team is good enough to win the Big 12. Grobe will clean this up. That’s what you’ll see this year

The school also should be doing more than it has to assist and help the victims and their families. It needs to take preventive measures to make sure something on this level doesn’t happen again. It must make the school a place where parents want to send their daughters. Those moves won't be visible, but they're a million times more important.

Give Grobe, Rhoades and the players the chance to be that short-term fix regardless of the punishment. Chances are they have been made aware of all the details and can anticipate the next story. That’s when the bashing will continue, and you’ll see those tweets over and over again. If you want the NCAA to levy the death penalty, close up shop and burn everything down, that’s one way to address the issue.

It just seems better to give a university and its football program a chance to show what they have learned.