when you read an opinion piece like Johnette Howard’s at ESPN.
I could start in on her misrepresenting the facts that “inspired” her piece. She writes:
Using your team’s big moment to suggest that people who don’t like women’s basketball must be sexist jerks rather than just benignly indifferent to the game, as he did Sunday, wasn’t artful.
What Aureimma actually said was:
“I just know there wouldn’t be this many people in the room if we were chasing a woman’s record. The reason everybody is having a heart attack the last four or five days is a bunch of women are threatening to break a men’s record, and everybody is all up in arms about it. All the women are happy as hell and they can’t wait to come in here and ask questions. All the guys that loved women’s basketball are all excited, and all the miserable bastards that follow men’s basketball and don’t want us to break the record are all here because they’re pissed. That’s just the way it is.”
What isn’t “artful” is Howard being deliberately and conveniently obtuse.
The article that follows is an odd little trip down memory lane and personality analysis that makes you think she’s been wanting to scold Auriemma for a loooong time.
And I really want to know what media rooms and sports desks she’s been hanging out that makes her think sport writers and editors are “benignly indifferent.” Oh, there are many reasons for their indifference — informed and uninformed — but it’s rarely benign.
Finally, let’s talk about the title of her piece: “Still need more, Geno? Go coach men.”
I think you could be more disrespectful of every single woman and man who has coached women’s basketball, but I’m not sure how.
Basically, she’s saying, shut up and be grateful you’ve got what you got. Don’t expect more, ’cause you’re not going to get it. ’cause you don’t deserve it. ’cause your players don’t deserve it. ”cause you chose the wrong profession to fall in love with.
Walk up to Alberta Cox and say that. Walk up to Cathy Rush and say that. Walk up to Margaret Wade, Harry Redin, Leon Barmore, Leta Andrews, Lin Laursen, Barb Stevens, Chris Kielsmeier… and the list goes on.
The women’ s game has grown not simply because people have worked quietly and politely and waited for the world to shift a little. It has also grown because, as Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote: “Well-behaved women (and men) seldom make history.”
Hey, it takes all sorts. And you can like or dislike’em, as the mood strikes you.
But if you’re going to write about’em, get your facts in order.
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