April 3, 2013 • 39 mins
It's not that there are no women coaching female basketball (consider the legendary Pat Summit and others), but Title IX has more male coaches. Join Caroline and Cristen as they explore homophobia, sexism and the glass wall that coaches often run into.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from how stuppards
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristin
and I'm Caroline, and we are coming at you in
the midst of March madness, even though it's April. Yeah,
basketball madness. Yeah. N C Double A Final four is
(00:26):
about to happen here in the men's tournament at least
is happening in Atlanta, right, it's best to bring something
like seventy million dollars worth of revenue to the city,
and thank you, and two hundred million people whomart is
going to be a little cramped, Yeah, and the streets. Ah,
And for this podcast, we're gonna gripe about traffic in Atlanta,
(00:48):
just kidding. We're gonna talk about basketball, but we're not
talking about the players. We're talking about the coaches because
in honor of the n C Double A basque a
ball tournament, we thought it would be worthwhile looking at
women's basketball coaches, which might sound like a narrow topic,
but there is a lot in here to discuss. Yeah,
(01:12):
I mean, there just aren't as many as perhaps there
should be. And something we'll get into is that. Okay,
so you've got the men's men's basketball, it's all coached
by men. Yeah. And you've got the women's basketball and
it's coached by some women, but a lot of men too,
but a lot of men. Yeah. We're gonna get into
how Title nine actually corresponded with fewer women coaching female
(01:37):
basketball teams and other factors at play. Huh pun in
all of this, But first, let's talk about the winning
ist basketball coach in the n C double A Pat Summit. Yeah.
Pat Summit was actually a basketball player at University of
Tennessee Martin when Title nine was introduced, so she was
(01:59):
kind of in the thick of it. She's now the
head coach emeritus of Tennessee women's basketball team. Thirty eight
years as a head coach, and she stepped down because
she made the very sad announcement that she has Alzheimer's. Yeah,
and she's coming out with a new memoir. I believe
that the title is Summit Up and her story is
(02:20):
pretty incredible. Like you said, Caroline, she was coming up
when Title nine was introduced, and before that, she talks
about how the women's athletic budget at you T Martin
when she got there was about five hundred dollars to
be distributed among volleyball, basketball, and tennis, and after the
passage of Title nine in nineteen two, those budgets increased.
(02:42):
But it wasn't exactly smooth sailing, as we'll talk about
in more detail, but for a little more about Pat's summit.
She ended up playing in the first women's Olympic team
to play basketball, and a little bit more though about Summit. Uh,
some highlights from her career were not only did she
(03:05):
you know, play with you team Martin, but she also
played in the nineteen seventy six Summer Olympic Games in
Montreal because for the first time they had a women's
basketball team and Summits team brought home the silver. And
then then she went on to coach the team in
the nineteen eighty four Olympics in Los Angeles. Yeah, she
(03:26):
has a really interesting perspective as far as you know,
having been a coach all this time, but also coming
up during the whole Title nine passage and everything. In
her new book, she says that three events in nineteen
seventy two changed everything, and that includes that a group
of dedicated women administrators formed the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics
for women, because she says the n C Double A
(03:48):
didn't yet care enough about females to bother with us.
She also says that it was very important the announcement
that women's basketball would be an Olympic sport for the
first time at the at those nineteen seventy six Summerlympics,
and of course the passing of Title nine. Yeah, and
she talks about how those developments made winning available to women.
(04:09):
For instance, with that establishment, Caroline that you mentioned of
the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. The title is
a bit of a mouthful. They organized the first championship
for women's basketball teams, which was a really important stepping
stone to legitimize the sport for women. Also made competition
(04:29):
more socially acceptable with Title nine, and it allowed women
to play a full court basketball game. Well, thank god.
I mean, I'm glad that they reached the point where
they're like, good, it won't bounce your uterus around too
much if you run up and down a full court right,
Because this reminds me of our episode on women running
(04:49):
marathon and even when sum it was going to those
Summer Olympics, in VENTI in Montreal. It was still a
crazy idea for a woman to run that long of
a distance. So this was a kind of mindset that
was going on when Title nine one was introduced. And
Pat Summit is going to come up a few more
times in this podcast because since she is the winningest
(05:13):
coach in n C Double A and the highest paid
female coach in the n C Double A, she's sort
of held, as you know, the pillar of female coaches.
I'd say, not just in basketball, but pretty much in
all collegiate sports because she made such an incredible name
(05:33):
for herself. But first, Caroline, let's speaking of women being
allowed to play full court basketball and bouncing our uteruses around.
Let's let's take a brief historical look at basketball for women. Yeah, well,
before it was for women, it was only for men. Obviously,
(05:55):
as is everything. Uh sorry that that's what I didn't
mean that to sounds better Except for corsets. Yeah, those
have always just been for women. Yeah, high heels though, no,
that's set. Rosemary Skein wrote a very comprehensive book titled
Very Simply Women College Basketball Coaches. I bet you can
(06:16):
guess what that's about. Yeah, But so in one basketball
was designed for male athletes who needed a winter sport
because God forbid they not play sports for a minute.
So the first public game was in March eight nine two,
but it was not that long after the women started playing.
Three months after that first public men's game, in March two,
Senda Barrenson, Smith Colleges, director of Physical Training, introduced the
(06:39):
game to women, and the first women's game was played
March twenty two at Smith. And in case you're wondering
at the score, Kristen uh sophomores five, freshman four. Yeah,
but that game was just between Smith students. The first
intercollegiate women's game happened between Berkeley and Stanford. Ley alumni
(07:01):
out there, you won? Oh no, you lost. Christine really
wanted you to win, but trivia alert. Stanford's Martha Clark
made the very first basket in women's intercollegiate history, and
she did so while wearing a woolen uniform that covered
everything except for the face, neck, and hands. As were
(07:24):
you know, the the uniforms that all the women would
be wearing. I noticed you did not include feet in
that list. Were they footy uniform? They were not. I
think they were allowed to expose their feet and in
order to put them into shoes. Well, you know, we
it's it is scandalous to have women running and playing sports,
even in full body footy uniforms. Uh. The day of
(07:45):
that game, only two men were allowed to watch, and
they were a pe well physical education director and an instructor.
Women guarded the windows of the auditorium with sticks to
keep men from sneaking a peak and scain rights. Even
letting women watch was apparently considered dangerous since basketball was
(08:05):
invented for men. Physicians who believed women were delicate said
women would become hysterical watching other women play basketball. Oh my,
oh my. Although I do sometimes become hysterical watching, but
probably not for the reason that they think this is true.
So it takes a little while, though, for them to
(08:26):
develop rules for women's basketball. In eighteen ninety four, the
first women's rules appeared, but they weren't widely circulated. Then
in June eighteen ninety nine, sent A. Barnson, who was
that director of physical training at Smith College, worked with
other East Coast physical teachers to develop women's rules at
the Conference on Physical Training, and so in October of
(08:50):
nineteen o one, finally a good year. Yesal being Sporting
Goods published her rules as the official rules for women's basketball.
But those rules emphasize maintaining ladylike behavior of course, no
snatching of the ball for instance. But Brenson did favor
physical activity. She said, quote, it's all the more to
(09:12):
develop health and endurance if they desire to become candidates
for equal wages. It's a little bit of feminism tossed
in there as well. Basketball playing basketball can help you
earn equal wages with men. It can close the gender gap. Unfortunately,
send a Barrenson. Those predictions were not not really uh
would not come to fruition. Yeah, well, clearly a duel mosher.
