The quiet voice helping Matt Rhule change Baylor off the field -

WACO, Texas — In March, new Baylor head coach Matt Rhule fired an operations staffer because of inappropriate texts to a teenager. That move came one month after firing an assistant strength coach arrested in a prostitution sting.

Rhule knew the biggest challenge he stepped into at Baylor would be changing a culture in wake of the sexual assault scandal under Art Briles, but these two staffers were people he had hired. Rhule was at a new school in a new state, still unfamiliar with his surroundings, and things were a little rocky.

So he called his father.

“I just kind of need you to come down here,” Rhule told his dad.

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At 7:20 a.m. on a typically warm Wednesday in August, Denny Rhule turns the corner of the hallway in Baylor’s athletic building. He’s wearing a black State College High School Physical Education windbreaker to go with his white hair and big smile.

As he heads in to a meeting room, there are 12 coaches and four players, including the head coach, waiting. There is Panera Bread catering for breakfast on a table in the back. Denny Rhule, 68, asks everyone to pull their notes out from last week, when they talked about 10 ways to be a better father.

This meeting is a mix between a bible study and a class for fathers, led by the elder Rhule. It’s the second meeting of at least eight Rhule has planned for the group, and it was an idea hatched by his son.

“To be a great leader at home, you have to love,” Denny Rhule tells the room.

Everyone in the building calls him “Papa Rhule”. He’s a former minister and a former coach. When you wonder why someone like Matt Rhule, who had plenty of interest for big head coaching jobs when he was at Temple, would take the Baylor job, you have to understand his relationship with his family and his faith, a journey that spans from Pennsylvania to Kansas City to New York City to Philadelphia to Texas and Africa.

When Matt was the Temple head coach, Denny spent a lot of time around the program and around his son. He hadn’t planned to come to Texas, until his son called.

Baylor has started this season 0-4. The on-field fix looks more difficult than it first appeared, but that will only start with fixing everything off the field. Denny now plays a part in that.

“As a head coach, there’s not many people for you to go to,” Matt Rhule told The All-American. “He keeps me calm and focused on the right things. He’s great for our staff. A lot guys have known him for a long time and trust him. He’s good for our players. He’ll sit in there and play ping-pong with them, talks to them. He’s great just as another set of eyes.”

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Denny Rhule told the group at his bible study that he’s been a Christian for 42 years. Quick math shows that’s not his entire life. He grew up going to church multiple times a week, but he wasn’t fully engaged in it until tragedy struck.

When Denny was in his early 20s, his older brother Kenny was killed in a car accident with his fraternity brothers on the way home from a concert in Washington, D.C.

“That was a time when I looked at my life,” Denny said. “I saw my parents, and despite the fact they were going to bury their son, through all the grief, mourning and tragedy, I saw this really strong faith. I thought, I need that.”

Denny Rhule reads for a lesson during a quiet moment in Baylor’s football offices. (Chris Vannini / The All-American)

Matt was born in 1975 in State College, Pa., and his family moved to Kansas City the next year, when Denny went to seminary. After four years there, the family drove to New York in a U-Haul, and Dennis worked at a church in Times Square at a time when it wasn’t one of New York’s safest areas.

In addition to being heavily involved in the church, Denny coached midnight basketball at a youth center. Matt always tagged along wherever Dennis went, and it made an impact, his mother Gloria said.

“He was with kids who lived in low income housing, kids in welfare hotels, and he could be with kids who were the children of diplomats, kids who lived on Park Avenue,” Gloria Rhule said. “He had a wide spectrum of experiences. I think that helped him understand a lot about people and different kids.”

After 11 years in New York, the family moved back to State College. As a young kid, Matt had told his dad he’d play football at Penn State and then become a coach. Then he followed through.

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Difficult beginnings aren’t new for Matt Rhule. In his first head coaching job, he got off to an 0-6 start at Temple in 2013. That team finished the season 2-10. It was not pretty.

Denny would make the drive from State College for games and visit with his son. The following year, the elder Rhule spent preseason camp with the Owls, and they opened with a win at Vanderbilt and finished 6-6. He did the same the next year, when Temple opened with a win against Penn State and finished 10-4. By that point, the Owls wanted Denny around all the time. He was a good luck charm.

“My mother and father sold their home, moved to Philadelphia,” Matt said. “He was just around. He came to practice in the morning, hung out. It was really good for me, really good for our young coaches.

“I saw the impact my father has with his quiet sort of way. He’s a patient man, a kind man. I saw the impact he had on so many players, outside of me. He’d sit in the cafeteria when they eat, and he’d get to know them.”

So Denny spent the entire 2016 season with his son. Temple went 10-3 and won the American Athletic Conference. Matt was a hot coaching candidate, and Nike CEO Phil Knight reportedly met with Rhule about the Oregon job.

But Rhule chose Baylor, surprising many.

Sporting activities have bound Denny Rhule (foreground) and Matt Rhule for Matt’s entire life. (Chris Vannini / The All-American)

Yes, Baylor has a recruiting base in Texas, but it was still going through the fallout of the wide-ranging sexual assault scandal under Briles’ watch, all sorts of administrative turnover at the school as a result, losing an entire recruiting class the year before and having one committed recruit for 2017. Why would anyone go to Baylor?

“This wasn’t the easiest thing to say yes to,” Gloria said, “but it was something he felt like, after talking and discussing with people and praying, I felt like he had this sense it’s what he was supposed to do next.”

Matt said new athletic director Mack Rhoades’ presence was a big factor, because he felt enough was in place where he could come in and help fix things.

