You knock them right in the face.

That’s what Baylor women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey said last Saturday during the Bears’ Senior Day celebration.

Baylor has endured the after-effects of a scandal after football players allegedly committed 52 sexual assaults over the course of four years.

The story has been in the press for a long time and you’d think that people who work at the university would choose their words carefully.

That wasn’t the case for Mulkey, who decided to show her passion for her school in one of the worst ways possible.

Her exact phrase was “If somebody around you and they ever say I will never send my daughter to Baylor, you knock them right in the face.”

Think about that. The head coach of a women’s basketball team whose college is under national scrutiny for a massive sexual assault scandal scoffed at the idea of a parent not sending their daughter to Baylor.

What if that was your daughter? Or your sister? Or your girlfriend?

How would you feel if a coach, and not only that, a female coach, dismissed your concerns? I’m guessing most people would be pretty disgusted.

Mulkey tried to explain her comments in a subsequent press conference by saying she was tired of hearing people discussing the scandal who weren’t involved in the investigation and that the problems at Baylor weren’t any different than the ones at other schools.

So after saying something remarkably tone deaf, she then tried to say other people’s opinions about the school’s issues don’t matter.

It’s like she was determined to keep digging a deeper hole for herself. She did apologize for her “choice of words” Thursday and said her “heart goes on to the victims.”

It was good that she said that, but the words she chose will continue to linger in people’s minds.

Mulkey’s comments were awful enough, although not surprising since she’s been accused of trying to get a former player to hide her sexual orientation at the school.

However, the most disturbing of all was that fans in the stands cheered. They probably weren’t meaning to imply that sexual assault was OK, but it made them sound proud of the fact that someone was basically shrugging off the scandal that has been destroying the reputation of their beloved school.

Mulkey was partly right in her statement that what happened at Baylor is happening at other schools.

Apathy seems to be a common theme at some college campuses when it comes to sexual assault, especially when athletes or prominent coaches are involved.

What makes Baylor unique is that instead of just accepting the fact that it screwed up in epic fashion, it’s still trying to play dumb about it.

It’s not just the Baylor campus that has a massive problem, it is its culture as well. Some fans have defended the football program and the university vehemently; more are annoyed with the fact that the Bears have lost a lot of prized recruits with their win-loss record plummeting last season.

This has happened at other schools as well, Penn State being the most obvious example. That university has tried to accept what previous members of the school had done and is going through the slow process of redeeming themselves.

However, a good chunk of the fan base is more upset with the team’s performance on the field and Joe Paterno’s reputation being tarnished than what has happened behind closed doors.

Watch the documentary “Happy Valley” and you’ll see what I mean. By the end, you’ll want to throw your remote through the TV if you hadn’t already.

Baylor has a big image problem and it’s not going to go away until everybody in power there accepts the fact that many mistakes were made.

As long as you have campus representatives like Mulkey saying ignorant things, parents and recruits are going to question whether they should go to Baylor and some might have already turned their backs on the Bears.

So the next time a parent says that they’d never let their daughter go to Baylor, maybe those who defend the school should instead of punching them in the face, address the concerns they have and try to fix the problem.

Or the Baylor-ites could knock themselves in the face and see if some sense finally sinks in.

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.