Dave Aranda committed to evolving as a person and a leader after a two-win 2020 campaign as the first-year head coach of the Baylor Bears. The program went 11-3 the year before under the direction of Matt Rhule. The only losses that season were by three points to Oklahoma in the regular season, by seven in overtime to those same Sooners in the Big 12 Championship game, and to the Georgia Bulldogs in the Sugar Bowl. 

“A lot of my success is owed to Matt Rhule and the groundwork he laid, so I tried to be too much like him,” Aranda admitted. “I took the slogans he had. I’d try to do the things I’d think he’d do or say the things I’d think he’d say. I wasn’t comfortable being myself yet.”

Aranda, a long-time defensive coordinator who avoided the spotlight as an assistant coach, learned some valuable lessons from his failure in Year 1. Football was the most important thing in Aranda’s life from an early age. He started coaching as a teenager when injuries ended his career. He jokes that most of his collegiate time at Cal Lutheran was spent driving to different programs to soak up knowledge and talk in his favorite language: Football. 

That made Aranda a tremendous assistant, but it might have hurt his initial prospects as a head coach. Aranda admittedly lacked an identity as a head coach in 2020. He went about fixing that heading into the 2021 season. 

“I didn’t dig deep enough to know what my values were and what I believed in as a person and a leader,” Aranda said. “I honestly didn’t know how weird I was. Some of it was because I never had to talk to people as a defensive coordinator.”

Aranda began doing things his way. The man nicknamed “Fence Post” as a kid because he just stood there began to embrace his background in philosophy. He leaned into the sports psychology side of football. He ditched preconceived notions that a head coach had to be a tyrant or an energetic motivator and went about building a program in his image. 

The results were instant. Baylor won 12 games for the first time in program history, claiming a Big 12 title and a win in the Sugar Bowl over Ole Miss along the way. His level of sideline stoicism would make Marcus Aurelius blush. Aranda credits success in close games during the 2022 season to that even-keeled nature. 

“In those close games I’d look over to an opponent’s sideline and I could see their emotions moving up and down,” Aranda said. “Our sideline was steady. We can be like that in those crucial moments because we work that way the rest of the year. We try not to get emotional and reactive about adversity.” 

Aranda admits that his coolness under pressure is a double-edged sword. He recalled a conversation with former NFL head coach Tony Dungy days after accepting the job to become Baylor’s head coach. 

“He goes, ‘Dave, I hope you win right away because if you don’t, people are going to think you don’t care because of your personality,’” Aranda said. “And he was completely right. All that stuff is good if you win. If you lose, they’re going to think you don’t care.” 

That’s an issue Aranda won’t need to worry about if his program keeps winning. The defending Big 12 champions start the season with home games against Albany and Texas State sandwiched around a trip to future Big 12 Conference foe BYU in Week 2. The road to a repeat starts with a trip to Iowa State followed by a home game against Oklahoma State, the team the Bears bested in the Big 12 championship after losing to the Cowboys during the regular season. Baylor center Jacob Gall credited the 2021 win over Iowa State in Week 4 as the catalyst for last season’s success.

“Beating them in a last-second situation was a huge confidence booster because we overcame some adversity and won a tight game against a program that’s always in the Big 12 hunt,” Gall said. “Now, we know what we can achieve, and we know we can do better than that.”

The Ceiling 
Baylor rides strong offensive and defensive lines to a second consecutive Big 12 title in Year 3 under Dave Aranda. 

The Floor 
The losses of major contributors prove too much for the Bears as they finish in the middle of the Big 12 pack.