star_telegram
Baylor's football team is just a dozen inches away from an undefeated record and its first AP Poll ranking since September 2022, but another kind of dozen is causing greater unease at the university—and indirectly for head coach Dave Aranda. This week, the campus student newspaper revealed that undergraduate enrollment stands at 13,860, the lowest mark in 12 years and the fourth consecutive annual decline.
While graduate student numbers have risen and partially offset the drop, peer institutions like TCU and Texas Tech continue to see enrollment growth, making Baylor's undergraduate trend an undeniable concern for university leadership. It is hardly coincidental that Baylor's record enrollment of 15,213 in 2022 followed a football season in which the Bears went 12-2, captured the Big 12 title and the Sugar Bowl, and finished No. 5 nationally.
Now, with a 4-1 record, Baylor is off to its best start since that 2021 campaign, but the true state of the program—and by extension, the security around Aranda—will come into sharper focus when the Bears host rival TCU at 6 p.m. Saturday in Waco. Two factors will heavily influence whether Baylor's decision to retain Aranda this season was correct: applications and enrollment, and what fans see on television.
Key Analysis
McLane Stadium, the centerpiece of a dramatic redesign that has lifted the city of Waco and boosted morale for the university, students, and residents, once provided a vibrant game-day atmosphere after opening in 2014. In recent years, however, the experience has grown flat, with quality seats still available at kickoff. It is not quite the level of the Floyd Casey Stadium era—the off-campus venue that felt like watching a game in an abandoned dump—but with just one winning record in the last four years, Baylor fans have found other things to do. Attendance for home games has fallen 11 percent over that span, and the team is averaging 40,015 through three home dates this season. The stadium's capacity is 45,000, though Baylor, like most schools, adjusts its attendance figures.
Baylor is not alone in struggling to draw real crowds; college football attendance outside marquee matchups like Texas vs. Ohio State or Alabama vs. Georgia is a constant battle against the couch or the iPhone. But this trend, combined with the enrollment drop, is something Aranda and his team must fix now—or else. A year ago, Aranda was widely assumed to be on the hot seat, so much so that he no longer even appears on coaching hot seat lists; people simply assume he is already gone or that Baylor's program no longer registers. Aranda remains because of his contract, the odd timing of Baylor's previous athletic director's exit, and because the school president leaned on the new AD to give him a chance before making a decision. He could now become a rare case in which giving a losing coach more time proves wiser than appeasing the Frankenstein-scale masses at the gate who demanded his firing four weeks ago.
The evaluation of Baylor's decision to keep Aranda reaches a new level of scrutiny starting with Saturday's home game against TCU. If the Bears cannot beat the Horned Frogs at home in front of a sold-out crowd, the strong start will look fraudulent. TCU has won nine of the last 11 meetings, and Aranda is 1-5 in the series. Since 2020, there have been two, maybe three, instances when Baylor should have won but let it slip away. In 2021, the week after TCU coach Gary Patterson resigned, the Horned Frogs upset the Bears by two points in Fort Worth, ending Baylor's playoff hopes. In 2022, Baylor led undefeated No. 4 TCU by eight in Waco with 2:08 remaining but lost on a last-second field goal—a game TCU fans remember as the Hypnotoad in a Hurry.
Now is not the time for Aranda and Baylor to lose to TCU. The Horned Frogs' offense is one of the worst in FBS, the team is 2-3, and support for head coach Sonny Dykes is akin to endorsing a tax increase. If Aranda and his team want people to believe their start to the 2026 season is legitimate, they must beat TCU. Baylor was unintentionally patient with Aranda, and that patience could be rewarded with the kind of season the program needs—for the sake of attendance and its own enrollment.
Originally reported by star_telegram.