After two straight losses, Baylor fired football coach Dave Aranda on Sunday.
The move comes a day after the Bears lost to Kansas, giving the Jayhawks their first Big 12 win of the season and ending a 14-game losing streak against Baylor that dated back to 2007.
Defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman, in his first season after arriving from Kansas State, will serve as the Bears' interim coach.
Aranda was 40-40 in seven years in Waco. He arrived after serving as LSU's defensive coordinator on its 2019 national championship team. After posting a 2-7 record in his debut season in 2020, Aranda led the Bears to a 12-2 record, a Big 12 championship and a win in the Sugar Bowl in 2021. It would prove to be the high-water mark for his tenure. The Bears would have only one more winning season under him.
"Anyone who knows Dave Aranda understands what a genuine and honorable person he is and how much he deeply cares for his players, staff and this University," Baylor athletic director Doug McNamee said in a statement. "He is a gifted coach and a brilliant football mind whose leadership brought some of our best Baylor football memories. While this is a difficult moment, we believe a change in leadership is necessary at this time for our program. We will forever be thankful to Dave and his family for their time here at Baylor, and we wish them well."
Aranda was popular with the Baylor administration but was admittedly slow to adapt to the NIL era. At Big 12 media days in 2024, when asked how the Bears had picked up momentum on the recruiting trail, he responded candidly, "We're paying players."
He made changes at both coordinator positions during his tenure, firing two offensive and two defensive coordinators.
The Bears went 8-5 in 2024, Aranda's second winning season, but fell to 5-7 last year. Despite being on the hot seat, he earned a respite when athletic director Mack Rhoades resigned Nov. 20 for personal reasons. Baylor president Linda Livingstone announced the next day that Aranda would return, citing "financial stewardship" around the "extreme volatility in college athletics."
"Dave is a learner and he's a listener, and he's always been open from my perspective to doing things differently," Livingstone told ESPN last year. "I'm not the football guru here, so I'm not going to be the one to predict or say what they should or shouldn't be doing, but I have great confidence that a new athletic director working with Dave will do everything they can to put in place all the right things to help them to be successful next year."
Baylor opened the season with a 17-16 loss to Auburn in Atlanta, coming up just short on a game-winning two-point conversion in the final seconds. The Bears reeled off four straight victories, including Big 12 wins over Colorado and at Arizona State, but then fell 17-6 to a struggling TCU team at home. After Saturday's loss to Kansas, McNamee opted to move on from Aranda.
The Bears are 4-3 (2-2) this season but still have the toughest part of the Big 12 slate remaining, with games at BYU, home vs. Texas Tech and at Houston in the final three weeks of the season.