Jan. 12, 2008
When the weekends come and he no longer has to dress for work, Brian Brabazon always reaches for the same T-shirts.
They're tattered and frayed, worn out to the point where the green and gold are faded to near gray. He knows he should have tossed the Ts into the rag pile long ago, but he can't bring himself to do it.
And so when Friday turns into Saturday and Brabazon clocks out as a natural gas controller on the gas pipeline, a lone Baylor basketball fan in Carson City, Nev., dons the school colors.
Brabazon is the most unlikely of Baylor cheerleaders.
Those T-shirts? They belonged to Brabazon's stepson, Patrick Dennehy.
In 2003, Dennehy's murder at the hands of teammate Carlton Dotson was the flint in a firestorm that ended in the revelation of a cover-up, the firing of a coach and athletic director, NCAA probation as well as some of the harshest penalties in the history of the organization, and the demise of the Baylor basketball program.
From the ashes, Baylor is coming back. The Bears are 12-2 as they head into their Big 12 opener Saturday against Iowa State (ESPN Classic, 6 p.m. ET), a legitimate postseason threat awarded a 12-seed in Joe Lunardi's latest Bracketology.
In November, Baylor won the Paradise Jam, its first in-season tourney title since 1971, and in December beat South Carolina for its first nonconference road win in 25 games. For a Nov. 30 date with Washington State, 10,193 packed the Ferrell Center -- the fourth-largest crowd in the gym's history and the largest since 2003, when everything began to unravel.
But perhaps the most telling evidence that Baylor basketball is reborn is the graciousness of a man who hasn't stepped inside a college basketball arena in nearly five years for fear of acting like a "blubbering fool," but who again is rooting for the Bears.
"I don't know if happy is the word, but I'm satisfied," said Brazabon, who entered Dennehy's life when Dennehy was 8 months old. "I'm glad that Scott Drew was named coach. He stepped into a hornet's nest and he withstood all the troubles the program was having. If someone were to invite me to a Baylor game, I'd go in a minute. Not that I'm anyone important, but I would like to shake his hand and say, 'Thank you, congratulations and good luck.'"
"Are you crazy?"
Good luck wasn't the sentiment on most people's minds when Scott Drew left Valparaiso for Baylor, when Ian McCaw took over as athletic director, when guard Aaron Bruce left Australia for Waco, when LaceDarius Dunn took his top-25 prepster skills to the Bears.
Most people wrinkled their eyebrows and asked them, "Are you crazy?"
"Yes," McCaw laughed. "I heard that more than once."
To read the complete ESPN.com article: click here
