When Matt Rhule agreed to become the head football coach at Baylor in 2016, the campus was scorched, the athletic department was smoldering, and the football program was in ashes.He arrived in Waco that December at a university trying to recover from a sexual a sault scandal that rocked the campus and saw coach Art Briles, university president Ken Starr and athletic director Ian McCaw lose their jobs. It was clear Rhules succe s wouldnt be measured by just the on-field product.Its just one of those things where my wife (Julie) and I just kind of made a decision based on faith, Rhule told Sporting News. We thought that this was where we were supposed to be. We knew Baylor was a great place, but that they had hit on hard times. We felt that we were uniquely suited to come here. We thought that we could turn it around. And really, turning it around, to me, meant turning Corey Knebel Jersey it around off the field first. So we felt like if we could get it done off the field, then on the field succe s would follow.Whereas a lot of people saw disaster, we saw an opportunity to go do something not just something positive on the field, but also something really positive off the field as well.MORE: Rhule has turned that opportunity from an 1-11 record in 2017 to an 11-2 campaign and Sugar Bowl berth this season into Sporting News Coach of the Year for 2019.But wait: Did Rhule call Baylor a great place before he got there? What, in 2016, made Baylor a great place? From the Pepper Hamilton report, the exposs, the steady stream of statements and accusations, the convictions, the expulsions, the firings, even the Big 12 sanctions, there seemed little that was great about Baylor three years ago.Sure, theres the company line about a commitment to excellence and high academic standards and competitive athletics and a strong Christian mi sion. Soon enough, though, Rhule returns to the heart of the matter football to explain why he took the job.Unfortunately, despite having that mi sion, the football program wasnt nece sarily in line with that, he told SN. So I thought Milwaukee Brewers T-Shirts me, as the son of a high school football coach and minister, that maybe I could help get the football program back in line with the university and the universitys mi sion with a commitment to faith and service and leadership.Rhule, 44, executed a similar on-field turnaround in his four years at Temple, taking the Owls from 2-10 in his first year to 10 wins in each of his last two in Philadelphia. He regards that first season in Temple as our best coaching, and said the same thing happened in Waco.The Bears “weren’t quite ready” to win in 2017, but those hard le sons from a 1-11 season produced five single-po se sion wins this year. The Bears twice took College Football Playoff-bound Oklahoma to the wire, including an overtime lo s in the Big 12 championship game. They also tied a program-record 11 wins, and have a chance at one more.Winning football games is one thing, but winning back the Waco community and college football fans in general is something entirely different. Rhules players havent had any prolonged off-field i sues since he got there. He said when he arrived, there were zero graduate students on the roster; now there are 10. Players are committed to community outreach projects. Family has become a centralized theme for the coaching staff.There are so many How did you questions for Rhule: How did you save your first recruiting cla s? How did you build this team up? How did you unite a fractured fan base?Start with recruiting. The departure of half the 2016 recruiting cla s, followed by a ma s exodus of the 2017 group that left just one player safety Jalen Pitre meant Baylors future depended on much more than Rhules ability to parachute in and put out fires.Kids hadnt been on visits. Kids hadnt been recruited, Rhule said. It wasnt like there was a bunch of kids that had been recruited and then we just had a transition. We had to start over from scratch. It was really, really, really hard. But I think we looked at it as an opportunity.Rhules first move was to hire David Wetzel, who was president of the Texas High School Football Coaches A sociation and played receiver at Baylor under Hall of Famer Grant Teaff. Wetzel was an accomplished coach at Reagan High School in San Antonio. But Wetzel “knew Robin Yount Jersey all the right people” among the Texas coaching ranks, and was invaluable for his connections. So Rhule made him a sistant athletic director for football relations.Wetzel introduced Rhule to another succe sful Texas prep coach, Joey McGuire from Dallas suburb Cedar Hill. Rhule hired him to coach tight ends (hes now a sociate head coach and works with defensive ends). From there, Rhule hired former Baylor quarterback and Cedar Ridge coach Shawn Bell, whos now the offensive line coach.Those were three of his first hires, said Baylor play-by-play voice John Morris. That was the first move, and it was very well thought out, very smart.A Yankee like Rhule native New Yorker, played at Penn State, coached in Philly could have crashed and burned in Waco if he hadnt reached out and brought some of the Texas coaches into the fold. In that endeavor, hiring Wetzel, McGuire and Bell along with Evan Cooper, who followed Rhule from Temple was a vitally important first step.In two months, that first recruiting cla s grew to Pitre and 26 others, including 20 Texas schoolboys, 17 of whom are still on the team. The list includes three-year starting quarterback Charlie Brewer (Austin-Lake Travis), as well as All-American defensive end James Lynch (Round Rock), All-Big 12 linebacker Terrel Bernard (LaPorte), Big 12 title game hero Trestan Ebner (Henderson) starting guard Xavier Newman (DeSoto) and starting wideout R.J. Sneed (Cypre s Ranch). Some of them had other offers, some did not.There are too many kids playing high school football in Texas there are too many great players to not recruit well, Rhule said. Theres too many players in this state that can go play and play at a high level. So for us, were just on a mi sion to make sure that we do a great job evaluating. You know, I dont want Drew Brees leaving the state. I dont want Nick Foles leaving the state. I want to make sure that all these guys that end up playing in the NFL, that we evaluate and we get our arms Eric Thames Jersey around.Rhule gets the credit for building that cla s, extinguishing the flames and winning those games because, it can be argued, hes precisely what Baylor needed: an outsider. That was both the quickest and most lasting way to get the Bears past the dark times and into a brighter, more enduring future.This team was the doormat of the Big 12 before Briles, whose wide-open, sideline-to-sideline, up-tempo offense seemed to be the only way to turn a perennial loser into a co
