Too Hot to Blog

Yankees captain Derek Jeter meets C. Vivian Stringer, head coach of the Rutgers women's basketball team, before Friday night's game. (Julie Jacobson/AP)
I know I've used this a post title before, but really, 94 degrees in June? It's like living in a swamp.

Here are some updates on stories we've covered previously:

Anucha Browne Sanders has finally landed another job, as the senior Associate Athletic Director for marketing and senior women's administrator for the University at Buffalo (what in the old days we would have called SUNY Buffalo, I guess UB sounds trendier.)

A New York investor and ten other business leaders have offered to put up Genarlow Wilson's $1 million bond so that he can be free pending appeal. Even Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker's pastor thinks Genarlow Wilson should be released, but still he rots in jail. What a waste.

Rutgers women's basketball team and coach Vivian Stringer have been awarded the 2007 Irv Grossman Award of Merit by the Collegiate Women Sports Awards Program at Columbia University, for their play as well as their dignity and grace under pressure during the Imus imbroglio. They've also been nominated for an ESPY. They were also honored by the Yankees at Yankee Stadium two weeks ago. Turns out Derek Jeter is a big supporter and wrote a letter to the team after l'affaire Imus.

Pokey Chatman settled her lawsuit against LSU.

Boston College Women's Ice Hockey Coach 'Resigns'

Photo: USA Hockey: In his fourth season at Boston College, head coach Tom Mutch has everyone on the same page.


Hours after the Boston Herald began making inquiries about sexual text messages found on the cell phone of Boston College women's ice hockey's leading scorer, head coach Tom Mutch abruptly resigned. Mutch had been named New England coach of the year and had led the team to the Frozen Four for the first time.

Apparently following the LSU model for crisis management, Boston College originally issued a statement saying Mutch was leaving to pursue other interests, and thanking Mutch for his contributions to the program. Did they think the story wouldn't get out?

The messages were on a cell phone that the player had given to a teammate, who discovered the messages. They were written from the player to Mutch. The Herald reports:

One source familiar with the messages described them as “filthy. They were very sexual in nature.”

Coach Mutch is 39 years old, and married to a 31-year-old former ice hockey player he met while he was her coach with the women's Olympic team in 1998; they have a 7-month-old baby. The player is a 19-year-old freshman. [I see no reason to name her here. You can read her name on the links. She's been humiliated enough, IMHO.] I bet her parents back home, entrusting their daughter to this guy, are furious, and rightly so. I'm sure his wife is furious, also.

These coaches who marry former players that they met while coaching them should be carefully monitored. They have either crossed or come close to crossing the line in the past. Don't schools do the math? Nine years ago his 31-year-old wife was 22 years old, the same age as many Boston College seniors. Schools must be more careful.

The Herald also reports:

A 2005 profile of Mutch in the BC publication “The Heights” said he was fond of singing Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” to his players.

In retrospect, this is seen as a red flag. I would say, the fact that he is married to a former player is a much bigger red flag.

Boston Herald: BC hockey coach quits after sexy messages surface

Boston Herald: Students mum on beleaguered BC hockey coach

Boston Globe: BC's Mutch quits amid allegations
Coach abruptly leaves women's hockey job

TheHeights.com: Mutch resigns amid controversy
Allegations of inappropriate relationship with player surface

after atalanta: Another player/coach incident

Bostonist.com: Too Mutch: BC Coach Resigns in Sex Scandal

Basketball News

Nothing Imus-related here. Really!

Harvard hires a new men's basketball coach, less than two weeks after the Boston Globe reported that Harvard has no black coaches for their 41 varsity sports. The new hire: Tommy Amaker, the former Duke All-American and coach of Seton Hall and Michigan. Yes, he's black. Good for them.

LSU has hired Pokey Chatman's replacement: It is Van Chancellor, the former Olympic, Houston Comets of the WNBA, and Ole Miss coach. Chancellor has announced that he will keep Bob Starkey, the white male assistant who took over after Chatman left, and would consider keeping the other female assistants including Carla Berry, the coach who blew the whistle on Chatman.

My sister predicted to me a month ago that Pokey Chatman's replacement would be a white male, and that a lot of the southern schools with coaching vacancies would hire white males. On this one she was right. But Texas hired Gail Goestenkors (away from Duke) and Duke offered their job to former Duke player Joanne Boyle (who turned down the job and is staying at Cal.) It will be interesting to see what happens at Kentucky, where longtime Pat Summit assistant Micki DeMoss unexpectedly resigned after four years. She put Kentucky on the women's basketball map; hope she enjoys retirement.

Rutgers in NCAA Women's Basketball Final

Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer yells to her team during the first half of the women's semifinal basketball game against Louisiana State at the Final Four Sunday, April 1, 2007, in Cleveland.(AP Photo/Mark Duncan)
Rutgers over LSU in the first semi-final, 59-35.

The ESPN announcers kept talking about sainted Bob Starkey and what a great job he's done taking over for Pokey Chatman at LSU, but that he doesn't want to be a head coach. However, they never mentioned the fact that his lack of desire to be a head coach was killing LSU in this game. Tale of the tape: Rutgers had two great head coaches (C. Vivian Stringer and Marianne Stanley, her assistant) and LSU had a head coach who didn't ever want to be a head coach. It shows in the final score.

NYTimes had a nice profile of Marianne Stanley this week. But how do they miss the most important part of her coaching history? She's the coach who got fired (by USC) for daring to ask to be paid equally to the men's coach. Women coaches never forget it. When she can't get a head job in the game, great coaches like Tara VanDerveer and C. Vivian Stringer hired her as their assistant. The New York Times ignores women's basketball 99% of the time; maybe they just don't have a reporter on staff who knows the game well enough to know this essential fact.

