Too late for Baylor coach

By Will Parchman

Monday, October 15, 2007

For the first time in his five-year tenure at Baylor, the voices calling for Guy Morriss’ resignation have risen to an overwhelming crescendo.

And it doesn’t seem like they’re going away this time.

So it was just his luck that he had to take his traveling circus, the fast-plummeting Baylor Bears, on the road to face a Top 25 squad in Kansas following arguably the most embarrassing home loss of his short Baylor career.

It seems odd to call a 20-point loss to Colorado a bigger embarrassment than, say, a 62-0 shellacking to Texas two years ago. Or the season-ending 35-0 beating Oklahoma gave the Bears last year.

But look at it from a Baylor fan’s perspective. Morriss has had five years to recruit, build and mold. His recruiting classes are still mired in the nation’s bottom half. His average recruiting class since his arrival is 79th out of 119 D-I schools. Call it the Baylor factor, but any school should expect better than that, let alone a BCS school.

His inability to recruit quarterbacks has been the scariest part. No Morriss-recruited quarterback has ever won a Big 12 game. Following Baylor’s loss under the lightning Saturday to Kansas, Blake Szymanski is 0-6 as a starter in Big 12 games and last Saturday’s 20-point blowout to Colorado was the closest he’s ever come to winning one.

That’s why it appears this Morriss-built program has reached a disappointing plateau. This team is five years in the making. Where is the progress?

Ever since Morriss’ arrival at Baylor in 2003, the ups and downs that typically accompany one of the hottest seats in the conference over the last decade have been wildly evident. After a shameful 27-20 overtime loss at home to Army last year, Morriss looked defeated. He sounded defeated.

The fans gave him attitudes to match, failing to properly support the team for the rest of the year. When the Bears completed one of the most incredible fourth quarter comebacks in their history last season and pulled together an 19-point quarter to defeat the Jayhawks 36-35 on homecoming, the fans streamed out at halftime. About 20,000 people were left at Floyd Casey Stadium to witness the scene.

The Baylor Regents have not been blind, deaf and dumb throughout all of this. Judging by Baylor’s hiring history since the Big 12 formed, something big is going to happen this off-season, and the trend doesn’t favor Morriss.

The calls for Mike Singletary, Baylor’s legendary linebacker of the 1980s, are deafening. Now an assistant with the San Francisco 49ers, Singletary was a prime candidate for Baylor’s head job back in 2003. Fresh off a 7-5 season at Kentucky, just his second as a head coach, Morriss took the job instead.

The only conceivable way Morriss can save himself now is a bowl bid, something Baylor hasn’t had in hand since 1994. A couple conference wins won’t satiate the Baylor crowd anymore, nor should they. The frenzy is too great, the gap between winning seasons too long. Judging by the result in Lawrence Saturday, six victories seem as distant and unreachable as the highest steppes of Mount Everest.

Above all, Baylor fans are tired. They are tired of losing, tired of being a conference doormat and perhaps most of all, tired of bowing down to Texas A&M and Texas each year. Morriss isn’t a bad guy; he’s just not the one to accomplish those tasks. He’s already proven as much.

So say goodbye to Morriss. The Colorado game dug his coaching grave. This loss to Kansas nailed his coffin shut.

Just like the backup quarterback in any town, the most popular guy in Waco after the season will be the one who replaces Guy Morriss.

Parchman is a senior journalism major from Austin, Texas.

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