(09:36):
I'm sorry if I'm really sorry if I just butchered
her name. She was a physician background this time in
the Victorian era, and she agreed with Barrenson as far
as like, let women have physical activities. So no, she
she had nothing to do with actual basketball. But it
was during this time that she was of the same
school of thought that women actually needed to have some
(09:56):
physical activity, and she wanted to prove that women were
not in fury or two men, and that the frailties
attributed to sex were really just the effects of binding
garments like those. Course, it's insufficient exercise and mental conditioning.
So get those women onto the court playing sports and
maybe one day will be equal. Yeah, Because I mean,
as much as we think about how exercise is something
(10:20):
that we today consider part of you know, a well
balanced life, where you're supposed to exercise, what five days
a week for sixty minutes at a time, I'm pulling
that out of the air. You're supposed to do it
a lot. But when all of this was going on,
it was socially unacceptable for women to be moving around
(10:40):
like that. This was also the time when things like
bicycles were coming into vogue, and it was a big
deal for women to ride bicycles because yes, it would
be straddling things. How would you do that, You'd have
to wear maybe something like a bloomer invented by Amelia Bloomer,
who was an early feminist. Um. You know, things that
we take for granted were revolutionary the time, like basketball. Um,
(11:04):
but let's talk about a few more of the more
modern pioneers of women's basketball, such as Carol Ekman, who
was considered the mother of collegiate women's basketball. National championships.
She's best known for establishing the first National Invitational women's
intercollegiate basketball tournament in nineteen Yeah. And then we have
(11:28):
Teresa Shank Grantz, who is the former head coach of
the women's basketball program at the University of Illinois, Rutgers University,
and Saint Joseph. She's a member of the Women's Basketball
Hall of Fame and was the Olympic head coach in
n and that year her team captured the bronze medal
in Barcelona. And Billy Moore, for some more trivia, was
(11:48):
the first coach in women's basketball history to lead teams
from two different schools to national championships. In those schools
were California State Fullerton and u C. L A. So
we are moving into the modern era, and like we
said in nineteen two, Title nine happens. So with Title nine,
(12:12):
schools that are receiving this federal funding have to equally
distribute it for men's and women's athletics. But what we
want to look at is how Title nine impacted not
so much the players and the women who like Pat
Summit benefited from Title nine by having more resources to
(12:33):
be able to get out on the court or get
out on the field and play. But how for again,
for people like Pat Summit, once their time was up playing,
whether or not coaching would be more open to them
as a lucrative occupation. Right, Well, it definitely influenced how
people saw women's sports, and not just making it more
(12:55):
socially acceptable, but also making it, Yeah, like you said,
more lucrative because all of a sudden, all the money's
flowing in, and now maybe men who wouldn't have considered
coaching women's teams are like, there's more in it for
me now. So yeah, speaking of men being interested in
coaching women's teams, a curious thing happens when Title nine
(13:16):
has passed. In nineteen seventy two, women coached more than
ninety percent of women's teams, but in such a short
amount of time, by nineteen seventy eight, that number had
dropped to fifty eight point two percent, and as of
two thousand ten, it was down to forty two point
(13:36):
nine percent. So today women coach fewer than half of
women's college teams. Yeah, and since two thousand, n C
Double A programs have added one thousand, seven seventy four
women's head coaching jobs. Men have filled over twelve hundred
of those openings. And you know, only about three percent
(13:57):
of men's teams are coached by women, and that's a
whole well other issues like why aren't women coaching men's
teams either? Yeah, and that percentage the percentage of women
coaching men's teams has not changed at all since Title I.
The only thing that has dropped is the percentage of
women coaching other women. And a lot of these statistics
(14:19):
are coming from early conference of article from ESPN magazine
written by Kate Fagan and Luke Ciphers on which they're
looking into this gender gap in women coaching, specifically women's teams,
because you would assume, oh, well, women's sports teams, you
can have a women's a female coach, But no, because,
(14:41):
like you said, Caroline uh, the increased money coming into
women's sports simply made it a more desirable option for
men's coaches who might not have been as qualified as
potential women's coaches. Well, so they looked into some of
the reasons as for like why there aren't as many
women coaching teams, and a lot of it has to
(15:04):
do with, Okay, there's a small pool of female candidates,
um there's a lack of second chances for female coaches.
A lot of women if they screw up, it's just
kind of it's not the same revolving door type of
situation that men have, like they can just go to
a different team. A lot of the times, if women
are fired or lose their coaching jobs, that's it for them.
A lack of female mentors, women just not applying for
(15:26):
these jobs retaliation for Title nine complaints. But a lot
of it also has to do with sexism and homophobia. Yeah,
there's this habit of women's basketball coaches hiring male assistance, uh,
to be kind of that quote unquote straight presence, because
there's this whole issue um in recruiting, of of negative recruiting,
(15:48):
of saying, you know, we're a family friendly program, but
over there, you know that that female coach at that school,
you know, we're not so sure, Yeah, because the stereotype
is is that a female sports coaches are lesbians. And
so the type of homophobic recruiting that goes on is
referred to as family friendly recruitment, saying things like to
(16:12):
a new recruit like, oh, you know, we were a
very family oriented environment with a wink and a nudge
to the parents saying, don't worry your daughter won't be
coached by a lesbian and possibly corrupted because of this.
And again, ESPN magazine covered this in February two thousand eleven,
and in and among fifty five percent of the college
(16:36):
players that ESPN spoke to, they said that sexual orientation
was quote an underlying topic of conversation with college recruiters percent.
So the homophobia is a pretty rampant thing, and it's
also a deterrent for would be coaches who might be gay,
(16:58):
who are like, you know what, I don't want to
have to live a closeted professional life and also be
you know, slurred for my for my lifestyle. Yeah, that
same ESPN article talked about how these homophobic, uh negative
recruiting policies are not policies, but practices are pretty unique
(17:19):
to the women's game. You don't you don't have a
male recruit coming up from high school, coming up the
ranks and them talking about, you know, issues of family friendliness.
But it's it's a general open secret as far as
like the code words of family friendly. Yeah. For instance,
University of Tennessee and University of Connecticut don't play each
other anymore, allegedly due to Yukon's anti gay recruitment against Uti,
(17:45):
claiming that, oh Pat Summit is a lesbian and so
you don't want to send your kids there. Apparently it
was a huge rivalry and the game used to be
a giant draw until finally Summit and University of Tennessee
were like, you know, we're not even gonna play this game.
So now that's less money coming into a women's game, right,
which you know, women's sports can use as much money
(18:07):
as possible. Um, which we'll get into a little bit later,
but um in two ESPN, But ESPN also talks about
how in two there was this homophobia mongering case of
Pam Parsons, who resigned as coach of South Carolina after
allegations that she had a relationship with one of her
(18:29):
basketball players. And they say that since that incident, that
kind of anti gay recruitment has been almost a common
part of the process, which is unfortunate. Yeah, so common
that Portland's States Sharing Mural is the only out lesbian
in Division one women's basketball. Yeah, and we should say
too that it's not just a thing of the whole
family friendly things, not just a wink and a a nudge
(18:52):
to you know, a homophobic sentiments. But it's also a
thing a winken and nudge saying this is in a
black program either we are you know, everything will be
safe for your child. There's a lot of there's a
dirty underbelly to this that's going on. So yeah, we
mentioned how you know, with all with the influx of
funds after the passage of Title nine, coaching a women's
(19:15):
basketball game became our a team, I'm sorry, became more
attractive to male coaches. And this brings us to what
we call a glass wall phenomenon where men can coach
women while women are shut out of the men's game.
