Baylor won the Big 12 in 2021, following up their championship season, the Bears went 6-7 in 2022. At the Big 12 Media Days, head coach, Dave Aranda gave his perspective on the disappointing season, and his mindset heading into this year.

The first issue Aranda addressed was lack of hard boundaries. The head coach said, “I look at the last year trying to save people, maybe trying to change people, and not having hard enough boundaries,…but I think people are ready to improve when they’re ready to, when they’re ready to do it on their own. I think that was a big factor last year.”

Did Aranda mentioned specifically who he was talking about with that statement? Of course not. But nonetheless he believes it was a contributing factoring last year. 

In Aranda’s opinion, the other issue last year was not utilizing and embracing the transfer portal. 

To explain his perspective on the portal, Aranda stated, “I think one of the struggles for me has always been if you say yes to something, a player outside of your team that’s in the portal, you’re saying no to a player on your team…I think when you bring somebody in, you almost kind of stunt the growth of that person.” 

The head coach realizes now that the transfer portal is something he needs to embrace, shifting his mindset for the betterment of the team.

Aranda explained, “For me to kind of come to grips with ‘hey, this is what needs to happen for the betterment of the team as opposed to just looking at what’s best for that one particular player on your team’…to say ‘hey, we’ve still got you, we still believe in you, but this is what we need to for the team right now’ has been an area of growth for me.” 

Along with talking about last year’s pitfalls, coach Aranda spoke heavily about the mindset for himself and his program heading into the new season. 

Their “person over player” mindset is something Aranda says they have been focusing on this offseason. The coach explained, “We’re talking about the whole thing, your mind, your heart, and your soul is to get that into an alignment and to get that to where you know yourself, you can be yourself, you can express yourself, and when it comes time to, you can check yourself.” 

Aranda and his staff believe this is an important factor for their players on and off the field. 

When explaining his thought process behind this mindset, Aranda said, “Our young people today aren’t just a cog in a machine, right, to get wins and take home revenue, but are human beings, fully formed by God.”

This concept,arguably more important than anything done on the field, is one rarely spoken about publicly from college football coaches. 

Of course winning is great and it’s what fans and administrators are looking for, and surely if Aranda and the Bears won the Big 12 once again, they’d be ecstatic. But this coaching staff seems to hold character development in as high of regard as winning games. Some might argue that it is unimportant, but regardless of what their record looks like at the end of the season, Aranda’s players will be uniquely prepared for the game of life. 

Photo credit: Cameron Robertson/FAAZ Sports