When the Baylor Bears charge onto the field today at Floyd Casey Stadium against the Kansas Jayhawks, the pressure to win will be greater than ever.

It’s the first Big 12 football game here since the near-demise of the conference this summer, which shook the Baylor and Waco communities.

Quarterback Robert Griffin represents Baylor’s hopes to be a contender in Big 12 football. The Copperas Cove High School star says he wants the major conference competition.
Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald

If heavyweight rivals such as the University of Texas had bolted, it would have left Baylor an orphan of a conference that has brought prestige to the university and town for 14 years.

Baylor dodged that bullet when UT-Austin and others in the league agreed to pursue new Big 12 television contracts. But the scare was a reminder that Baylor’s struggling football program is an Achilles’ heel in a conference system driven by football television revenue.

The Baylor football team has had a losing record every season during 14 years in the Big 12, posting a dismal 46-118 record, and 14-98 in conference.

It’s been at or near the bottom of the league in the athletic budget, attendance and TV revenue.

To make itself bulletproof in the next round of realignments, Baylor must turn those numbers around.

Nonetheless, the 2010 season has emerged as a hopeful moment for the Bears.

Here are some reasons not to despair:

*  The Big 12 and other major conferences appear to be entering a new period of stability, as they negotiate long-term TV contracts that should discourage wholesale realignments, at least until late in the decade.

That buys Baylor time to try to build a winning tradition in football.

*  TV contracts aside, experts say Baylor continues to bring value to the conference, especially in academic prestige and women’s and men’s basketball.

*  Baylor’s facilities, including those for football, are now top-notch after tens of millions of dollars of investment.

*  BU officials are bullish about the coaching and recruiting skills of the football team under head coach Art Briles, who was hired in 2007.

They hope he can build a winner by providing the continuity that has been sorely lacking. The team has gone through five coaches in 14 years.

“Continuity is critical,” said Ian McCaw, Baylor’s athletic director since 2003. “Programs that are consistently successful have recruited the right coach. Baylor had a period where there was a lot of transition, and that’s very disruptive in terms of recruiting and building a program. . . . I couldn’t be more pleased with what Coach Briles is doing in all aspects of the program. From recruiting to the strength and conditioning program, everything is moving in the right direction.”

Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe agreed that Baylor’s football program is making strides.

“It’s outstanding what Coach Briles has done to show improvement in the football program,” he said. “What the Baylor administration has done to market the program has paid off.”

Baylor officials think the seeds of football success have been planted but need time to grow.

Baylor has stepped up its financial investment in football and other athletics, increasing its overall athletic budget to $50 million annually — up 90 percent since 2003.

Baylor would not release budget numbers for the football program, but officials said football has not been the primary driver for the overall athletic budget growth.

Through its TV contracts and gate revenues, football pays for itself and then some, Baylor vice president Reagan Ramsower said.

Clearly, Baylor has been investing in football.

It hired Briles away from a winning University of Houston program and reportedly pays him more than $1.8 million a year.

The university has built the $46 million Highers Athletics Complex, which includes a $34 million sports training and academic center and a $12 million indoor football field.

Baylor’s athletics budget still pales in comparison to some of the powerhouses in the league — UT’s is nearly three times higher.

But the good news is that Baylor doesn’t need to try to outspend its rivals, Baylor officials and observers say.

“I don’t know what else Baylor can do,” said former head coach Grant Teaff, who led the Bears to 12 winning seasons and eight bowl games in the Southwest Conference. “There’s not much left except winning games that need to be won and building a tradition that needs to be built. In terms of facilities, I see just about everybody’s, and there are not many around better than what Baylor has.”

Recruiting star players

The millions of dollars that Baylor has spent on football facilities and staffing are largely in pursuit of a simple but elusive goal: Recruiting high school football stars to join a team that hasn’t been to a bowl game since they were toddlers.

Briles said building impressive facilities is a way of keeping up in the “arms race” in Division 1 football, but he has to offer recruits more than that.

“Playing at the highest level in the Big 12 — that’s the sell,” Briles said. “I think everybody wants to play on a national showcase with a chance to play for a national title, and the Big 12 certainly gives you that opportunity.”

That was the draw for Robert Griffin, the quarterback who has drawn national attention.

Baylor had not even attempted to recruit Griffin when he was a star quarterback at Copperas Cove High School.

Instead, Griffin planned to go to the University of Houston in 2008. But he followed Briles to Baylor, where he got the chance to be a big-league quarterback as a freshman.

“When Coach Briles switched over to Baylor, it was a big thing,” he said. “One of the only knocks on going to Houston was that it’s in Conference USA. You can put up big numbers and score a lot of touchdowns there, but the competition just isn’t the same. . . . When I came here, you know you’re going to play teams like Texas and Oklahoma in the Big 12. It was a no-brainer.”

