Hue Jackson wanted to hire Art Briles, and so he did. It is a simple answer for a complicated situation.
Jackson was allowed to hire Briles as his offensive coordinator at Grambling State—though make no mistake, there are multiple people who had to O.K. this on both the athletics side and the university side. Briles and Jackson’s working relationship goes back to at least 2016, when Jackson—then the head coach for the Cleveland Browns—brought Briles in during training camp and the regular season as a guest coach just months after Briles was fired by Baylor following an investigation into his and the school’s handling of a number of sexual assault allegations.