I've only ever known Willie Taggart. I didn't follow USF until I became a student in 2013. That didn't stop me from being bothered by the "Grumble grumble grumble I want Jim Leavitt back" attitude of the fans on this website when I first became a student at USF. Despite knowing his legendary status and rise to fame, I was never really fond of that complaint, nor the "fired under dubious circumstances" thing that some people brought up. That was 3 years ago now, and I don't think I've seen a comment like that since USF knocked off Temple this year.

Fast foward: Art Briles gets fired. Cruising the interwebz during the Baylor scandal brought back...memories if you will, of the USF fan base grousing about the fact Leavitt was gone. The fan base realized that, yes, Leavitt did a bad thing (Briles did some terrible things), and yes, probably did deserve to be fired (definitely deserved to be fired), but the fans seemed be saying "if we must." (ditto mark).

Basically I'm saying Baylor is USF circa 2010. The difference here is that USF cut off the head of the problem before it became a university-wide sinkhole, and one of the reasons I'm incredibly proud of USF. Leavitt was a good coach, no doubt, but the school realized that keeping their moral code was more important than winning. That was an argument I was having earlier today. Halfway through I was drawing all sorts of parallels between the two schools with that one distinct difference.

Despite USF's program receiving a black eye for someone attempting to save face, nobody really remembers it anymore (until someone makes a contrived reason to remember it. *awkward cough*). Baylor, meanwhile, saved face as long as they could, covering up things that I'm not even sure UCF would try to sweep under the rug. Hell, UCF might have given themselves a few pains in their own asses (Jay Bergman joke), but they never let anything grow into this kind of stain (insert UCF hate digression here).

I think that anyone who once called for the rehire of Jim Leavitt might be able to look at Baylor right now for a taste of what might have happened if USF had decided that winning was the most important thing. Honestly, I'm not sure Baylor, the university as a whole, is ever going to recover from this. Football, maybe. But the reputation of Baylor University has a stain that makes Jerry Sandusky look like a speck. Oh, the Penn State Scandal was bad, but they were only protecting one *redacted*. Do we know how many players Baylor was/is protecting? I haven't seen a number yet.

Is it fair to compare Jim Leavitt interfering with a police investigation to an entire university covering up sex crimes? Probably not. But they're both tales of two football programs where morality temporarily flew out the window. The stories have two different endings. Maybe it was only going to be a one time thing with Leavitt, but USF still sprinted outside to find said morals and fired him. Baylor, on the other hand, waited until someone noticed they were up to their necks in shit before realizing "it might be a good idea to change a few things."

Neither story has ended yet, though hopefully USF will give us the storybook ending the seniors (meaning me) deserve. Baylor, however, still has a long way to go. The fallout will be intriguing to watch, for sure. How long it takes for Baylor to recover will really show if it was really worth abandoning their morals for the sake of winning.