“You look at my family. I’m the son of a football coach and a minister,” Rhule said. “How often would those two worlds I’ve been around my whole life collide but at a handful of universities? I looked at a place like Baylor, which was in distress. It seemed like they needed someone who wanted to come there and make it more than just football.”

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Rhule scrambled and put together a serviceable recruiting class, but the start was bumpy, and he had to fire those two staffers he hired to Waco. When he called his parents about coming down, they weighed the decision.

“I thought, you know, I’m young enough to do it, I still have the resources to do it, my son wants me to be there, my grand-kids are there, I’m around football and can do some ministry stuff,” Denny said. “To me, yeah, I want to do this and be part of Baylor and rebuilding the whole thing.”

They made the move in the summer. In Waco, they attend Church Under The Bridge, and Gloria is planning to get involved with Mission Waco, a local non-profit that works with the poor. Denny spends most days with the football program as a volunteer. It’s not about breaking down film or recruiting. It’s just being a sounding board and an outside observer, like when Denny asked Matt why his teams would bring kick returns out of the end zone. He’s also there if players need him.

“I come to practice, watch a little film sometimes, walk around the field, pray for everybody, no injuries,” Denny said. “There are times when I’ll be with Matthew and talk about different things I see. I think I’ve coached 60 teams, football, basketball, baseball. It’s part of who I am. He may ask me couple questions once in a while.”

As fall camp progressed, he’s become more involved with the Baylor players, as he was at Temple. Senior defensive end Brian Nance has two children and attends Denny’s fatherhood classes.

“It’s been real good. It’s an honor,” Nance said of Denny Rhule. “He’s a good person. You can take a lot of advice from him. He’s been through everything. Whenever you want to ask somebody something, he’s the first person you go to.”

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As much as Matt Rhule does to change things in the program, it will take a long time for external perceptions to truly change. The people involved in the scandal may be gone, but have remained in the news, whether it’s Art Briles getting hired and un-hired in the CFL on the same day, or former Baylor president Ken Starr showing up on cable news to talk about 1990s politics, or former interim president David Garland allegedly writing in 2016 that sexual assault victims “seem willingly to make themselves victims.”

The Pepper Hamilton law firm produced the scandal’s original investigative report, one that made 105 recommendations to the school on what to change even while its details remain private. The football program didn’t even have drug testing in place under Briles, something Rhoades immediately changed.

The school has settled numerous lawsuits, and the legal process will continue to play out for a long time. The settlements mean many findings will not make it into the public, a fact that has drawn criticism. In late 2016, a study paid for by the group Bears For Leadership Reform estimated the total cost of the scandal to the school could be more than $200 million.

You won’t see many observers feeling sorry for the Bears over an 0-4 start to the season. Even if the people on the field weren’t involved, it’s part of what Rhule and the current players will have to carry, to show that things can change.

Matt Rhule knew there would be numerous challenges when he accepted the Baylor job. (Mark Dolejs / USA TODAY Sports)

“The university took the Pepper Hamilton recommendations and, at least in process, implemented all of them,” Rhule said. “I think, when we look back at this time, we’re going to see this was a really tough thing that happened at Baylor, but the regents and administration responded with new leadership, new policies, and it’s unfortunate it happened, but hopefully other universities can learn from the great things Baylor has done in the wake of that.

“I know people have come from all across the country to look at our (new) Title IX procedures, some of our athletic department and university policies, because we think we’re hopefully on the forefront of those issues.”

In late June, sportscaster-turned-activist Rachel Baribeau spoke to the Bears on issues like how to treat women and how to handle themselves. She’s taken her talk, titled “Changing The Narrative,” to 16 schools, with at least six more visits planned. Baribeau describes it as a positive talk, emphasizing to the players their importance beyond football and how they can change the culture, as opposed to tearing them down. She said 50 Baylor players stayed after her talk to thank her and offer their stories.

Baribeau visited again in August and plans to return during homecoming week this season. She’s adamant that Rhule is the right person to lead the program in the right direction.

“He was exactly what they needed,” she said. “Giving him a long-term contract gives him room to breathe. They may not have gotten the results on the field thus far, but more important work is being done.”

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When the 2017 football season ends and the Bears go through their winter workouts, Denny and Gloria will head to the other side of the world, spending time at a youth school in Rwanda for three months, beginning in January. They have gone five times, each trip lasting longer than the previous one. They help at schools, they build houses. Denny said some children there walk three miles just to get to school, because they want to learn. Denny and Gloria want Matt to come with them some time, but such a trip is difficult in the busy life of a football coach, and he’s got plenty on his plate.

Denny and Gloria Rhule (standing, far left and far right, respectively) on a mission trip to Rwanda. (Photo courtesy Denny Rhule)

Matt is leaning on his experience from that first season at Temple right now. This is a new experience for the Baylor players, most of whom aren’t used to losing. With games at Kansas State and Oklahoma State next, the Bears very well could open 0-6 and be 1-12 in their past 13 games, dating back to last season. But Rhule’s been through it.

Still, any and every change at Baylor has to start off the field.

“The way to build this program is with one player relationship at a time, not to get too focused on Xs and Os, but to make sure you spend time with each player,” Rhule said. “That’s how we built the program at Temple.”

He knows it will take time for the school to become the guiding light he envisions. If Rhule wins at Baylor around like he did Temple, the Bears will face backlash. It comes with the territory.

He knows what he signed up for, and he’ll do it with his dad by his side.

“I knew he felt called to come here and do that,” Denny said. “He had other opportunities. In our faith, we’re told we’re the light of God, we receive Him, and you need to take the light into dark places. This was a place going through a difficult time. It was natural for us to come.”

(Top photo: Baylor Athletics)

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