Baylor's Art Briles is built to last

WACO, Texas -- Reminders of the worst day of Baylor coach Art Briles' life come every year like clockwork. There are a few dates on the calendar -- his parents' birthdays, their wedding day, holidays and, of course, the anniversary of their tragic deaths -- that tug the painful memories from the back of his mind.

Briles, 57, has never forgotten how much his life changed on Oct. 16, 1976. Nearly four decades later, the deep emotional wounds still fester because he never allowed them to heal. How could they? Briles still shoulders much of the blame for the deaths of his parents, Dennis and Wanda, and his beloved aunt, Elsie "Tottie" Kittley, who was more like a grandmother to him.

"I think about them every day, every second," Briles said, while sitting in his dark office last month. "I can sit here right now and know that tomorrow is the anniversary of it. It never leaves you."

At nearly every stop in his coaching career, from West Texas high schools to the University of Houston to Baylor, Briles has somehow molded perennial losers into winners. His family, close friends, former players and assistant coaches say Briles has an extraordinary ability to persuade others into believing that anything is possible, even for football programs that have never won.

"I was blown away by his ability to instill confidence in his players and the people he's around," said Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury, who played quarterback for the Red Raiders when Briles was an assistant there from 2000 to 2003. "He always made you feel like you were 10 feet tall and bulletproof."

It kind of jolts the soul and spirit, you know? All of the sudden, you look down and there's not a net anymore. When you're falling, you're falling. One day everything is good and then the next day you're wondering where you're going for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Fortunately, I'd been raised right long enough to understand that there's a purpose in life.

--Baylor coach Art Briles

Briles embraced the underdog role after that tragic day so many years ago, when his life was shattered in an instant as a 20-year-old. It was an experience that taught him to recognize unseen potential in jobs nobody else wanted and allowed him to convince the people around him that they were capable of accomplishing anything.

"It was kind of a hopeless time, to say the least," Briles said. "It kind of jolts the soul and spirit, you know? All of the sudden, you look down and there's not a net anymore. When you're falling, you're falling. One day everything is good and then the next day you're wondering where you're going for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Fortunately, I'd been raised right long enough to understand that there's a purpose in life.

"Very easily, I could have gone down a wrong path with alcohol or an undriven lifestyle. But I decided I was going to try to live nobly for my parents' name and honor. If anything good came out of it, I think it's that I've learned to care and respect people differently than I would have."

Over the years, Briles rarely talked about the details of his parents' deaths, even with his three children. His wife, Jan, his high school sweetheart from their hometown of Rule, Texas, helped him cope and recover from the tragedy, but Briles seldom shared his sorrow or guilt with anyone else.

"Honestly, I've never mentioned it to anybody, other than maybe some players who have been in similar situations as I was trying to help them," Briles said. "It's not a topic I like to share or talk about. It hurts. You don't like to talk about things that hurt."

The subject wasn't taboo in the Briles home; it was simply never discussed.

"He says he doesn't like talking about it," said Kendal Briles, who played for his father at Stephenville (Texas) High School and Houston and now works as Baylor's passing game coordinator and receivers coach. "I think the most I ever heard about my grandparents growing up was my dad saying, 'My dad would have loved to see you play,' when I was in high school. That was the extent of it."

Jancy Briles, Art's daughter, who works as the media relations coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys, barely remembers a time when her father spoke about her grandparents.

"Our mom would tell us today was the day they were killed or today was his dad's birthday or his mom's birthday, and that's why he was a little off or sad," Jancy Briles said. "She said holidays were always sad for him. I don't know who told us the story; it just kind of came up. We understood it was something he didn't want to talk about. I don't know that he ever dealt with it. His way of handling it was moving on and honoring them."

For nearly 40 years, Briles kept his feelings and guilt about his parents' death bottled up inside. Finally, at the urging of Jancy, Briles shared his story of recovery and perseverance in his autobiography, "Looking Up: My Journey from Tragedy to Triumph," which was released last month. The book is a blueprint of a man who has made a living winning at places where few others have ever won.

"I think a lot of it has to do with what happened to my mother and father," Briles said. "I've been where nobody ever wants to go. I've been in the dark room. What are you going to do? Send me back there? I've been there, so I'm not intimidated or fearful of things not being the way you want them to be. If they are that way, you're still going to make it and you're still going to be fine."

After Art Briles stepped onto the Cotton Bowl field on Oct. 16, 1976, he could sense something wasn't quite right. He looked into the stands for his parents and aunt, but didn't see them. Briles knew his family members were supposed to be there; he'd spoken with his mother on the telephone the night before. Dennis and Wanda Briles had planned to make the 200-mile drive from Rule to Dallas to watch their son play for the Houston Cougars against SMU. Dennis, who coached Art in high school before retiring, worked as the principal of Rule High School and was the small town's mayor.

