Lighting the cig with the flaming finger is fucking cool.

Absolutely.

There’s an idea here, in our small towns, that big city people are not to be trusted and all you need is the comforting embrace of your small-town culture.

The underbelly is almost sinister, and most of them don’t even actively realize they’re contributing to it.

So, have you never played baseball before? You go from standing to maximum effort while running on unstable surfaces.

Awesome.  Now Mexican free climbers can come over the border and fill the freeclimbing jobs that American freeclimbers don’t want to do.

and dogs, and bees, and dogs with bees in their mouths that when they bark they shoot bees. 

and that “world champion climber” (probably named Jim) came to him afterwards with tears streaming down his face and said “Sir, you just built the most unclimbable wall in history. You are truly a genius and hero to us all and are making American great again.

OR, you could just burn it? 

Yeah, I almost went down the JoPa road, too, but I didn’t want my post to be a million words. But I agree completely - it’s basically the same kind of “looking the other way” but with different kinds of abuse going on.

Call me stupid, but can’t you just throw a rope over the wall, reach through for the loose end, tie it to one of the columns with a simple bowline knot, pull up the slack and climb that bitch like Batman and Robin?

Two weeks later, I was gone. So, it’s like, ‘Why did I waste my time?’

I wish it wasn’t true, but I spent all my formative years surrounded by it and it’s infected almost every small town in the state.

The contrast between Small Town Texas and Big City Texas is massive. It’s a gulf.

And I know Texas isn’t the only state where that’s true.

I grew up in Oregon and attended Oregon State for undergrad, believe me when I say Oregon is NOT the exception. There is a reason why Chip left a very successful program when he did. I agree with you that every program has some shady shit, but paying athletes (illegally) and looking the other way for drug offenses is…

awesome article! Reading some of the comments from the locals (the NY Times, Christian forgiveness, that crap) it was obvious this was Trump country and I looked it up and sure enough. It explains well why so many would support this despicable human being and make excuses for him (Briles, that is):

The main victims are the young women who know that their school’s football coach won’t give a shit if his players rape them.  How’d you like to walk those halls?

“After Briles was hired and people started wondering whose idea it was to bring him to town, Leigh Anne Ramsay deleted all of the information off of her personal LinkedIn page. Landon and Leigh Anne Ramsay did not respond to requests for comment.”

Briles appears to...
1.) feel no remorse for what he’s done.
2.) feel entitled to his redemption story.

People who have not experienced small town Texas life often don’t get how insular it can be and how strong the impulse to circle the wagons against outsiders is. I wonder how much the people who talked to Kelsey even believe what they’re saying, but they’re sure as hell not going to offer up dirt on their town to…

As a Baylor Alum who attended the school and worked for the athletic program from 2010-2012, Briles is a Class-A piece of shit. He only cared about one thing, himself. I arrived at Baylor a wavering agnostic and came out a staunch atheist (near anti-theist) from all the awfulness and hypocrisy that christians show. It…

The Briles supporters in Mt Vernon are exhibiting willful ignorance, or disingenuous denial. Briles presided over a major football program with a horrific record of sexual assaults. There is absolutely zero chance he didn’t know what was going on - but he was hired to win, so that’s all he cares about.

Wrong!