Baylor’s Dave Aranda will return for a sixth season as the Bears head coach, a school spokesman confirmed to The Athletic on Saturday.
Aranda entered the 2024 season on the hot seat after going 9-16 combined in the 2022 and 2023 seasons and posting only one winning season in his first four at the school. His job security seemed to be on even shakier ground at midseason, when Baylor sat at 2-4 on the heels of a three-game losing streak.
But the Bears have won four in a row over the last month, including a 49-35 win at West Virginia on Saturday. Baylor has averaged 45.7 points per game during their winning streak and has won three of those games by double digits.
Last November, at the end of a 3-9 season, Aranda campaigned to keep his job to athletic director Mack Rhoades by pledging to make wholesale changes to the program. That included investing heavier into name, image and likeness, tapping the transfer portal more often to upgrade the roster and making multiple staff changes, including bringing in an offensive coordinator (Jake Spavital) who had head coaching experience. Aranda also made the decision to call the defense for the first time since he was LSU’s defensive coordinator in 2019.
After recovering from their rocky first half, the Bears have played at a level not seen in Waco in nearly two years. Baylor is bowl eligible for the third time in the last four seasons, and Aranda’s record at the school is back up to .500, at 29-29.
Why Baylor is bringing Aranda back
Despite his struggles, Rhoades felt confident Aranda could execute his grand plans to change the program, and Baylor’s administration believes Aranda’s personality and character fit the university.
Rhoades could have easily pulled the plug at midseason. After late miscues at Colorado, a terrible start in a loss to BYU and an awful second half at Iowa State, the outlook for Aranda and Baylor was bleak. But the Bears continued to play hard. The upgrades to the roster began to pay off. Some of the younger, talented players that Baylor wanted to hang on to last offseason started to mature. And the quarterback change from Dequan Finn to Sawyer Robertson reversed the team’s fortunes on offense.
Robertson, a Mississippi State transfer who played in an Air Raid-style offense at Lubbock (Texas) Coronado High, is an ideal fit for Spavital’s offense. Together, they’ve turned Baylor into one of the most explosive attacks in the country. In the last four weeks, Baylor’s scoring average is No. 1 in the FBS. Robertson has the third-best passer rating in the Big 12 and the best touchdown-to-interception ratio (20 to 4).
Solidifying the Aranda decision now also signals stability to potential transfers and recruits. Baylor has the second-ranked recruiting class in the Big 12 and the No. 32 class in the country, according to 247Sports. If Baylor finishes that high, it would be the Bears’ highest-ranked signing class since 2018. The early signing period begins on Dec. 4, and the transfer portal winter window opens for all undergraduates on Dec. 9.
It also would be expensive to part ways with Aranda now. At the time Rhoades made the decision to bring him back last winter, Baylor would’ve owed Aranda a buyout north of $20 million from a contract extension he signed after the 2021 season. Aranda is under contract with Baylor through the 2029 season.
(Photo: David Purdy / Getty Images)
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