Art tried to discourage his parents from coming to the Cotton Bowl because he wasn't sure how much he would play, if at all. But Wanda told Art that she and his father weren't going to pass up an opportunity to see him. A former standout quarterback at Rule High, where he led his team to the Texas Class B state championship game as a senior in 1973 (the Bobcats lost to Big Sandy High, which was led by future Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith), Briles moved to receiver at Houston. But now Briles' knee throbbed and he feared there was serious damage. It was another setback in an injury-filled college career; he broke his wrist in the final scrimmage before the 1975 season after redshirting the previous year.

When the Cougars returned to the field after coach Bill Yeoman's pregame speech, Briles looked into the stands again. He still didn't see his family, which made him uneasy. The No. 19 Cougars defeated the Mustangs 29-6, then Briles made his way to Houston's locker room to shower. But before Briles reached the door, Yeoman stopped him and pulled him into a small room, where he broke the tragic news he had learned only 30 minutes before kickoff: Briles' parents and aunt were killed in a car accident outside of Newcastle, Texas.

According to Briles' autobiography, his parents and aunt had left Rule in Dennis' beige Ford LTD about 8 a.m., but didn't make it even halfway to Dallas. As they were approaching a hill on Highway 380, a tanker truck trying to pass another truck veered into their lane. Their car was hit head-on by the tanker truck, and they were killed instantly. The driver of the truck suffered a broken arm. No criminal charges were ever filed.

"It was a terrible situation," said Yeoman, who coached at Houston from 1962 to 1986 and now works in the athletics department's development office. "It was horrible. You really don't know what in the world to say. We visited briefly, but I don't know what you say to a young man who endures something like that."

It might have even been worse. Briles' girlfriend, Jan Allison, who would later become his wife, also had planned to go to the game with his parents, but she stayed in Rule for a friend's bridal shower during a weekend break from school at Texas Tech.

"If there's a shining light out of all of it, that's it," Art said. "Jan could have been in the car, too. She's been very important to me because she's been rock-solid. She's been really good for me."

Briles and his older brother, Eddie, weren't the only ones grieving the deaths of their loved ones. The small town of Rule, with a population of only a few thousand residents at the time, was grief-stricken over the loss of its mayor and high school principal, his wife and her sister. Wanda Briles was a special education teacher at the high school and was raised by her older sister, "Tottie," after their mother died during Wanda's birth. Art's aunt became more like a grandmother to him, taking him and his brother on annual camping trips to Colorado.

"In Rule, everybody knew who the mayor was," said Texas Tech track and field coach Wes Kittley, a Rule native and one of Briles' closest friends. "It was really devastating for a small town."

That Sunday morning, Art and Eddie drove to nearby Haskell, where a department store opened so they could purchase sports coats and pants for the funeral. The towns are separated by only about 10 miles, but it seemed to take them forever to get there. Eddie was driving, while Art sat dazed and silent in the passenger's seat.

"We drove on the shoulder for about 45 minutes or an hour," Eddie said. "We wanted to make sure we weren't hit in a head-on collision."

Art and Eddie also had to select a gravestone for their parents.

"They suggested something like, 'In memory of our parents,'" Eddie said. "But Art said he wanted it to say, 'In honor of our parents.' He just said, 'I believe in honor.' He was 20 years old."

The funeral was Monday, only two days after their parents and aunt were killed. The memorial service was held at the high school gymnasium in Rule because none of the local churches could accommodate the overflowing crowd. More than 450 people packed the gym with the three closed caskets.

As Art and Eddie made their way to a nearby cemetery to bury their parents and aunt, John Greeson, pastor at the Rule Church of Christ, walked with them. According to Briles' biography, he told Greeson, "Preacher, please tell me God didn't take my momma and daddy."

"No, son, God didn't do this," Greeson answered. "It was a bad, tragic accident."

Then Art replied: "When's all this going to end?"

"I think Art was asking me when the funeral would end, but my thought at the time was that he was asking me when he was going to get over all that happened," Greeson told ESPN.com. "I told him it was going to take time and he'd have to allow God to help him. We don't get over it in a day or a week or a year. Maybe he never will."

Greeson, who still lives in Rule, suspected that Briles was dealing with the tragedy as well as someone his age could. He didn't know that Briles felt responsibility for the accident, guilt he still lives with today.

"I do," Briles said. "I really do. If I hadn't been playing, it would have never happened. They were coming to see me."

As much as Briles' family and friends have tried over the years, they haven't been able to convince him that it wasn't his fault his parents and aunt died.

"I've always felt no blame for what happened," Eddie said. "It was just meant to happen. I've never felt it was his fault or he was the cause of their deaths. They were doing something they wanted to do. Dad retired from coaching to go see Art play."

Briles returned to Houston about a week after his parents' funeral, but wouldn't stay for long. After undergoing surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament after the 1976 season, Art packed his bags and returned to Rule. He never told his coach or teammates goodbye. Eddie had moved into their parents' house, but Art didn't think he could live there, so he moved in with Jan's family. He joined her at Texas Tech the next fall. Art never played another down of intercollegiate football.

