Rice’s marching band showed iffy judgment on this one.
There are two ways to look at this. Either Rice’s notoriously feisty marching band audaciously called out an in-state rival by referencing the ugly sexual assault scandal surrounding Baylor’s mishandling of investigating alleged sexual assaults by multiple members of the team. That’s probably putting Baylor’s issues kindly given the documented track record they’ve shown over the past few year in terms of enforcement, judgement, communication, and overall culture issues that eventually led to Art Briles’ dismissal. So yeah, some could say “Wow! I can’t believe they went there!”
But the other way of looking at this is that Rice’s marching band — in an attempt to get under the skin of a team they really had no chance of beating — sunk to a new low by invoking a scandal that has deep and fresh wounds, and a myriad of victims who were probably were not thrilled to see such a horrible scandal become marching band humor fodder.
Below, a look at the actual performance.
https://twitter.com/bdbsport/status/776959950320906240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Rice's MOB band making fun of Baylor’s sexual assault scandal at halftime. Referring to Title IX here pic.twitter.com/kp39MsoZKi
— Glynn Hill (@RiceChron) September 17, 2016
That’s a reference to Title IX (the NCAA bylaw that spurred the investigation the Baylor sexual assaults) directed at the away stands, as well as a Star, a reference to Baylor’s ousted former president Kenneth Starr.
Folks are now finding out what C-USA fans already knew: the Rice MOB is basically the discount Stanford Band.
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) September 17, 2016
The majority of folks didn’t take too kindly to the performance.
https://twitter.com/scATX/status/776966059672817664
https://twitter.com/MattSBN/status/776968947245707264
Given this was planned and took a lot of planning and instruction from adults, I have to think heads are going to roll on this one. Hope it was worth it!
Making the stunt even more odd was Art Briles was actually at the game although left at halftime (maybe because of the halftime show perhaps?)
If you’re unfamiliar with the scandal at Baylor, a brief timeline below.
Rice isn’t really a school you hear much about in terms of athletics. They’ve put themselves on the map tonight in a big way and it remains to be seen what the reaction and fallout is for doing so.
