KIM MULKEY
As if Baylor University hasn’t been in the news enough lately and for all the wrong reasons.
In 2003 the men’s basketball program was rocked by Carlton Dotson’s murder of teammate Patrick Dennehy. Dotson who entered a guilty plea was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Shortly after Dennehy’s disappearance, both the school and the NCAA launched investigations into multiple allegations such as drug use among players and improper payments to players by members of the coaching staff.
(The university may have been better served to aid the authorities in solving the Dennehy case first and foremost; hopefully that was accomplished before the investigations into the alleged unethical behavior began).
Baylor’s self-imposed punishments were augmented by the NCAA and included extended probation for the university through 2010; the elimination of one full year of non-conference play; and the most severe action that can be levied against an American collegiate coach, a 10-year show-cause penalty against resigned and forever besmirched and besmeared head coach Dave Bliss.
SIDEBAR:
[The NCAA show-cause penalty was written and enacted to prevent a coach from escaping violations that were either allowed or committed under his/her watch by simply resigning and then accepting a job at a different, i.e. “clean” school. If the other NCAA-member institution wished to avoid the sanctions imposed on their newly-hired coach they were mandated to send representatives to appear before the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions and “show cause” — prove the existence of good reason — as to why they should not be forced to assume and accept the previously imposed penalties or sanctions].
Needless to say the Bears men’s program was brought to its knees and did not record another winning season until 2008. Short of the death penalty (which in the vernacular is the NCAA’s power to ban a school from competition in a sport for at least one year and has been implemented only 5 times) Baylor men’s basketball endured the harshest set of penalties ever imposed on a Division 1 program.
Then of course the world’s largest Baptist university was forced to come to grips with its football program’s sexual assault scandal between the years of 2012 and 2016, a debacle of epic proportion (a reported 52 rapes over the four-year period) with widespread and costly ripple-effect ramifications.
In a nutshell, Baylor’s football team came under fire in 2016 when it was revealed that university officials looked the other way, failing to take action regarding alleged rapes and other assaults committed by several players.
Fallout and disgrace swallowed whole most notably, deposed Head Football Coach Art Briles; University President Ken Starr who was demoted and eventually resigned; Athletic Director Ian McCaw who resigned; and two other football program members who were terminated. Title IX Coordinator Patty Crawford chose to tender her resignation.
Briles to this day remains confused and befuddled it appears. Covertly? Only he knows. Never a mea culpa nor an apology of any sort from him. He sued. He withdrew his suit. He sued again on other grounds.
He and his people are clueless.
The Associated Press reported on March 3, 2017 that [after] “breaking months of public silence, the former Baylor coach Art Briles said Thursday [03/02/2017] that he had not covered up sexual violence by his players or tried to obstruct any investigations tied to the assault scandal…Briles released a letter defending himself against allegations that he ignored incidents of assault and [sic] run a program whose members considered themselves above the rules. The letter came a day after the Texas Rangers, the state’s elite criminal investigation unit, said it had opened a preliminary probe into how Baylor handled assault reports over several years.”
He will never coach again and if and when he does, few will know and fewer will care.
At least Dave Bliss was able only by the grace of God, to somehow resurrect his coaching career. (He has been the Head Coach at Southwestern Christian University since 2015 after beginning to pick up the pieces with the Dakota Wizards of the NBDL in 2005–6 and then with Allen Academy, a Bryan, Texas prep school from 2010–2015).
The same cannot be said with any certitude of Art Briles.
And more importantly, what about the victims?
The other day Kim Mulkey messed up big-time. Hugely. Egregiously.
She victimized herself by her poor choice of words. It probably wasn’t the first time for her but never on such a big stage with the tentacles of social media applying the choke-hold, an unforgiving albatross around her neck.
She got swept up in the moment — not a seemingly interminable series of moments — and bit off just a little more than she could chew.
The country girl volunteered that “if somebody is around you and they say, ‘I will never send my daughter to Baylor,’ you knock them right in the face…my daughter went to school here…and it’s the damn best school in America.”
Prideful remarks? Sure.
Out of touch? A little, given the well-documented Baylor travails.
In an attempt to clarify her remarks immediately afterward, she offered nothing more than a weak ‘woe is me; woe are we,’ when she explained repeatedly that she was “just tired of hearing it…I work here every day…I’m in the know…I’m tired of hearing it…This is a great institution. The problems we have at Baylor are no different than the problems of any other school in America. Period. Move on…”
But a few days later haggard and remorseful she apologized, something that Art Briles has apparently deemed unnecessary.
“Not only do I sympathize with victims, I am angry about the way victims were treated at this university. It is horrible, horrible anytime someone does not take care of a victim. Even one sexual assault is too many. Nobody is dismissing what happened here. I want us to get to the bottom of it…But I don’t think that everybody at Baylor should be put under an umbrella as all being a part of the things that happened. I can’t fathom anybody not helping someone who is a victim of that type of crime. I don’t condone it.
My words…did not express exactly what I was trying to say…My heart goes out to the victims. How could it not? I’m a woman. I have a daughter. I’m responsible for how many in that locker room? In fact, I’m angry that we failed those women…One crime against anyone is too many.”
Kim Mulkey has been criticized for closing her heart-felt remarks with the dubious claim that — in spite of failing the victims — “[she is] encouraged every day because [she sees] what’s taking place to fix it.”
And just what is that exactly?
She is defending the indefensible; Baylor’s responses have been reactive and virtually non-existent with respect to the victims.
But at least she has made the effort to apologize for her behavior and genuinely.
Dave? Art? Ken? Ian? Patty? Anyone else?
Baylor?
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in March 2017.]
ADDENDA: Under head coach Scott Drew the Baylor men’s basketball team finished 26–4 overall and 15–3 in the Big 12 in 2019-’20 when the season was cancelled in early March;
Dave Bliss resigned from his last job as head coach of Calvary Chapel Christian School, a private high school in Las Vegas, in 2018;
Under Matt Rhule, the Baylor football team posted an 8–1 Big 12 mark and were 11–3 overall in 2019. Rhule was the Big 12 Coach of the Year and signed a contract on January 7, 2020 becoming the fifth head coach of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers;
Art Briles has been the head coach at Mount Vernon High School in Mount Vernon, TX. since 2019 after coaching in Italy for a season;
With Kim Mulkey at the helm for her 20th. season as the Baylor women’s head basketball coach, the Lady Bears were 28–2 overall and 17–1 in the 2019-’20 COVID-19-shortened season. In 2005 she became the first woman to have won NCAA Division I basketball titles as a player and a head coach, and only the fourth person to do so following Joe B. Hall, Bob Knight and Dean Smith. A 2000 Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinee, she will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame with the Class of 2020 joining Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Eddie Sutton, Rudy Tomjanovich, Tamika Catchings, Barbara Stevens and Patrick Baumann.