"I feel really bad for him," Kittley said. "It's just in him. It doesn't matter who tells him it wasn't his fault, I know he feels in his gut that they were going to see him play. He still feels guilt about it and it's not going to change."

After Briles enrolled at Texas Tech, he never attended a Red Raiders football game. He watched local high school games, perhaps because Friday nights were when he and his father spent the most time together. Eventually, Art figured out that coaching was in his blood.

Briles proposed to Jan on Christmas Day 1977, and they were married in Rule on June 8, 1978. Art drove a forklift at a warehouse as a part-time job while finishing his bachelor's degree at Texas Tech, then took an assistant coaching job at Sundown High School after graduation. He moved to Sweetwater High School the next year and stayed there for four seasons.

In 1984, Briles was named the head coach and athletic director at Hamlin High School, a Class 2A school located about 45 miles from Abilene. Briles inherited a team that had gone 12-1 the previous season and guided it to an unblemished record in his first regular season as a head coach. The Pied Pipers breezed through the first three rounds of the state playoffs before facing Panhandle High School in a state quarterfinal game in Childress. Hamlin High's offense stalled, and the score was tied 7-7 entering the fourth quarter. Briles realized his split-back veer offense wouldn't break Panhandle High's bigger and stronger defense, so he decided to spread out his offense when it got the ball back.

By using a shotgun snap in one-back or no-back formations, Briles figured he could counter his opponent's brute strength by getting the football to his faster skill players in open space. Alas, the Pied Pipers never got the ball back, as Panhandle High controlled possession for the entire fourth quarter. The game ended in a 7-7 tie, but the Pied Pipers lost on penetration and first downs, as there weren't yet overtime rules in place. Hamlin High used a spread offense the next season, averaging 41.6 points and outscoring its opponents 416-26 in the regular season.

Briles' spread offense was born, along with much of the offensive philosophy he still uses today. On that cold, windy West Texas night, Briles decided his teams would play fast and score fast.

"I saw right then that we were going to go up against people that were better than us," Briles said. "At the end of the day, you better do something different if you're going to win. We went shotgun and one-back and just did it. I don't recall many other people doing it at the time. It was something we felt gave us an edge."

Eventually, Briles landed at Stephenville High School, a Class 4A school located about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth. Under Briles, the Yellow Jackets, who hadn't reached the state playoffs since 1952, won Class 4A state championships in 1993 and '94 and 1998 and '99. In 1998, Stephenville High set a national high school record for total offense.

"He's a fighter," said Baylor offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Philip Montgomery, who also worked under Briles for six seasons at Stephenville High. "'No' is never the answer, and he's always going to find a way to make whatever he wants done work."

After Kendal Briles led the Yellow Jackets to a 16-0 record and state championship as a junior in 1999, Art wasn't sure there was much left for him to accomplish in high school football. He was ready to try his hand at the college game.

He started by joining Texas Tech coach Mike Leach's staff in 2000 as a running backs coach. In Lubbock, Briles was surrounded by many of college football's brightest young minds: California coach Sonny Dykes and West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen were among those on Leach's staff. One of the primary reasons Leach hired Briles was that he was well liked by high school coaches around the state.

He proved early on that he had an eye for talent. His first recruit at Texas Tech was Wes Welker, a smallish, under-recruited receiver from Oklahoma City. The Red Raiders didn't offer Welker a scholarship until the day after signing day in February 2001. Briles was so confident Welker could play at Texas Tech that he dubbed him "The Natural." Four years later, Welker left Tech with more than 250 receptions and an NCAA-record eight touchdowns on punt returns. He is a five-time Pro Bowler in the NFL.

Even though Briles wasn't coaching quarterbacks, Kingsbury still found himself lured to Briles' office nearly every morning for breakfast. They'd sit in his office for about a half-hour, discussing his philosophy for offense and for life.

"He's a guy that I've actually patterned myself after with his ability to relate to his players and motivate them," Kingsbury said.

Nick Florence, who was Baylor's starting quarterback in 2012, said Briles is also adept at figuring out what buttons to push to motivate his players. As Florence was preparing to replace 2011 Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III, Briles unexpectedly called him into his office before the season opener.

"I think you should grow a beard," Briles told him.

Florence didn't know what to think. He was really surprised later that night when Briles sent him a text message with a photo of Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart. The text message read: "Only one of them is a felon."

"He was too clean," Briles said. "Good Lord, there was a squeak when he walked. You don't have to be bad, but you at least have to have a little edge to you. It's not about appearances. It's about who you are. It doesn't matter how you look."

Over the years, Briles learned to look deeper than the surface, to identify potential and talent where perhaps no one else saw it. It was why, when his alma mater was looking for a head coach after the 2002 season, he was interested.