Most of the people who watched Brittney Griner dominate the basketball court for four years at Baylor did not care what she did with her personal time. The fact that Griner is gay never really seemed to be an issue. However, Griner revealed in her new book that things weren’t always as civil as they seemed between her, Baylor coach Kim Mulkey and the university.
Before she committed to Baylor, Griner said Mulkey told her she cared about nothing besides her basketball ability.
“Big Girl, I don’t care what you are,” Griner recalls Mulkey telling her, via The Slate. “You can be black, white, blue, purple, whatever. As long as you come here and do what you need to do and hoop, I don’t care.”
Apparently that did not turn out to be the case. Griner wrote in her book that she was once out with her girlfriend on Valentines Day when someone spotted her and informed Mulkey. Griner said Mulkey later told her that she needs to be more careful about keeping her relationships private and watching what she puts on Twitter.
“The more I think about it, the more I feel like the people who run the school want it both ways: they want to keep the policy, so they can keep selling themselves as a Christian university, but they are more than happy to benefit from the success of their gay athletes,” Griner wrote. “That is, as long as those gay athletes don’t talk about being gay.”
Griner said there is “no right or wrong side” when it comes to Mulkey’s opinions and that she still loves her, describing their relationship as having “complicated feelings” at times. She also said she would attend Baylor again if she had to do it all over, but that it is hard to be a spokesperson for the school.
“I would love to be an ambassador for Baylor, to show my school pride, but it’s hard to do that,” Griner said. “I’ve spent too much of my life being made to feel like there’s something wrong with me. And no matter how much support I felt as a basketball player at Baylor, it still doesn’t erase all the pain I felt there.”
Unfortunately, this is an issue in many schools across the country. Baylor is a Christian university, and that can mean having to tread the line between biblical truths and equal rights. From the sound of it, Mulkey and school administration didn’t always make the right choices when it came to supporting Griner.
H/T Deadspin