So you know, they can see the jobs through the
glass wall, but they can't get there. And along these
(19:35):
same lines, a really interesting survey by never T. D. Walker,
who is a U mass Amherst professor and former Division
one basketball player. She talked to male coaches about you know,
would you hire a woman? Would you want to work
with a female coach? She found out that breaking that
institutional norm of hiring a woman as a coach really
(19:56):
required an exceptional candidate, like women have a much higher
burden of proof to use a legal term, because they
all cited pat Summit. Yeah. They were all like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
you've got Pat Summit. I mean she's great, I totally
work with her. Was like, of course she would hire
the winning is coach in the n C double A.
But there does seem to be sometimes a disconnect maybe
(20:20):
between what male athletic directors or coaches think is going on.
It's almost like a blind sexism that might be happening
to what female coaches or would be coaches um are feeling. Um.
There was a study that took place in the nineteen
eighties which found that male athletic directors believed that female
(20:41):
coaches left their schools for just individual reasons like going
to spend more time with family or what have you,
whereas the female coaches who left had actually jumped ship
due to structural barriers like the glasswall phenomenon, like the
kind of homophobia that is still happening so often to today. UM.
And it is a problem because it doesn't seem to
(21:04):
be there doesn't seem to be a ton of communication
at least between um these you know, the men and
women in athletics. It's just kind of a thing where
the female basketball players don't see many female coaches, they
don't have many models, and they also know of women
who are coaching in the rare positions where they are
(21:26):
coaching or our assistant, and they really don't like the
jobs all that much and so they choose other paths. Yeah,
that that's definitely a cycle. You see fewer coaches, you
have fewer role models, you might not choose that path,
and then you have no female coaches anymore. And it's
interesting that other Division one sports who which are traditionally
(21:46):
coached by women, are starting to see a decline also
in female coaches, like uh Division one softball female coaches
are down from seventy four point eight percent in two
thousand to six, and Division one field hockey female coaches
dropped from nine in two thousand to two. So maybe
not as significant as basketball as to dip the basketball seeing,
(22:09):
but still some of these coaches that ESPN talked to
were concerned, like, Hey, we don't want to you know,
it's not that we hate men, we just don't want
to lose coaching opportunities. And Nicole Levoy, who's the associate
director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and
Women in Sports has looked into this issue of, you know,
the female coaching role model a lot, and she talks
(22:31):
about how youth sports are overwhelmingly coached by men. The
whole thing is that the dad's coach while the moms
drive and put out orange slices, and so they grow
up to be recruits that don't want a female coach.
There was also a study that we found called Working
with Male Athletes the Experience of US Female Head Coaches
UM and they and they talked to these female coaches
(22:53):
about their experience with mentors and interestingly found that one
of the common themes was actually having a negative experience
with youth sports with a female coach. UM and they
also cided though an n C double a survey from
two thousand nine which found that a only ten percent
of female student athletes even cared to pursue coaching, and
(23:16):
that of that the rest of those who did not
want to pursue it cided knowing a female coach, he
was not happy in her role. So something is clearly
going on here. Yeah. Well, Matthew Malady in September asked,
why don't we care that there aren't any female coaches
coaching men for instance, like why don't why isn't it
(23:38):
more of a big deal that we have so few
women out there? And he he wrote that there are
zero female head or assistant coaches for the hundred and
twenty two teams playing in the NBA, MLB, NHL, and NFL.
It's basically considered impossible. He says that only three women
have ever been assistant coaches for men's college basketball teams.
That's Bernadette Matics, Jennifer Johnston, and Stephanie Ready. And he
(24:02):
said that this whole choosing a coach from such a
narrow pool thing is a totally flawed system, the narrow
pool being only men and only certain men. Yeah, it
was illuminating to read the coverage of Nancy Lieberman, who
was a superstar point guard for Old Dominion, who played
professionally for both men's and women's teams before coaching the
(24:25):
w n B a is Detroit Shock, and then became
head coach of the Texas Legends, which was a men's
team in the NBA's Development League. And it was this
huge deal because finally we have a female coach of
a professional team, even though it was a development league.
But nevertheless, all of these major media outlets are covering
Nancy Lieberman and the only thing they want to talk
(24:47):
about is the fact that, oh, you're a woman coaching
a man's team and talking to these athletes like, how
is it being, you know, being coached by a woman?
How can you handle that? And most of the time
the response of we're just along the lines of she's coach.
What I mean, she calls the place and we run them.
What else do you want to know? Yeah, And there
(25:08):
was one interview, you know what, I'm not even sure
if it was about Nancy Lieberman or just another female coach,
maybe even on the high school side, but one of
the players said, yeah, she's tiny, but when she's mad,
she's seven ft tall. Yeah, you know, like it's it's
not an issue of she has a vagina, I'm not
going to listen to her. It's she's the coach, she's
the authority figure, she's telling us what to do. We're
(25:30):
the players. We listened to her. And I can't imagine
that in locker room situations there might be different dynamics
of a woman sitting there and talking to a group
of guys versus a guy saying there talking to a
group of women. But I wonder why that is why
we're more comfortable with men leading a group of women
on the field than we are with a woman leading
(25:52):
a group of men on the field or the court.
I should say, is we're speaking about basketball specifically. Maybe
it's just what we're used to saying. Yeah, I mean,
what we are accustomed to seeing on the television. Yeah,
I mean. It almost makes you wish that Pat Summit had,
you know, coach the U team men's team instead of
the women's team. But then again, we don't want to
(26:12):
take away good coaches from women's athletics. And I think
that is one of the main reasons why she was
so dedicated to that women's team, because she came up
through the ranks and new firsthand what it was like
to be marginalized as a female athlete. Um and speaking
of marginalization, because this is kind of a downer topic,
(26:36):
let's talk about wages. Oh yeah, salary, let's get into
that now. The two thousand eleven coaches compensation, four schools
and four the previous five n C Double A women's
basketball tournaments were pretty handsome. You know, Pat Summit makes
a lot of money. Uh, that year according to stats
published by You to Say today, she brought in one
(26:57):
point nine million dollars. I want to become a women's
basketball coach. If you like to throw the ball at
the net. You got it, Oh ladies, hooray. But just
for contrast, Pat Summit again winning his coach. But just
for contrast, again, Pat Summit winning his coach in the
n C Double a one point nine million dollars. Her
(27:20):
men's coach counterpart in the University of Tennessee brought in
one point five million dollars A little bit less. But
if we go to the top earner for men's teams
over Louisville with Rick Pettino, that dude brought home eight
point nine million dollars. You can buy some fancy new
(27:43):
shoes with that. Basketball is almost as lucrative as podcasting. Carolina. Yeah,
I mean Summits compensation package is definitely unusual for women coaches.
Um But from two thousand three to twenty two, let's
get some perspective, the average salary for the coach of
an n C Double, a Division one men's team in
any sport increased by six to two d sixty seven
(28:04):
thousand ish. The average salary for the coach of a
women's team increased only by six percent in that time
to thousand and I'm sure that you know, people would say, hey,
why are you complaining about a dollar average salary? But
when you look at this breakdown of these major pay
gaps for male and female coaches, uh, you know, it's
(28:28):
I think it speaks to something larger. Yeah. And then
for Division one basketball in particular, the median salary for
coaches of a men's team in was nearly twice that
of coaches for women's team, and over the past four years,
the median pay of men's head coaches increased compared with
for women's coaches. So yes, you could argue, okay, if
(28:51):
you're looking at all Division one sports into in one package,
men could be making more because they're coaching more of
the high profile sports like football, basketball. Women might be
teacher coaching more of the low profile sports. Okay, so
like softball or something. But yeah, I mean when you
look at the actual basketball stats, women coaches just are
(29:11):
not getting the same increases in salary that men are.
