Tepper: Rhule's work to rebuild Baylor begins now

[caption id="attachment_27829" align="aligncenter" width="700"]Photo by Jerome Hicks Photo by Jerome Hicks[/caption] The embers are still dying on the conflagration that consumed the Baylor athletic department in May. Jim Grobe was brought in to douse the flames. Now, Matt Rhule will arrive in Waco to rebuild. Baylor announced on Tuesday that it had hired Rhule to become its 27^th head coach, luring the 41-year-old away from his job at Temple. He takes over for Grobe, who took over on an interim basis when Art Briles was fired in a swirl of controversy surrounding the program’s handling of a number of sexual assault accusations. Rhule’s a hot name in the coaching ranks thanks to the remarkable turnaround he’s sparked in Philadelphia, guiding perennial doormat Temple to consecutive 10-win seasons and consecutive appearances in the American Athletic Conference championship game. A former Penn State linebacker, Rhule rose through the ranks as an assistant at Buffalo, UCLA, Western Carolina and Temple — briefly taking an assistant’s job for the New York Giants — before beginning his tenure with the Owls in 2013. Rhule’s arrival in Baylor almost certainly marks the end of the wide-open spread offense to which Bears fans have grown accustomed in the Briles era. Rhule’s teams have offered more of pro-style scheme — think more of Alabama’s attack than Texas Tech’s. But that is all down the road, into the weeds, once the 2017 season kicks off. The work begins now for Rhule, and he faces an uphill climb. Baylor is already in a sizable recruiting hole. The 2016 class was gutted when Briles was unceremoniously canned, and the 2017 class features just one commitment — Stafford safety Jalen Pitre. The Bears are already behind, and every day that passes — with a recruiting dead period looming — only pushes Baylor farther behind. Complicating matters further: Rhule’s lack of Texas ties. Briles built Baylor into a Big 12 contender through savvy recruiting of the Lone Star State, using his past as a Texas high school football coach to find diamonds in the rough before the wins came and superstars after. Rhule has no such Lone Star State pedigree. We can only confirm that Rhule has spent at least four days in Texas: twice when Temple traveled to play SMU, and twice when Temple traveled to play Houston. That makes Rhule’s surrounding hires — assistant coaches, most notably — especially crucial to his ability to lure talent to Waco. In sum: the job of rebuilding the Baylor football program on the ashes of where it once stood was going to be difficult for whomever took it, but if Matt Rhule can get the right players to campus, he appears to have the coaching acumen to make the process as hasty as possible.