Report: Baylor settles with Briles over Contract

Bleacher Report's Jason King is reporting this morning that Baylor has reached a settlement with Art Briles over his contract. At 8:30 this morning, King issued the following tweet:

Baylor has reached a contract settlement with former football coach Art Briles, sources tell B/R. Details unclear.

— Jason King (@JasonKingBR) June 17, 2016

At this point, Jason is the only person reporting that Baylor reached settlement with Briles, but we'll update with other confirmations as they come in.

This is coming on the heels of the news yesterday that Briles retained counsel independent of the university for the handling of the Title IX suit filed in March that named him as a defendant. The letter that accompanied the motion filed yesterday contained scathing allegations against the university's handling of the incident. Many speculated that this move likely signaled the end of any possible discussions of Briles returning as head coach of the Baylor football team. It now appears that is the case.

It's worth noting that yesterday's news should not necessarily be an indication that this settlement happened "fast." We aren't privy to the details, but it's possible that Baylor and Briles have been in settlement negotiations since the announcement of his suspension was made near the end of May.

Not many details are known at this time (none actually). Many settlements contain confidentiality agreements, so the details of the settlement may never be known. While it may be easy to draw conclusions from this news might mean for the underlying problem, there are many reasons to settle cases. As Mark said on Twitter, there are a myriad of reasons that Baylor would want to settle quickly with Briles, from the avoidance of costly litigation that could drag on for years to the desire to have staff and assistants spending time on game preparations instead of deposition preparations. There are plenty of reasons to settle, and it's very likely we won't know the specific details of the why of it for a long time, if ever.

As always, we'll keep you posted with details as they come.