And you would say, well, that's not right because under
the Equal Pay Act of nineteen sixty three, the pay
for male basketball coach versus a female basketball coach should
be comparable, but those differences emerge from third party money.
(29:33):
For instance, you know, Louisville's Rick Pettino brings in a
bulk of that eight point nine million dollars, not so
much from coaching, but on supplements, talent fees, appearance fees,
endorsement agreements with apparel companies, summer camp, summer campus are
huge way that coaches make cash, and those kinds of
(29:56):
opportunities are simply not there as much for female coaches.
And there was an interesting thing pointed out. The writer
talk to some lawyers who deal with contracts and said
that athletic directors usually assume that women's players will be
better students, so the academic clauses often are not included
(30:18):
for these coaches. And as academic clauses being you know,
if your players, if your student athletes do really well
in school, you'll make a bit of a bonus. They're like,
women are already smart. Yeah, we're just gonna give you
less money. Yeah, exactly for the women's teams that the
academic clause isn't is not there, But for the guys teams,
it's like high five all your players made made good grades.
(30:40):
Good for you. But there's uh an interesting way too
that men's coaches for women's teams can actually offer a
cost savings to athletic departments because the Equal Pay Act
focuses on gender based discrimination. So the New York Times
offered the example of can Hoockeys coach of the men's
(31:01):
basketball team earning a one thou dollar bonus when his
team made round sixteen of the n C Double A Tournament,
but the Wildcats women's coach received a forty dollar bonus
for doing the exact same thing. But because both coaches
were dudes, no problem under the Equal Pay Act. So
maybe some schools are actively courting more male coaches because
(31:25):
they just don't have to deal with all of the
equal pay kind of stuff. Yeah, the fact of the
matter is about a third of women's teams were profitable
as of two thousand and ten, according to the Department
of Education, and even then, the annual net profit was
on average less than sixteen thousand dollars, and those were
usually among smaller schools. So sure, I mean, from a
(31:52):
financial standpoint, investing a lot in female coaches when you're
not getting much out of those teams money wise, Uh,
you might not be as motivated to to really invest
a lot of a lot of resources in that. Yeah,
but there's a lot of talent out there. And I
mean Bleacher Report is one of the sources that did
(32:15):
recognize a lot of coaches of women's teams, not just
female coaches of women's teams, but male coaches also. I
mean there were a lot of names among their fifty
best college basketball coaches, and I won't list all of them,
but of course Pat Summits on their uh, Tara Vanderveer
from Stanford, Vivian Stringer from Rutgers, and then people like
Andy Lander's from U g A who coaches the Lady Dogs.
(32:38):
There is room, there is more room for women to
coach sports. But it's I mean, when is it is it?
When is it going to change, Kristen, or when are
we going to be like, yes, we want more women
role models. Is it just going to become a cycle
of terrible, terrible things where we have few women's coaches,
so girls grow up not having women's coaches, and then
(32:59):
they only want men for coaches. I mean, I I
feel like the problem is so multifaceted and largely money
driven that. I don't think that not to be a cynic,
I don't think that we are going to see many
major changes anytime soon at all, because bottom line, I
(33:19):
think the fact that only a third of women's teams,
and I think that is across sports are even profitable, um,
is an argument against investing more resources than women's sports.
And I think socially, you know, we don't value women's
athletics as much as we value men's period. Think about
the NBA versus the w n b A which how
(33:41):
many jokes have you heard about watching women play basketball
insert punchline? Um? And I think that when I would
like you know, listeners as we watch the n C
Double A tournament stuff too, I don't know, consider all
of the attention that those men's skeet versus the women
(34:01):
who are in you know, their own n C Double
A tournament. For instance, today on the news, I heard that,
you know, President Obama released his brackets for the n
C Double A team. I think he's pulling for Indiana
to win everything. Uh, the President's talking about it. You know,
no one's doing the same thing for the women's teams.
(34:24):
And if they were too, it would be it would
probably be some kind of a joke, you know, but
but it's worth thinking about from from the coaching downward.
Also those recruiting tactics, um, you know, the the negative assumptions,
and also why would it be a bad thing if
your coach is a lesbian? All all that kind of
stuff that's wrapped up into something we might not think
(34:46):
about all that much. A because we don't see it,
because we don't see women coaching all that much. And um,
you know, it's really only this one time of year
when we're even paying all that much attention to basketball.
Maybe that's just me. I'm not an have a basketballer. Yeah,
I don't know, what do you think? Yeah? I think
we're gonna be waiting a while before we see a
(35:08):
lot more women's coaches. And you know, maybe we're gonna
be waiting even longer than I think, because obviously the
numbers are on the down swing. Yeah, but it's definitely
it's worth a conversation of you know, why why are
we so not okay with seeing women coaching, especially women
coaching men's teams. They're here and there, but there's such
(35:28):
a novel Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of men's coaches,
male men's coaches who maybe weren't good enough to play
in college, but they're still excellent coaches because they have
a head for the game, they've studied, you know, they
they love the game. They're great coaches. So you know,
that's another argument, like if a woman who didn't necessarily
play at a big school play basketball at a big
(35:50):
school in college, she can still coach women or men
if she studies, is passionate about the game, you know.
I mean, but like you said, though, I mean that
all roots back to that finding out of ums Amherst
never two D. Walker's study that female coaches inherently have
that higher burden of proof to meet. Yeah, so we
(36:12):
could always just go on and on and if we
could just clone Pat Summit, that's the answer. Yes. Uh,
But in the meantime, basketball players out there, coaches, anyone
interested in sports, or if you just want to send
us your bracket, let us know your I won't know
what to do with it. Mom. Stuff at Discovery dot
(36:33):
com is our email address. And speaking of letters, I
have one here from Emily, She says, while listening to
your podcast on animal testing, my opinion on animal testing
really changed. I have an albino lab rate as a pet.
Long story short, he needed a home before he was
fed to a snake, and I realized I just couldn't
deal with the thought of my sweet little friend being
(36:54):
in pain just for a product that might not even
hit the human market. Ever, I wish products would not
contain day jurious enough ingredients that require animal testing to
make sure the product is safe for human use. After
so many years of scientific research, we know what is
and isn't toxic. Well, I understand there will always be
animal testing for medical purposes to save human lives. I
(37:14):
hope animal testing will decrease in the cosmetic industry. These
little fellows have feelings too, and I've made a great
friend with a rat bread to be food slash a
lab test. So thank you, Emily, And I am just
picturing your little friend wearing a teeny tiny mouse hat. Well,
I've got one here from Alis about that same episode
(37:36):
on animal research, and she writes it got me a
little riled. I am a m d PhD student studying
molecular genetics and I use mice in my research for
my PhD. And of course I listen to this most
recent podcast while working in my lab. I know most
of the podcast was about commercial testing on animals, but
(37:57):
you did seem to conflate animal research and animal testing
on occasion. I must confess I don't know what the
rules are for animal testing of commercial products, or even
if there are any rules, which is a scary thought. However,
animals used in medical school research are very tightly controlled.
