By Dylan Fink | Sports Writer
If Baylor wins a Big 12 championship this season, Dave Aranda’s legacy will be cemented as the best head football coach to come through Waco.
When talking great coaches to lead the Bears, names such as Frank Bridges, Grant Teaff, Art Briles and even Matt Rhule break into the conversation — and Aranda has the potential to pass them all.
Aranda’s tenure became stained for Baylor fans following the disappointments of the 2020, 2022 and 2023 seasons. But the highs of 2021 — a 12-2 record, Big 12 championship and Sugar Bowl victory — are enough to hold Aranda’s place in the conversation of Baylor’s greatest head coach.
For many fans, Teaff is praised as the greatest Baylor football coach. Teaff’s significance relies on leading the Bears to two Southwest Conference championships in 1974 and 1980.
Teaff’s 1974 squad saw the famed “Miracle on the Brazos“ as the Bears won their first conference championship in 50 years. The green and gold won 10 games for the first time in 1980, a season remembered for future NFL Hall-of-Famer Mike Singletary, who claimed to have broken his helmet in every game he played in that season, encapsulating the aggression of Teaff’s defensive-minded team.
The stain on both of Teaff’s championship seasons is that, unlike 2021, the Bears could not win their bowl game, losing the 1974 Cotton Bowl to Penn State, 41-20, and again in 1980 to Alabama, 30-2.
The Briles years follow a similar suit. His tenure for the Bears saw the school’s only Heisman winner, Robert Griffin III in 2011, and two Big 12 championships in 2013 and 2014.
Both conference championship seasons for Briles, remembered for their emphatic air-it-out offense, ended on sour notes with emotional losses in New Year’s Day bowl games. The 2013 season ended with a 52-42 defeat to UCF in the Fiesta Bowl. The 2014 season finished with a heartbreaker at the Cotton Bowl, as the Bears gave up a 20-point lead in the fourth quarter to lose to Michigan State, 42-41.
Following the scandal that ended the ties between Baylor and Briles, the Bears plummeted from their early 2010s success to see three straight losing seasons from 2016-2018. In 2019, Rhule turned the team completely around.
Rhule’s short time leading the Bears is harder to see as a possible “greatest coach” candidate, but the 2019 season alone earns him a place in the conversation.
An 11-3 season saw the Bears return to the AP top 10. Despite two losses to the Jalen Hurts-led Oklahoma Sooners and another to Georgia in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, 26-14, Rhule managed to bring hope back to the program in 2019.
While each of these coaches has served their role as a great coach in the history of Baylor football, depending on how the 2025 season goes, Aranda could claim the title of Baylor’s GOAT.
Aranda’s stretch with the Bears has been marked by parity. Posting only two winning seasons across five years, fans have kept Aranda on the hot seat throughout his tenure.
The 2021 season, Aranda’s strongest resume piece, is by far the best season in Baylor history. The first 12-win season for the Bears was accompanied by that elusive New Year’s Day bowl win, which slipped through the fingers of Teaff, Briles and Rhule.
With Sawyer Robertson catching Heisman buzz and the Bears finding themselves near the top of conference championship odds, another Big 12 championship could be in the cards for Aranda.
If the Bears can win the conference and thereby cap off the season with a College Football Playoff appearance, then Aranda will be solidified as the best coach to ever lead the green and gold.
The Bears will begin their Big 12 push at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at McLane Stadium against reigning Big 12 champion Arizona State. The game will be broadcast on Fox.
