Bad News Bears
Grambling State waited for a literal war to break out before announcing Art Briles as offensive coordinator
Tom Pennington
All the worst announcements happen on Fridays. This is when you fire people, when the eviction notices are delivered, when you announce the national price of Dunkin’ Munchkins is going up again. This is when you deliver whatever piece of bad news you have to deliver, with the hopes that A. It flies under the radar and B. By the time people are plugging back in on Monday morning, cooler heads have prevailed. This has been a bulletproof PR strategy for decades, but occasionally the news is so bad, so ripe for outrage, that Friday afternoon just doesn't cut it. In those exceptional circumstances, the bad news must be held until bad news of equal or greater magnitude arises, allowing one to slip their poison pill into the glass with minimal attention or, at the very least, with the public perception that said poison might offer respite from the broader context. Enter Grambling State University, who delivered this doozy on Thursday.
That's right. Grambling State waited for a LITERAL WAR to break out before announcing Briles—a guy who makes Urban Meyer look like Mother Teresa—as their new offensive coordinator. Mere hours before, a Grambling spokesperson claimed there was “no truth to the rumors.” Then Putin rolled into Ukraine and, boom, Briles was filling out his I9s.
Thankfully, however, the dirtbag of all dirtbag moves didn't sneak by totally undetected.
Ah yes, one last plot twist to muddy the waters even more. As it turns out, Grambling State might not have Trojan Horsed the Briles news with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but instead with Mardi Gras and all of its bedazzled, drunken, topless glory. Honestly, we’re not sure which is worse, but we can say this with absolute 100% certainty:
Neither are good.