Our universally received National Institutes of Health funds, so all
(38:17):
investigators at the school have to comply with NIH animal
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animals can only be euthanized using methods proven to cause
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on the animal, even the dosing of anesthetics is regulated. Also,
(38:40):
when you apply to the NIH for funding, you have
to estimate the number of animals that you use and
justify why you can't use fewer than that number. I
know the system isn't perfect, and it took me a
long time to come to terms with using animals in
my research, but for now it's what we've got, so thanks,
at least into everyone who has written into moms Stuff
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(39:02):
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(39:27):
Does it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from how stuppards
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristin
and I'm Caroline, and we are coming at you in
the midst of March madness, even though it's April. Yeah,
basketball madness. Yeah. N C Double A Final four is
(00:26):
about to happen here in the men's tournament at least
is happening in Atlanta, right, it's best to bring something
like seventy million dollars worth of revenue to the city,
and thank you, and two hundred million people whomart is
going to be a little cramped, Yeah, and the streets. Ah,
And for this podcast, we're gonna gripe about traffic in Atlanta,
(00:48):
just kidding. We're gonna talk about basketball, but we're not
talking about the players. We're talking about the coaches because
in honor of the n C Double A basque a
ball tournament, we thought it would be worthwhile looking at
women's basketball coaches, which might sound like a narrow topic,
but there is a lot in here to discuss. Yeah,
(01:12):
I mean, there just aren't as many as perhaps there
should be. And something we'll get into is that. Okay,
so you've got the men's men's basketball, it's all coached
by men. Yeah. And you've got the women's basketball and
it's coached by some women, but a lot of men too,
but a lot of men. Yeah. We're gonna get into
how Title nine actually corresponded with fewer women coaching female
(01:37):
basketball teams and other factors at play. Huh pun in
all of this, But first, let's talk about the winning
ist basketball coach in the n C double A Pat Summit. Yeah.
Pat Summit was actually a basketball player at University of
Tennessee Martin when Title nine was introduced, so she was
(01:59):
kind of in the thick of it. She's now the
head coach emeritus of Tennessee women's basketball team. Thirty eight
years as a head coach, and she stepped down because
she made the very sad announcement that she has Alzheimer's. Yeah,
and she's coming out with a new memoir. I believe
that the title is Summit Up and her story is
(02:20):
pretty incredible. Like you said, Caroline, she was coming up
when Title nine was introduced, and before that, she talks
about how the women's athletic budget at you T Martin
when she got there was about five hundred dollars to
be distributed among volleyball, basketball, and tennis, and after the
passage of Title nine in nineteen two, those budgets increased.
(02:42):
But it wasn't exactly smooth sailing, as we'll talk about
in more detail, but for a little more about Pat's summit.
She ended up playing in the first women's Olympic team
to play basketball, and a little bit more though about Summit. Uh,
some highlights from her career were not only did she
(03:05):
you know, play with you team Martin, but she also
played in the nineteen seventy six Summer Olympic Games in
Montreal because for the first time they had a women's
basketball team and Summits team brought home the silver. And
then then she went on to coach the team in
the nineteen eighty four Olympics in Los Angeles. Yeah, she
(03:26):
has a really interesting perspective as far as you know,
having been a coach all this time, but also coming
up during the whole Title nine passage and everything. In
her new book, she says that three events in nineteen
seventy two changed everything, and that includes that a group
of dedicated women administrators formed the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics
for women, because she says the n C Double A
(03:48):
didn't yet care enough about females to bother with us.
She also says that it was very important the announcement
that women's basketball would be an Olympic sport for the
first time at the at those nineteen seventy six Summerlympics,
and of course the passing of Title nine. Yeah, and
she talks about how those developments made winning available to women.
(04:09):
For instance, with that establishment, Caroline that you mentioned of
the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. The title is
a bit of a mouthful. They organized the first championship
for women's basketball teams, which was a really important stepping
stone to legitimize the sport for women. Also made competition
(04:29):
more socially acceptable with Title nine, and it allowed women
to play a full court basketball game. Well, thank god.
I mean, I'm glad that they reached the point where
they're like, good, it won't bounce your uterus around too
much if you run up and down a full court right,
Because this reminds me of our episode on women running
(04:49):
marathon and even when sum it was going to those
Summer Olympics, in VENTI in Montreal. It was still a
crazy idea for a woman to run that long of
a distance. So this was a kind of mindset that
was going on when Title nine one was introduced. And
Pat Summit is going to come up a few more
times in this podcast because since she is the winningest
(05:13):
coach in n C Double A and the highest paid
female coach in the n C Double A, she's sort
of held, as you know, the pillar of female coaches.
I'd say, not just in basketball, but pretty much in
all collegiate sports because she made such an incredible name
(05:33):
for herself. But first, Caroline, let's speaking of women being
allowed to play full court basketball and bouncing our uteruses around.
Let's let's take a brief historical look at basketball for women. Yeah, well,
before it was for women, it was only for men. Obviously,
(05:55):
as is everything. Uh sorry that that's what I didn't
mean that to sounds better Except for corsets. Yeah, those
have always just been for women. Yeah, high heels though, no,
that's set. Rosemary Skein wrote a very comprehensive book titled
Very Simply Women College Basketball Coaches. I bet you can
(06:16):
guess what that's about. Yeah, But so in one basketball
was designed for male athletes who needed a winter sport
because God forbid they not play sports for a minute.
So the first public game was in March eight nine two,
but it was not that long after the women started playing.
Three months after that first public men's game, in March two,
Senda Barrenson, Smith Colleges, director of Physical Training, introduced the
(06:39):
game to women, and the first women's game was played
March twenty two at Smith. And in case you're wondering
at the score, Kristen uh sophomores five, freshman four. Yeah,
but that game was just between Smith students. The first
intercollegiate women's game happened between Berkeley and Stanford. Ley alumni
(07:01):
out there, you won? Oh no, you lost. Christine really
wanted you to win, but trivia alert. Stanford's Martha Clark
made the very first basket in women's intercollegiate history, and
she did so while wearing a woolen uniform that covered
everything except for the face, neck, and hands. As were
(07:24):
you know, the the uniforms that all the women would
be wearing. I noticed you did not include feet in
that list. Were they footy uniform? They were not. I
think they were allowed to expose their feet and in
order to put them into shoes. Well, you know, we
it's it is scandalous to have women running and playing sports,
even in full body footy uniforms. Uh. The day of
(07:45):
that game, only two men were allowed to watch, and
they were a pe well physical education director and an instructor.
Women guarded the windows of the auditorium with sticks to
keep men from sneaking a peak and scain rights. Even
letting women watch was apparently considered dangerous since basketball was
(08:05):
invented for men. Physicians who believed women were delicate said
women would become hysterical watching other women play basketball. Oh my,
oh my. Although I do sometimes become hysterical watching, but
probably not for the reason that they think this is true.
So it takes a little while, though, for them to
(08:26):
develop rules for women's basketball. In eighteen ninety four, the
first women's rules appeared, but they weren't widely circulated. Then
in June eighteen ninety nine, sent A. Barnson, who was
that director of physical training at Smith College, worked with
other East Coast physical teachers to develop women's rules at
the Conference on Physical Training, and so in October of
(08:50):
nineteen o one, finally a good year. Yesal being Sporting
Goods published her rules as the official rules for women's basketball.
But those rules emphasize maintaining ladylike behavior of course, no
snatching of the ball for instance. But Brenson did favor
physical activity. She said, quote, it's all the more to
(09:12):
develop health and endurance if they desire to become candidates
for equal wages. It's a little bit of feminism tossed
in there as well. Basketball playing basketball can help you
earn equal wages with men. It can close the gender gap. Unfortunately,
send a Barrenson. Those predictions were not not really uh
would not come to fruition. Yeah, well, clearly a duel mosher.
(09:36):
I'm sorry if I'm really sorry if I just butchered
her name. She was a physician background this time in
the Victorian era, and she agreed with Barrenson as far
as like, let women have physical activities. So no, she
she had nothing to do with actual basketball. But it
was during this time that she was of the same
school of thought that women actually needed to have some
(09:56):
physical activity, and she wanted to prove that women were
not in fury or two men, and that the frailties
attributed to sex were really just the effects of binding
garments like those. Course, it's insufficient exercise and mental conditioning.
