What was he Thinking?

Baylor SID

Christmas Day 2016 has come and gone. The RJB hopes your day was peaceful and filled with family and those who mean a lot in your lives. As we get older, we become a little more appreciative of this holiday because you appreciate and practice the idea that the more you give, the more comes back to you.

For the RJB, it was all about the teen-age daughters opening items that brought joy to them. That joy was a great gift. This also means that the RJB isn’t done with the Christmas Spirit.

We’re going to extend the selections one more week with the playing of a personal favorite Christmas carol. Now, there’s always going to be several versions of any carol. But you can never go wrong with the traditional.

This is the final week of 2016. Those are probably the best seven words the Baylor community can read.

A year that’s been pretty much a nightmare since late May will finally transition into a year of the hope that 2017 offers. Hope is a good thing. And I’m going to borrow the rest of the line from author Stephen King and from the 1994 movie Shawshank Redemption about hope: “…Maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.’’

What you appreciate about hope is that it keeps you going when all appears lost. It keeps you going when opponents are gladly attacking you when you are in the lowest of low periods. It keeps you going when you don’t want to keep going. It keeps you going when you eventually realize that nothing bad lasts forever.

No one really can say with certainty that Baylor has made the proper atonement for what occurred over the summer. Quantifying it with dismissals, suspensions, expressing grief and make restitution with those victims on the wrong end of the sexual assault scandal may appear to be satisfactory. Those are the visual moves. But there’s no way that Baylor can help the true victims move forward past the violent acts committed on them. Those scars last a lifetime.

There’s no way to know how those accused, sentenced and removed from the university have dealt with their own personal anguish. In both cases, only time can answer that.

The best way to look at this period for Baylor is that the best way it can cope is to learn to live with it. Like everything, this mark will pass.

But as long as the university has recognized and realized where it fell short and addressed everything in the best way possible, it has to be able to turn the page.

To find the perfect college campus life is not realistic. We all think we know what it is. It comes down to personal experience. But now, Baylor has perhaps taken the steps to be safer and stronger than before.

That’s why Tuesday’s Motel6 Cactus Bowl at Chase Field in Phoenix between Baylor and Boise St. should be watched with enthusiasm and intrigue. New head football coach Matt Rhule will be like us. He will watch as a spectator with his eyes trained upon those returning players.

This is an audition for them. Their effort and energy will be critiqued. Sure, the Bears would like to beat the Broncos and end the year by finishing with a winning record and snapping a six-game losing streak.

However, the result is going to be secondary. It really comes down to these issues: Who wants to play in a bowl game that has no national rankings consequences? Who wants to take instruction from a coaching staff that will not be returning after this game? Who wants to demonstrate to the new staff that they can be good leaders and role models and are willing to be the bridge to keep Baylor football moving on a successful path?

Several players have tweeted positive things about the new staff. That’s great. For me, it always comes down to actions speaking louder than words. I’m going to watch this game like Rhule is going to watch it. I want to know who is invested. I want to know who isn’t. Did the message that Rhule delivered at the team meeting on Dec. 7 take hold or was it met with doubt?

The following weeks and maybe months that follow should tell us who doesn’t want to be there. I have to believe there will be a couple that just don’t want to stay and want to leave. That’s fine. As my wise aunts used to say about a relationship that broke off before the marriage, “Better to know now instead of later.’’

There’s something to be said for a program that is playing in its seventh consecutive bowl game. As brutal as the regular season ended, not many programs around the nation can say that. For several of those players in this game, some have been in the last four. Some have been in the last three. That should tell them what the 365 work meant.

We can’t disguise the personalities of the 2016 6-6 Baylor Bears. They won their first six. They lost their final six. Their offensive line and defensive lines were average to below average. Their offense was inconsistent. There is no senior quarterback in Seth Russell (fractured ankle). The program’s all-time leading rusher Shock Linwood (if you didn’t see it, we learned he became academically ineligible) will not be there.

Younger players like freshman quarterback Zach Smith, wide receiver/running back Blake Lynch and running back JaMycal Hasty have had to grow up fast.

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The Bears can still win this game. They’ve had three weeks to heal up. Smith should be through the worst of it with his sprained ankle. Wide receiver Pooh Stricklin should be ready to go with his health issues.

