Robert Griffin III is expected to interview for the Baylor head coaching job, ESPN’s sources say, and the man has never coached a single snap at any level, college or pro.
NEW: Baylor is expected to interview Robert Griffin III for its head coaching job, @PeteNakos reports.
Griffin won the Heisman Trophy in 2011. https://t.co/ttgeB3Cvjk pic.twitter.com/7XIBPjtFv4
— On3 (@On3) November 13, 2026
Expected. No report says it has happened, and nobody has been hired. Everybody keep your jersey on.
Let me say the generous part first. Baylor fired Dave Aranda on Oct. 25, the morning after a 25-24 loss at Kansas left the Bears 4-3, and Joe Klanderman has been holding the clipboard ever since. Your most famous alum went on The Dan Patrick Show and said, “So yeah, I would 100% be interested.” Ignoring that would have been weird. A phone call is cheap, a Heisman winner is a Heisman winner, and the school gets to say it listened. That is smart PR, and I have no problem with it.
The problem is the pitch.
Griffin’s argument, as Fox News Digital reported it, is that Baylor needs “people who know what it looks like to win at Baylor.” Fine. He’s one of them. In 2011 he led the Bears to a 10-3 record and took home the Heisman Trophy, and nobody in Waco has forgotten it, nor should they.
But that sentence describes a banquet speaker, the guy you put on the stage at the booster dinner, the guy who makes a recruit’s mom smile in the living room for four minutes. Nobody in that picture has installed a defense, fired an assistant, or told a 19-year-old why he is losing his scholarship spot.
Baylor’s athletic director, Doug McNamee, is the one who has to separate those two jobs. Griffin has said he already talked with McNamee, so the AD knows exactly how good the pitch sounds in a room. Hearing it is the easy part. The hard part is asking what comes after: whether there is a plan for a staff, a roster, a transfer portal, and a locker room that just watched its coach get cut loose in the middle of a season.
The name buys attention, goodwill, a press conference that goes viral. A single Saturday of experience calling plays costs extra. Those are different invoices, and only one of them comes due when the games start.
Interview him. Be nice about it. Then hire a football coach.