So get those women onto the court playing sports and
maybe one day will be equal. Yeah, Because I mean,
as much as we think about how exercise is something
(10:20):
that we today consider part of you know, a well
balanced life, where you're supposed to exercise, what five days
a week for sixty minutes at a time, I'm pulling
that out of the air. You're supposed to do it
a lot. But when all of this was going on,
it was socially unacceptable for women to be moving around
(10:40):
like that. This was also the time when things like
bicycles were coming into vogue, and it was a big
deal for women to ride bicycles because yes, it would
be straddling things. How would you do that, You'd have
to wear maybe something like a bloomer invented by Amelia Bloomer,
who was an early feminist. Um. You know, things that
we take for granted were revolutionary the time, like basketball. Um,
(11:04):
but let's talk about a few more of the more
modern pioneers of women's basketball, such as Carol Ekman, who
was considered the mother of collegiate women's basketball. National championships.
She's best known for establishing the first National Invitational women's
intercollegiate basketball tournament in nineteen Yeah. And then we have
(11:28):
Teresa Shank Grantz, who is the former head coach of
the women's basketball program at the University of Illinois, Rutgers University,
and Saint Joseph. She's a member of the Women's Basketball
Hall of Fame and was the Olympic head coach in
n and that year her team captured the bronze medal
in Barcelona. And Billy Moore, for some more trivia, was
(11:48):
the first coach in women's basketball history to lead teams
from two different schools to national championships. In those schools
were California State Fullerton and u C. L A. So
we are moving into the modern era, and like we
said in nineteen two, Title nine happens. So with Title nine,
(12:12):
schools that are receiving this federal funding have to equally
distribute it for men's and women's athletics. But what we
want to look at is how Title nine impacted not
so much the players and the women who like Pat
Summit benefited from Title nine by having more resources to
(12:33):
be able to get out on the court or get
out on the field and play. But how for again,
for people like Pat Summit, once their time was up playing,
whether or not coaching would be more open to them
as a lucrative occupation. Right, Well, it definitely influenced how
people saw women's sports, and not just making it more
(12:55):
socially acceptable, but also making it, Yeah, like you said,
more lucrative because all of a sudden, all the money's
flowing in, and now maybe men who wouldn't have considered
coaching women's teams are like, there's more in it for
me now. So yeah, speaking of men being interested in
coaching women's teams, a curious thing happens when Title nine
(13:16):
has passed. In nineteen seventy two, women coached more than
ninety percent of women's teams, but in such a short
amount of time, by nineteen seventy eight, that number had
dropped to fifty eight point two percent, and as of
two thousand ten, it was down to forty two point
(13:36):
nine percent. So today women coach fewer than half of
women's college teams. Yeah, and since two thousand, n C
Double A programs have added one thousand, seven seventy four
women's head coaching jobs. Men have filled over twelve hundred
of those openings. And you know, only about three percent
(13:57):
of men's teams are coached by women, and that's a
whole well other issues like why aren't women coaching men's
teams either? Yeah, and that percentage the percentage of women
coaching men's teams has not changed at all since Title I.
The only thing that has dropped is the percentage of
women coaching other women. And a lot of these statistics
(14:19):
are coming from early conference of article from ESPN magazine
written by Kate Fagan and Luke Ciphers on which they're
looking into this gender gap in women coaching, specifically women's teams,
because you would assume, oh, well, women's sports teams, you
can have a women's a female coach, But no, because,
(14:41):
like you said, Caroline uh, the increased money coming into
women's sports simply made it a more desirable option for
men's coaches who might not have been as qualified as
potential women's coaches. Well, so they looked into some of
the reasons as for like why there aren't as many
women coaching teams, and a lot of it has to
(15:04):
do with, Okay, there's a small pool of female candidates,
um there's a lack of second chances for female coaches.
A lot of women if they screw up, it's just
kind of it's not the same revolving door type of
situation that men have, like they can just go to
a different team. A lot of the times, if women
are fired or lose their coaching jobs, that's it for them.
A lack of female mentors, women just not applying for
(15:26):
these jobs retaliation for Title nine complaints. But a lot
of it also has to do with sexism and homophobia. Yeah,
there's this habit of women's basketball coaches hiring male assistance, uh,
to be kind of that quote unquote straight presence, because
there's this whole issue um in recruiting, of of negative recruiting,
(15:48):
of saying, you know, we're a family friendly program, but
over there, you know that that female coach at that school,
you know, we're not so sure, Yeah, because the stereotype
is is that a female sports coaches are lesbians. And
so the type of homophobic recruiting that goes on is
referred to as family friendly recruitment, saying things like to
(16:12):
a new recruit like, oh, you know, we were a
very family oriented environment with a wink and a nudge
to the parents saying, don't worry your daughter won't be
coached by a lesbian and possibly corrupted because of this.
And again, ESPN magazine covered this in February two thousand eleven,
and in and among fifty five percent of the college
(16:36):
players that ESPN spoke to, they said that sexual orientation
was quote an underlying topic of conversation with college recruiters percent.
So the homophobia is a pretty rampant thing, and it's
also a deterrent for would be coaches who might be gay,
(16:58):
who are like, you know what, I don't want to
have to live a closeted professional life and also be
you know, slurred for my for my lifestyle. Yeah, that
same ESPN article talked about how these homophobic, uh negative
recruiting policies are not policies, but practices are pretty unique
(17:19):
to the women's game. You don't you don't have a
male recruit coming up from high school, coming up the
ranks and them talking about, you know, issues of family friendliness.
But it's it's a general open secret as far as
like the code words of family friendly. Yeah. For instance,
University of Tennessee and University of Connecticut don't play each
other anymore, allegedly due to Yukon's anti gay recruitment against Uti,
(17:45):
claiming that, oh Pat Summit is a lesbian and so
you don't want to send your kids there. Apparently it
was a huge rivalry and the game used to be
a giant draw until finally Summit and University of Tennessee
were like, you know, we're not even gonna play this game.
So now that's less money coming into a women's game, right,
which you know, women's sports can use as much money
(18:07):
as possible. Um, which we'll get into a little bit later,
but um in two ESPN, But ESPN also talks about
how in two there was this homophobia mongering case of
Pam Parsons, who resigned as coach of South Carolina after
allegations that she had a relationship with one of her
(18:29):
basketball players. And they say that since that incident, that
kind of anti gay recruitment has been almost a common
part of the process, which is unfortunate. Yeah, so common
that Portland's States Sharing Mural is the only out lesbian
in Division one women's basketball. Yeah, and we should say
too that it's not just a thing of the whole
family friendly things, not just a wink and a a nudge
(18:52):
to you know, a homophobic sentiments. But it's also a
thing a winken and nudge saying this is in a
black program either we are you know, everything will be
safe for your child. There's a lot of there's a
dirty underbelly to this that's going on. So yeah, we
mentioned how you know, with all with the influx of
funds after the passage of Title nine, coaching a women's
(19:15):
basketball game became our a team, I'm sorry, became more
attractive to male coaches. And this brings us to what
we call a glass wall phenomenon where men can coach
women while women are shut out of the men's game.
So you know, they can see the jobs through the
glass wall, but they can't get there. And along these
(19:35):
same lines, a really interesting survey by never T. D. Walker,
who is a U mass Amherst professor and former Division
one basketball player. She talked to male coaches about you know,
would you hire a woman? Would you want to work
with a female coach? She found out that breaking that
institutional norm of hiring a woman as a coach really
(19:56):
required an exceptional candidate, like women have a much higher
burden of proof to use a legal term, because they
all cited pat Summit. Yeah. They were all like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
you've got Pat Summit. I mean she's great, I totally
work with her. Was like, of course she would hire
the winning is coach in the n C double A.