There’s also a part of me that believes that with this coaching staff knowing the end is near, they may have the passion to want to go out on a high note. It’s called being a professional. But that goes back to that hope thing, doesn’t it?

The Broncos are a solid team. Ask Oregon St. and Washington St. out of the PAC 12 whom they defeated in September. You don’t win 10 games because you don’t know what you’re doing. Now, some Mountain West opponents they played were pretty close to what Baylor saw in Kansas.

However, games like this against Baylor is what Boise St. embraces. That program wants to add another P5 victim to its ledger. The Bears are now on the list.

I’ll have to think more about this game as I dive into it over the next 24 hours. I can make the case for Baylor winning it. I can make the case for Baylor getting blown out. But I can tell you that Baylor’s commitment for playing hard in this game should be scrutinized should it fall behind by two scores. Yes, you’ve read that passage several times in November and December. But it’s true.

Regardless of it all, the 2016 season is behind Baylor. Turn on the TV late Tuesday night, just watch a football game and enjoy it. Let the anger for whatever was felt dissipate. Let the loyalty be your guide.

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>So Santa Claus gave your publisher a wonderful gift. I awoke Sunday morning with the most vicious migraine headache. The legacy of my late mother lingers on. What happens is when the air pressure changes, my sinuses get locked up and I feel like I want to rip my right eye out of its socket. So I barely got through presents before I went back to bed. I finally recovered about 2:00 p.m. There are two versions of this headache. There’s the sharp one. That’s the good one because it comes in and exits pretty rapidly. There’s the dull one – which is what I had – that you can’t shake until it decides to leave. No amount of steam, carbonated bubbles can get it to subside. It knocks you down. I don’t get the flu or crud very much (knock on wood!). But this is my kryptonite.

>Dallas plays Detroit Monday night and then finishes Sunday at Philadelphia with absolutely nothing at stake. The Cowboys won the NFC East. They are the No. 1 seed in the NFC and have home field advantage in the playoffs. To be honest, I don’t think the NFC is all that great this year. This could absolutely be the year Dallas returns to the Super Bowl after 21 years. Now, anything can happen. But if you’ve noticed, this Dallas defense is playing pretty well over the last several weeks. Offense is fun. Defense wins championships. That’s the way it has always been.

>I know the Baylor outrage from the Joe Mixon tape release and successive press conference is at a high level. Many of you probably felt the same way toward Oklahoma and Bob Stoops and David Boren like Oklahoma fans felt about Art Briles, Sam Ukwuachu, Ken Starr and Ian McCaw in the summer. It is interesting how there are a lot of glass houses out there. At the time, the yearlong suspension for Mixon seemed odd. But he didn’t play and he had to go through a process just to get reinstated. All of us get all crazy eyed when it comes to giving second chances or those Major League Baseball Steve Howe type of last chances. Mixon should have never worn an Oklahoma uniform. What college athletics has to do is adopt something similar to what professional leagues have done with their domestic violence policies. There should be no second chances unless the victim either recants or doesn’t press charges. There’s the adage that if you know you’re in an odd situation, do you whatever you can to remove yourself from it instead of burying yourself in the middle of it.

>I don’t think we have any more useless stall tactics to try and stop the presidential election result on Nov. 8. But what was amusing is that the losing candidate wound up three times. So all of these lawsuits, recounts and appeals backfired badly. And as it turned the candidate wound up losing by a larger margin in the Electoral College than the first time this happened. Again, I didn’t vote for the winner. But I did find the six-week train wreck peculiar theatre. Now, you can see how the other side wound up eating its own. Sometimes, you just get what you deserve.

>Don’t forget the No. 4/6 men’s basketball team (12-0) begins Big 12 play Friday at Oklahoma. The simple truth about road games in college basketball is that it’s another world. And those are the toughest games on any schedule to win.

>Recruits official visits are being set up for the weekends of Jan. 13, Jan. 20 and Jan. 27…at least. You never know if a mid-week visit will surface. Baylor coaches were talking to prospects on Christmas Day. There’s not a moment to lose.

>No sports going on other than the men’s and women’s basketball teams.

Let’s make it a great week and look forward to 2017!