Rece Davis admits Dave Aranda's Wolf of Wall Street quote made him rethink Baylor in 2025

The Big 12 is open for the taking this year, with no clear favorite to win it all. Baylor is one of the teams expected to be in the hunt for the conference crown, though the team received negative publicity in July when head coach Dave Aranda used the word outdated term, “midget” repeatedly while describing a scene from The Wolf of Wall Street.

Aranda’s comments not only left fans confused but also questioning his leadership. On Wednesday’s episode of the College GameDay Podcast, ESPN’s Rece Davis admitted he had second thoughts about Baylor’s Big 12 hopes after hearing Aranda’s unusual comments.

“I was higher on Baylor, but now I’m wondering,” Davis said. “The whole Dave Aranda-Wolf of Wall Street quote about the difficulty of building authentic relationships made me take a little half-step back… Now I wasn’t offended. I was just like, huh? But Dave’s a super smart guy. Sometimes, you work on the metaphors and you leave people scratching their head a little bit confused.

“… If you don’t know the random quote from The Wolf of Wall Street when answering a question about building authentic relationships within your team and recruiting, look it up. It’s like, ‘Is he going to dig his way out of this hole?’ The great Lou Holtz, my good friend Lou Holtz, always used to say, ‘When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.’ So they didn’t stop digging in that case.”

Aranda made the head-turning comments after giving a presentation at the Texas High School Coaches Association (THSCA) convention. Specifically, Aranda was attempting to make an analogy between the movie scene and the difficulties of recruiting in the current college football landscape.

“There’s a scene in The Wolf of Wall Street, where they talk about throwing midgets,” Aranda said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, this midget, can he roll there?’ And you go, ‘No, he doesn’t roll. You throw him. You know what I mean? And they’re made for throwing.’ And then after a while, they start talking, and they go, ‘Well, you know what? I think, if you start talking, they may think they know we’re making fun of them. The midgets may think we’re making fun of them.’

“‘They may get mad at us.’ And then the guys go, ‘Well, what we need to do is make them think they’re one of us.’ And they go, ‘One of us. One of us.’ And I think that’s the thing with coaching, call it recruiting… They talk about requiring players, getting rid of players, just like that. And the whole thing underneath all that is they make them think they’re one of us, you know what I mean? But, I don’t know. Do you have to do that to win? You know, that sucks.”

After receiving backlash for using the insensitive term, Aranda apologized while meeting with the press. On Aug. 29, Baylor will kick off its 2025 campaign with a showdown against Auburn at 8 p.m. ET. The game will air live on FOX.