RebKell's Junkie Boards

[Ex-Ref]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2015/02/23/women-college-coaches-title-9-ix/23917353/

Looks like this was an article from the Indy Star. I'm not through it yet, but everything is about coaches in Indiana so far.

[summertime blues]

There was another article on this, longer and more in depth, that I believe came out late last summer or perhaps early in the fall. At least that was when I first saw it. I *think* it was in a Florida based paper or magazine, but don't hold me to that, it's just what I remember now, and I have searched but can't find the dang thing. Perhaps one or another of you with better memories or better search skills can locate it. That was where I first learned about Mizzou coach Robin Pingeton's "Were all STRAIGHT here!" pitch to recruits and their parents, which has since been confirmed to me by acquaintances in the Columbia area. It also explored, IIRC, the difficulties women coaches have in even getting interviewed for top positions, let alone getting hired.

(At Tennessee there used to be a separate women's athletic department. Heartless Dave put an end to that and fired a lot of people, all women. He is also doing his level best to put an end to the Lady Vols brand. (That one is meeting with stiff resistance, including a lawsuit and a bill in the legislature.) Say what you want about his "economic acuity", his record vis a vis dealing with women is pretty abysmal. He just hadn't been called on it before.)

_________________
Don't take life so serious. It ain't nohows permanent.
It takes 3 years to build a team and 7 to build a program.--Conventional Wisdom

[Matt5762]

[BallState1984]

Call me old school, but I am convinced women need to coach women.

_________________
Terminally afffected with Our Girl Syndrome and proud of it!

[norwester]

[summertime blues]

I think *good coaches* need to coach women. That said, I take issue with Matt's comment because I think he's using statistics in a simplistic and wrong way. After all, you can make statistics "prove" anything, as we all learned in S&P 101. The "success" statistics for a partial season are meaningless. While some ADs, under *political* pressure, may well go out of their way to hire a female coach, I don't think that is by any means a universal case. (I saw it happen at my alma mater, and it was an outright disaster. That program may never recover, although the current coach also female is making a valiant effort.) In fact, I think many ADs, particularly at a larger program, are likely to hire a male coach for a number of reasons--perceived "better experience", a bias (acknowledged or unacknowledged) against the "appearance" of lesbianism, or just plain discomfort at working with women. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there are any female ADs at any large DI universities. At least I don't know of any.

Personally, if it's my child, I don't care if the coach is male, female or neuter, as long as my child is happy and getting good coaching. But if my *daughter* wants to be a coach--of any sport--and prepares for it properly, then she damn well ought to have an equal shot at it.

_________________
Don't take life so serious. It ain't nohows permanent.
It takes 3 years to build a team and 7 to build a program.--Conventional Wisdom

[GlennMacGrady]

What I'd like to see are data on the gender percentages in the coaching applicant pools for the various women's college sports. If there are more men in the applicant pool, then it makes sense that more men would be hired, all other things being fair and equal.

The article itself suggests some reasonable answers. Before Title IX, coaching positions for women's sports were low pay or even no pay. Almost all men are economic bread winners, so they can't afford to take low/no pay coaching jobs. When the salaries for women's coaches started to skyrocket upwards, that surely attracted a lot of men with basketball expertise. There were a lot more such basketball-trained men in the 80's and 90's, and probably even now, than there were women.

That brings us back to the unknown applicant pool mix.

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http://www.youtube.com/MagicBusBasketball

[purduefanatic]

I almost feel like we need to mention hires like the barely 20 yr old Summitt kid again in this thread, who happens to be a male. But I guess we probably beat that horse to death in another thread. However, that is pretty relevant in the context of this thread as well.

[Beemer]

I think you must also factor in the time a coach has to dedicate to coaching any Division I sport. And it isn't just coaching either- it is recruiting, mentoring, NCAA compliance, etc.

I think that men are still more willing to sacrifice personal life for professional success than many women. I think a lot of women look at what they'd have to sacrifice personally and decide to coach high school or at smaller division colleges instead.

_________________
Go Huskies! Go Sun!

[ArtBest23]

[ArtBest23]

Personally, I think people are making this more complicated than it is.

Pre Title IX, most big colleges largely ignored women's sports. Consequently the jobs were low paying, and men interested in coaching mostly stuck with MBB where the pay was better. Post Title IX, big schools started spending real money on women's sports, including WBB. Suddenly the jobs were more attractive and the applicant pool expanded accordingly. More men applied. (I expect more women applied as well.) The result was that some women who previously might have gotten jobs, didn't get them simply because there was a bigger pool of candidates, some of whom were more qualified than they were. This doesn't seem that difficult to understand.