But there does seem to be sometimes a disconnect maybe
(20:20):
between what male athletic directors or coaches think is going on.
It's almost like a blind sexism that might be happening
to what female coaches or would be coaches um are feeling. Um.
There was a study that took place in the nineteen
eighties which found that male athletic directors believed that female
(20:41):
coaches left their schools for just individual reasons like going
to spend more time with family or what have you,
whereas the female coaches who left had actually jumped ship
due to structural barriers like the glasswall phenomenon, like the
kind of homophobia that is still happening so often to today. UM.
And it is a problem because it doesn't seem to
(21:04):
be there doesn't seem to be a ton of communication
at least between um these you know, the men and
women in athletics. It's just kind of a thing where
the female basketball players don't see many female coaches, they
don't have many models, and they also know of women
who are coaching in the rare positions where they are
(21:26):
coaching or our assistant, and they really don't like the
jobs all that much and so they choose other paths. Yeah,
that that's definitely a cycle. You see fewer coaches, you
have fewer role models, you might not choose that path,
and then you have no female coaches anymore. And it's
interesting that other Division one sports who which are traditionally
(21:46):
coached by women, are starting to see a decline also
in female coaches, like uh Division one softball female coaches
are down from seventy four point eight percent in two
thousand to six, and Division one field hockey female coaches
dropped from nine in two thousand to two. So maybe
not as significant as basketball as to dip the basketball seeing,
(22:09):
but still some of these coaches that ESPN talked to
were concerned, like, Hey, we don't want to you know,
it's not that we hate men, we just don't want
to lose coaching opportunities. And Nicole Levoy, who's the associate
director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and
Women in Sports has looked into this issue of, you know,
the female coaching role model a lot, and she talks
(22:31):
about how youth sports are overwhelmingly coached by men. The
whole thing is that the dad's coach while the moms
drive and put out orange slices, and so they grow
up to be recruits that don't want a female coach.
There was also a study that we found called Working
with Male Athletes the Experience of US Female Head Coaches
UM and they and they talked to these female coaches
(22:53):
about their experience with mentors and interestingly found that one
of the common themes was actually having a negative experience
with youth sports with a female coach. UM and they
also cided though an n C double a survey from
two thousand nine which found that a only ten percent
of female student athletes even cared to pursue coaching, and
(23:16):
that of that the rest of those who did not
want to pursue it cided knowing a female coach, he
was not happy in her role. So something is clearly
going on here. Yeah. Well, Matthew Malady in September asked,
why don't we care that there aren't any female coaches
coaching men for instance, like why don't why isn't it
(23:38):
more of a big deal that we have so few
women out there? And he he wrote that there are
zero female head or assistant coaches for the hundred and
twenty two teams playing in the NBA, MLB, NHL, and NFL.
It's basically considered impossible. He says that only three women
have ever been assistant coaches for men's college basketball teams.
That's Bernadette Matics, Jennifer Johnston, and Stephanie Ready. And he
(24:02):
said that this whole choosing a coach from such a
narrow pool thing is a totally flawed system, the narrow
pool being only men and only certain men. Yeah, it
was illuminating to read the coverage of Nancy Lieberman, who
was a superstar point guard for Old Dominion, who played
professionally for both men's and women's teams before coaching the
(24:25):
w n B a is Detroit Shock, and then became
head coach of the Texas Legends, which was a men's
team in the NBA's Development League. And it was this
huge deal because finally we have a female coach of
a professional team, even though it was a development league.
But nevertheless, all of these major media outlets are covering
Nancy Lieberman and the only thing they want to talk
(24:47):
about is the fact that, oh, you're a woman coaching
a man's team and talking to these athletes like, how
is it being, you know, being coached by a woman?
How can you handle that? And most of the time
the response of we're just along the lines of she's coach.
What I mean, she calls the place and we run them.
What else do you want to know? Yeah, And there
(25:08):
was one interview, you know what, I'm not even sure
if it was about Nancy Lieberman or just another female coach,
maybe even on the high school side, but one of
the players said, yeah, she's tiny, but when she's mad,
she's seven ft tall. Yeah, you know, like it's it's
not an issue of she has a vagina, I'm not
going to listen to her. It's she's the coach, she's
the authority figure, she's telling us what to do. We're
(25:30):
the players. We listened to her. And I can't imagine
that in locker room situations there might be different dynamics
of a woman sitting there and talking to a group
of guys versus a guy saying there talking to a
group of women. But I wonder why that is why
we're more comfortable with men leading a group of women
on the field than we are with a woman leading
(25:52):
a group of men on the field or the court.
I should say, is we're speaking about basketball specifically. Maybe
it's just what we're used to saying. Yeah, I mean,
what we are accustomed to seeing on the television. Yeah,
I mean. It almost makes you wish that Pat Summit had,
you know, coach the U team men's team instead of
the women's team. But then again, we don't want to
(26:12):
take away good coaches from women's athletics. And I think
that is one of the main reasons why she was
so dedicated to that women's team, because she came up
through the ranks and new firsthand what it was like
to be marginalized as a female athlete. Um and speaking
of marginalization, because this is kind of a downer topic,
(26:36):
let's talk about wages. Oh yeah, salary, let's get into
that now. The two thousand eleven coaches compensation, four schools
and four the previous five n C Double A women's
basketball tournaments were pretty handsome. You know, Pat Summit makes
a lot of money. Uh, that year according to stats
published by You to Say today, she brought in one
(26:57):
point nine million dollars. I want to become a women's
basketball coach. If you like to throw the ball at
the net. You got it, Oh ladies, hooray. But just
for contrast, Pat Summit again winning his coach. But just
for contrast, again, Pat Summit winning his coach in the
n C Double a one point nine million dollars. Her
(27:20):
men's coach counterpart in the University of Tennessee brought in
one point five million dollars A little bit less. But
if we go to the top earner for men's teams
over Louisville with Rick Pettino, that dude brought home eight
point nine million dollars. You can buy some fancy new
(27:43):
shoes with that. Basketball is almost as lucrative as podcasting. Carolina. Yeah,
I mean Summits compensation package is definitely unusual for women coaches.
Um But from two thousand three to twenty two, let's
get some perspective, the average salary for the coach of
an n C Double, a Division one men's team in
any sport increased by six to two d sixty seven
(28:04):
thousand ish. The average salary for the coach of a
women's team increased only by six percent in that time
to thousand and I'm sure that you know, people would say, hey,
why are you complaining about a dollar average salary? But
when you look at this breakdown of these major pay
gaps for male and female coaches, uh, you know, it's
(28:28):
I think it speaks to something larger. Yeah. And then
for Division one basketball in particular, the median salary for
coaches of a men's team in was nearly twice that
of coaches for women's team, and over the past four years,
the median pay of men's head coaches increased compared with
for women's coaches. So yes, you could argue, okay, if
(28:51):
you're looking at all Division one sports into in one package,
men could be making more because they're coaching more of
the high profile sports like football, basketball. Women might be
teacher coaching more of the low profile sports. Okay, so
like softball or something. But yeah, I mean when you
look at the actual basketball stats, women coaches just are
(29:11):
not getting the same increases in salary that men are.
And you would say, well, that's not right because under
the Equal Pay Act of nineteen sixty three, the pay
for male basketball coach versus a female basketball coach should
be comparable, but those differences emerge from third party money.
(29:33):
For instance, you know, Louisville's Rick Pettino brings in a
bulk of that eight point nine million dollars, not so
much from coaching, but on supplements, talent fees, appearance fees,
endorsement agreements with apparel companies, summer camp, summer campus are
huge way that coaches make cash, and those kinds of
(29:56):
opportunities are simply not there as much for female coaches.
