Photo Credit: Rod Aydelotte/ AP Images

Today was senior day for the Baylor women’s basketball team, and rather than spending her time at the mic focused solely on her soon-departing players, head coach Kim Mulkey took a different route.


The storied coach decided to share a few choice words for parents voicing concern over sending their daughters to a place currently being sued for allowing and enabling football players to commit an alleged 52 sexual assaults in four years. Or rather, she shared some instructions for the fans—who cheered her both during and after her speech—telling them that if a parent tells them they won’t let their daughter attend Baylor, they should “knock them right in the face.”

“If somebody’s around you and they ever say, ‘I will never send my daughter to Baylor,’ you knock them right in the face.” [Pause for applause.] “Because these kids are on this campus. I work here. My daughter went to school here. And it’s the best damn school in America.”


Mulkey explained her comments in the postgame press conference, saying she was tired of hearing the scandal discussed on a national stage by people not involved in the investigation who “don’t know what they’re talking about.” She said the scandal is over and she would send her daughter to the private Christian university, claiming the “problems we have at Baylor are no different than the problems at any other school in America.”

While the sexual assault football scandal has plagued the Baylor football program, leading to a recruit exodus and 7-6 season filled with distractions fueled by their staff, coaches, current and former players, and fans, Baylor’s basketball programs have thrived over the past calendar year. The men’s team is currently ranked No. 9 (though they’ll drop after today’s loss to unranked Iowa State) and the women’s team sits at No. 4 in the polls.