The Big 12 Media Day commenced Monday morning at The Star in Frisco and it didn’t take long for questions regarding an update on Baylor and the ongoing investigation to present themselves to Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby.
Bowlsby highly praised university leaders such as president Linda Livingstone, athletic director Mack Rhoades and head football coach Matt Rhule in their cooperation and efforts with the investigation on behalf of the Big 12’s efforts.
“We are involved in a verification process with them, with Mack Rhoades, since the day he got there, he’s been engaged on the task. Matt Rhule has come in and done terrific work on the culture of the Baylor football program. President Livingstone, I’ve met with several times. I have been very impressed with her values and leadership and the things that she’s going to do.”
As the unraveling of the scandal and investigation continues to haunt Baylor, Bowlsby claimed that the Big 12 will continue to take progressive action towards the university as needed and continue to uphold the sanctions put on Baylor.
“It is obviously a very complex situation, and because of the lawsuits… it will have some effect on the time frame of our verification process, but we are moving forward with it. We continue to withhold 25 percent of their revenue distribution, and we’ll continue to do that as long as this is a pending matter. But we could not have gotten any better cooperation from the three people I just mentioned that we have gotten.”
“We have a lot of people engaged against this process. We have a subcommittee of our board that’s working on it, and I haven’t the slightest doubt that we’ll get through it in an expedient way. But it isn’t going to be over in the next month. It’s just got a longer tail than that.”
As far as the investigation on the part of the NCAA, Bowlsby had no comment but echoed his earlier sentiments that he could not be more pleased with how cooperative the aforementioned university leaders have been.
“We could not have had any better cooperation and any better engagement from the president, the athletic director, the head football coach and general counsel and anybody else we’ve dealt with down there.”
“They are working very hard to get it right.”
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