The $46 million Highers Athletics Complex, partially shown here while under construction in October 2008, is among the new sports facilities Baylor has built as a Big 12 school.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald, file

Sophomore defensive back Chance Casey, who was a star player at Crosby High School in East Texas, saw the same opportunity.

He said the new facilities “were kind of important,” but not the main draw.

“I could tell something was going on here at Baylor after talking to other players and the coaches,” he said. “I felt a change was coming, and I wanted to be in that group that could help Baylor turn the page and have a winning program.”

Briles has yet to prove that a new winning chapter has begun. So far, his record is 11-17 overall, and 3-13 in Big 12 play.

So far this season, the Bears have trounced Buffalo, Rice and Sam Houston State University but lost to No. 5 Texas Christian University.

But Bears fans have been showing their faith in the team this season.

School campaign

Spurred by Baylor’s “Rise Up” campaign, more than 41,000 fans showed up for the first two home games, a great improvement over last year, when the average attendance was 36,306.

Beebe, the Big 12 commissioner, took notice of this year’s strong beginning in attendance.

“Baylor is an important part of our conference and they need the fans there to step up and support the football program like a Big 12 institution should,” he said. “Baylor has done very well in so many sports. Football is a big challenge at any institution, and it’s certainly that way at a private institution, and it’s important that people support them (at Baylor).”

The Rise Up effort formed in the aftermath of the Big 12 scare this summer, when it became clear that Baylor’s lack of football fan support jeopardized the college’s conference status.

Attendance and TV revenue were the main factors cited when the Pac-10 passed over Baylor while wooing its Texas Big 12 rivals: UT, Texas A&M and Texas Tech.

While most other teams have seen their attendance skyrocket since joining the Big 12, Baylor’s has remained at the same levels as in the Southwest Conference.

Last year, the average Big 12 school had a home game attendance of 62,875.

Baylor’s numbers were by far the worst.

The poor attendance might be partly explained by the fact that Baylor is the smallest school in the league and therefore has generated fewer alumni than its rivals.

Another reason might be the football schedule, which includes many more out-of-state schools than the old Southwest Conference.

But observers inside and outside Baylor say success in the stands depends on success on the field.

Teaff said fans and players have to go into every game with a reasonable hope of winning.

“When you get a fan base feeling that way, that’s when they’ll come,” he said. “When they don’t come it’s because they don’t want to be disappointed again and again and again.”

Success doesn’t mean beating the University of Texas or being top of the league year after year.

Baylor just has to be seen as a real contender, said Craig Depken, a sports economist at University of North Carolina-Charlotte who has studied Big 12 schools.

“To the extent Baylor can get into a bowl game, and keep doing that, it should generate more excitement,” he said.

McCaw said that’s the goal.

“There’s a lot of excitement about what Coach Briles and the football program are doing, and we’re feeling very optimistic about going to our first bowl game in 16 years,” he said.

Even if Baylor succeeds in developing a competitive football program, it’s hard to predict its long-term conference future, Depken said.

He thinks the current 10 teams in the Big 12 are committed to their conference, but there could be another national wave of realignment in a few years, possibly from the East instead of the West.

He said the Big East might seek to expand its current roster of eight football teams, leading to a domino effect.

But he said Baylor’s value to its fellow Texas Big 12 members shouldn’t be underestimated.

Even though TV football revenue wields a huge influence in conference alignments, conferences are also about academic prestige, Depken said.

Like Vanderbilt in the SEC, he said, Baylor contributes to the academic heft of a conference and that makes it an attractive colleague for UT, the Big 12 leader.

Combine that with Baylor’s proximity to Texas schools and Baylor is in a strong position, he said.

The Baylor women’s basketball team celebrates a victory over Tennessee in NCAA regional play in 2010. While the Baylor football teams have struggled in the Big 12, the Lady Bears have won a national championship and are regularly in the top ranks of women’s teams.
Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald, file

Travel times

In turning down the Pac-10’s offer this summer, UT President Bill Powers said the long travel times to Pac-10 schools was a factor.

“You have to make it so no one local, within a few hundred miles, could replace Baylor in every respect, not just football but in academics and other sports,” Depken said. “You could look at TCU, but they’re not seen as academically broad as Baylor. The University of Houston is seen as broad but not as academically rigorous.”

Given those advantages, he said, “I wouldn’t put Baylor on the hit list.”

Baylor’s academics are also an attraction for some football players, including Griffin, who was an honor student in high school.

He’s on track to graduate in December but has two more seasons of football eligibility remaining.

After that, he aspires to go to law school.

The desire for competitive athletics and academics drives senior defensive back Byron Landor.

“The education brought me here, and I wanted to be part of something special,” he said. “I had an opportunity to go to a lot of established teams, but I wanted to be one of the players who helped turn around the program here.

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