So now, at the current time, the relevant question is whether unqualified men are getting coaching jobs over better qualified women. Are there examples we can discuss where folks believe that occurred? Think of some recent hires, does anyone here contend that Graves, McGuff, Moore, Tsipis, or Foster should not have been hired or that more qualified women were excluded or passed over for those jobs? If so, who were those candidates? What about the recent hires at Houston or Butler? I don't know the situations surrounding those hires. Any others where someone can point to a specific hire where there were better women candidates?

Personally I don't see how waiving around generalities about "it's because the ADs are men" or the like is really productive. It seems to me you have to look at each individual hire and see whether there were inappropriate preferences given. (And should that include the reverse? I have seen Wisconsin fans complain that they are saddled with a bad coach because Wis essentially had out a "men need not apply" sign. Don't know if that's true, but if so, is that any different?)

[purduefanatic]

[turkeytrot]

As the male coaches are not covered by equal pay protection, AD's camn pay them less than female coaches.

[ArtBest23]

[ClayK]

It's a complex question, and is part of a larger one involving women in all businesses ...

I think one major issue is raising a family. Coaching is a very time-consuming profession/avocation and for most, it begins at a lower level, which means coaching at night or on weekends.

If the coach has a family with young children, then one of the sacrifices that must be made is by the non-coaching spouse, who must take up more of the child-rearing duties. In most cases, for whatever reason, this job is taken by females.

I know that I am always looking for female assistants to help me coach at the high school level, and it is much, much harder to find a female with children who can find the time, or has the driving passion, to coach than a male with children.

Or, to put it another way, how many couples with young children do you know where the male does the bulk of the child care?

_________________
Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā

[Freddie Brooks]

Like @GlennMacGrady said, money is attracting males into coaching women's teams.....next to none of them would care otherwise

[tfan]

If you read anecdotes about Steve Jobs or Bill Gates and how they handled underlings, they come off as insensitive, mean jerks. And yet they are lauded as managers. It always makes me wonder if meanness is a benefit in a manager. Although Jobs at least, could go the other way and also be very nice. As somebody at Pixar put it, "The highs were unbelievable, the lows were unimaginable".

But if there is something to mean (or mean/nice) bosses getting more from their employees it may work against women. A coach has some overlap with a manager. They are both "bosses" trying to get people to perform a task well. Women are nicer than men. If meanness (and I'll say coupled with niceness) is a positive trait for a manager to have to get the most out of their employees, maybe men have an advantage over women in coaching for that basis alone. I remember reading that Geno Auriemma had Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi in tears in at least one practice. Could Nell Fortner, Carolyn Peck, Muffet McGraw, etc. have done the same, or done the same and not had them transferring? And the most successful women's coach - Pat Summit - looked like a homicidal maniac on the sidelines at times. But it seems like female coaches could not match their male counterparts in meanness because there is a double standard - we don't tolerate or receive as well, meanness from a woman, as we do from a man.

But I am also old school - I would prefer that only women coached women in college and high school. I guess it is all right in the WNBA, where the number of female coaches has gone down over the years. I think there was one male of 8 coaches in the first year - Van Chancellor. Now we have 6 of 12 male.

[ClayK]

Some girls, for whatever reason, prefer to be coached by men. I would also think, that if women coached men's teams on a regular basis, that some boys would prefer to be coached by women.

But the real issue is the pool of available candidates. It is much, much easier to find men who want to coach athletic teams, in any sport, for any gender, than it is to find women. (It's the same with officials.)

As pointed out above, all athletes, male or female, deserve the best possible coach for their teams, regardless of the gender of that coach. If there are 100 male candidates and 50 female, the odds of the better coach being male are presumably 2-to-1.

And it's not just about coaching: For whatever reason, males want to participate in team sports more than females do.

_________________
Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā

[summertime blues]

At one time, my brother coached both a boys' and a girls' soccer team at the high school level. He said multiple times that he'd much rather coach the girls, because they were more coachable, more aggressive, and MUCH better team players.

_________________
Don't take life so serious. It ain't nohows permanent.
It takes 3 years to build a team and 7 to build a program.--Conventional Wisdom

[TechDawgMc]

[FS02]

[Phil]

[ClayK]

[GlennMacGrady]

[PlayBally'all]