And there was an interesting thing pointed out. The writer
talk to some lawyers who deal with contracts and said
that athletic directors usually assume that women's players will be
better students, so the academic clauses often are not included
(30:18):
for these coaches. And as academic clauses being you know,
if your players, if your student athletes do really well
in school, you'll make a bit of a bonus. They're like,
women are already smart. Yeah, we're just gonna give you
less money. Yeah, exactly for the women's teams that the
academic clause isn't is not there, But for the guys teams,
it's like high five all your players made made good grades.
(30:40):
Good for you. But there's uh an interesting way too
that men's coaches for women's teams can actually offer a
cost savings to athletic departments because the Equal Pay Act
focuses on gender based discrimination. So the New York Times
offered the example of can Hoockeys coach of the men's
(31:01):
basketball team earning a one thou dollar bonus when his
team made round sixteen of the n C Double A Tournament,
but the Wildcats women's coach received a forty dollar bonus
for doing the exact same thing. But because both coaches
were dudes, no problem under the Equal Pay Act. So
maybe some schools are actively courting more male coaches because
(31:25):
they just don't have to deal with all of the
equal pay kind of stuff. Yeah, the fact of the
matter is about a third of women's teams were profitable
as of two thousand and ten, according to the Department
of Education, and even then, the annual net profit was
on average less than sixteen thousand dollars, and those were
usually among smaller schools. So sure, I mean, from a
(31:52):
financial standpoint, investing a lot in female coaches when you're
not getting much out of those teams money wise, Uh,
you might not be as motivated to to really invest
a lot of a lot of resources in that. Yeah,
but there's a lot of talent out there. And I
mean Bleacher Report is one of the sources that did
(32:15):
recognize a lot of coaches of women's teams, not just
female coaches of women's teams, but male coaches also. I
mean there were a lot of names among their fifty
best college basketball coaches, and I won't list all of them,
but of course Pat Summits on their uh, Tara Vanderveer
from Stanford, Vivian Stringer from Rutgers, and then people like
Andy Lander's from U g A who coaches the Lady Dogs.
(32:38):
There is room, there is more room for women to
coach sports. But it's I mean, when is it is it?
When is it going to change, Kristen, or when are
we going to be like, yes, we want more women
role models. Is it just going to become a cycle
of terrible, terrible things where we have few women's coaches,
so girls grow up not having women's coaches, and then
(32:59):
they only want men for coaches. I mean, I I
feel like the problem is so multifaceted and largely money
driven that. I don't think that not to be a cynic,
I don't think that we are going to see many
major changes anytime soon at all, because bottom line, I
(33:19):
think the fact that only a third of women's teams,
and I think that is across sports are even profitable, um,
is an argument against investing more resources than women's sports.
And I think socially, you know, we don't value women's
athletics as much as we value men's period. Think about
the NBA versus the w n b A which how
(33:41):
many jokes have you heard about watching women play basketball
insert punchline? Um? And I think that when I would
like you know, listeners as we watch the n C
Double A tournament stuff too, I don't know, consider all
of the attention that those men's skeet versus the women
(34:01):
who are in you know, their own n C Double
A tournament. For instance, today on the news, I heard that,
you know, President Obama released his brackets for the n
C Double A team. I think he's pulling for Indiana
to win everything. Uh, the President's talking about it. You know,
no one's doing the same thing for the women's teams.
(34:24):
And if they were too, it would be it would
probably be some kind of a joke, you know, but
but it's worth thinking about from from the coaching downward.
Also those recruiting tactics, um, you know, the the negative assumptions,
and also why would it be a bad thing if
your coach is a lesbian? All all that kind of
stuff that's wrapped up into something we might not think
(34:46):
about all that much. A because we don't see it,
because we don't see women coaching all that much. And um,
you know, it's really only this one time of year
when we're even paying all that much attention to basketball.
Maybe that's just me. I'm not an have a basketballer. Yeah,
I don't know, what do you think? Yeah? I think
we're gonna be waiting a while before we see a
(35:08):
lot more women's coaches. And you know, maybe we're gonna
be waiting even longer than I think, because obviously the
numbers are on the down swing. Yeah, but it's definitely
it's worth a conversation of you know, why why are
we so not okay with seeing women coaching, especially women
coaching men's teams. They're here and there, but there's such
(35:28):
a novel Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of men's coaches,
male men's coaches who maybe weren't good enough to play
in college, but they're still excellent coaches because they have
a head for the game, they've studied, you know, they
they love the game. They're great coaches. So you know,
that's another argument, like if a woman who didn't necessarily
play at a big school play basketball at a big
(35:50):
school in college, she can still coach women or men
if she studies, is passionate about the game, you know.
I mean, but like you said, though, I mean that
all roots back to that finding out of ums Amherst
never two D. Walker's study that female coaches inherently have
that higher burden of proof to meet. Yeah, so we
(36:12):
could always just go on and on and if we
could just clone Pat Summit, that's the answer. Yes. Uh,
But in the meantime, basketball players out there, coaches, anyone
interested in sports, or if you just want to send
us your bracket, let us know your I won't know
what to do with it. Mom. Stuff at Discovery dot
(36:33):
com is our email address. And speaking of letters, I
have one here from Emily, She says, while listening to
your podcast on animal testing, my opinion on animal testing
really changed. I have an albino lab rate as a pet.
Long story short, he needed a home before he was
fed to a snake, and I realized I just couldn't
deal with the thought of my sweet little friend being
(36:54):
in pain just for a product that might not even
hit the human market. Ever, I wish products would not
contain day jurious enough ingredients that require animal testing to
make sure the product is safe for human use. After
so many years of scientific research, we know what is
and isn't toxic. Well, I understand there will always be
animal testing for medical purposes to save human lives. I
(37:14):
hope animal testing will decrease in the cosmetic industry. These
little fellows have feelings too, and I've made a great
friend with a rat bread to be food slash a
lab test. So thank you, Emily, And I am just
picturing your little friend wearing a teeny tiny mouse hat. Well,
I've got one here from Alis about that same episode
(37:36):
on animal research, and she writes it got me a
little riled. I am a m d PhD student studying
molecular genetics and I use mice in my research for
my PhD. And of course I listen to this most
recent podcast while working in my lab. I know most
of the podcast was about commercial testing on animals, but
(37:57):
you did seem to conflate animal research and animal testing
on occasion. I must confess I don't know what the
rules are for animal testing of commercial products, or even
if there are any rules, which is a scary thought. However,
animals used in medical school research are very tightly controlled.
Our universally received National Institutes of Health funds, so all
(38:17):
investigators at the school have to comply with NIH animal
testing guidelines. Everyone who works with lab animals has to
go through training, and there are very strict rules for
how you can operate on or kill an animal. For example,
animals can only be euthanized using methods proven to cause
the animal minimal suffering, and if the surgery is done
on the animal, even the dosing of anesthetics is regulated. Also,
(38:40):
when you apply to the NIH for funding, you have
to estimate the number of animals that you use and
justify why you can't use fewer than that number. I
know the system isn't perfect, and it took me a
long time to come to terms with using animals in
my research, but for now it's what we've got, so thanks,
at least into everyone who has written into moms Stuff
at a discovery dot com. You can also find us
(39:02):
on Facebook there leave us a note if you'd like.
You can follow us on Twitter as well at Mom's
Stuff podcasts, and on Tumbler at stuff mom Never Told
You dot tumbler dot com. And if you would like
to learn more about basketball and other sports, you can
find all of the rules that how Stuff Works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(39:27):
Does it how stuff works dot com
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