ESPN on LSU

New article out today on the Pokey Chatman situation at LSU; someone told ESPN reporter Elizabeth Merrill that the last telephone call Pokey Chatman made from the phone in her LSU office was to former player Marie Ferdinand, who graduated from LSU in 2001. Is someone dropping a hint here? Also names Chatman's attorney as "Mary Olive Pierson, a high-profile litigator in Baton Rouge." (Photo of Pierson from an unrelated case.)

Dykes

Am I the only person on earth who thinks it's hysterically funny that the LSU-Connecticut game is being called by an announcer named "Jimmy Dykes"? Does God have a sense of humor or what?

No Excuses

The Pokey Chatman saga at LSU continues to play out slowly and gets more and more ugly. ESPN is reporting two significant facts: (1) the player with whom Chatman had a sexual affair was a player on the team at the time; and (2) assistant women's basketball coach Carla Berry is the person who reported Chatman to LSU officials.

If Chatman had a sexual affair with one of her players while she was their coach, she had to go. If this is the allegation, I am amazed that LSU accepted her resignation and is paying her until April 30th. You would think that with allegations of this nature and this enormity, that the school would have taken immediate and decisive action. Instead, they initially allowed Chatman to resign and to issue a statement that she was leaving to pursue other career opportunities. (Hmmm. Maybe that's why the LSU board tabled a vote on giving AD Skip Bertman a new deal.) She should be pursuing something outside the realm of coaching young, vulnerable athletes. Maybe she can get a job with Granny Basketball in Iowa. Those women wouldn't take any crap from her.

I feel a lot of resentment towards Chatman. Her actions sully all of women's basketball. They reinforce the absolutely false stereotype that lesbians (or gay men, for that matter) are sexual predators who shouldn't be allowed to work with kids because they'll be cruising them. If there were statistics on this kind of thing I'm sure they'd show that heterosexual coaches are just as likely to violate social norms and get involved with players.

On the other hand, I feel sorry for Chatman and all the other people who live their lives in the closet. I only know of one women's basketball coach, Tara VanDerveer (Stanford, former US Olympic coach), who is out as a lesbian. (And I'm not even sure if she's really "out", see this Washington Post article on negative recruiting.) There are certainly many other coaches in Pokey Chatman's situation: lesbians who are cowering in the closet, afraid to live their lives out loud.

Imagine what her life was like. She is gay, but pretending to be straight. Think of all the things she does to keep in the closet. She doesn't hang out with gay friends in public. Maybe she is even afraid to have friends who are out of the closet. She doesn't go to gay clubs or gay events. She doesn't acknowledge her partner (if she has one) in public in any way. This is no basis for a relationship, so her partner leaves her. Or maybe she has never had the courage to have a partner at all. Eventually, her life becomes constricted to one thing: basketball; and one group of people: her team. This becomes her social life. These are the people she spends time with. When she leaves the team, she goes back into her protective shell, but on the basketball court she can be, for the most part, herself.

And sports are intense, intimate, expressive, and emotional. (If you doubt that, go watch the Celtic fans singing in the post below.) Just the dangerous mix where a repressed gay person can make the biggest mistake of her life, on the public stage, and lose everything as a result.

I am writing all of this based on what has been reported. You hope it isn't true. But if it is, even though I feel sorry for Chatman, there are no excuses. She had choices and made all the wrong ones. Now she can do what she should have done from the beginning. Live out loud, be who she is, and walk on with her life.

This Makes Me Sad

Bill Feig/Associated Press

Pokey Chatman resigned over suspected inappropriate conduct with a former player.
Pokey Chatman has resigned as coach of the LSU women's basketball team, reportedly because she had what has been termed an "inappropriate relationship" with a former player.

What all does that mean? Obviously, it means she's gay. In Louisiana, just having a gay relationship is enough to get fired and land in jail. But if the relationship began while the player was still in college, it's just wrong. There are power dynamics involved when a coach begins a relationship with a player. The coach has power, and the player doesn't; therefore, the coach must say no.

Interestingly, most often these player/coach relationships involve women players. Male players are almost never found to have been involved in a relationship with a coach. Why is this? Because jobs coaching men aren't available to women. Once Title IX forced colleges and universities to pay men's and women's coaches on a more equivalent basis, those women's jobs became desirable. But women have never been hired to coach men on more than a token basis. So at this point 75% of all coaching jobs are available to men (100% of jobs coaching men's teams, 50% of jobs coaching women) and 25% are available to women. So it's rare to find a female coach charged with an inappropriate relationship; when the coach is female, it usually involves a lesbian relationship.

We see many women involved with or married to former male coaches. Prominent examples: Jackie Joyner Kersee, married her coach Al Joyner, who she met while he was her track coach at UCLA; Julie Foudy is married to Ian Sawyers, who was a coach in her development league when she was 18; Brandi Chastain is married to her former coach at Santa Clara. Foudy and Chastain's marriages were discussed in the excellent Sports Illustrated article on this issue, "Passion Plays", by Grant Wahl. There's no official copy of the article on the web, but if you go to this link and scroll down to Feb 11th, 2003, 06:49 PM, it's reproduced there.

As an attorney, I look at this from an employment discrimination perspective. A coach should never be in a relationship with a player while they are coaching them, because that is an abuse of the coach's power over the player, and makes all the decisions the coach makes about that player suspect. Why did she get so much playing time, etc.? On the other hand, coaches and players do fall in love, and if they happen to pursue that relationship after graduation, there's no problem. The problem is those years while attraction exists in the midst of the coach/player relationship. The coach, the older, more experienced person, is expected by society to be the bigger person and hold off until the coach/player relationship is no more. If Pokey Chatman was involved with a player while she was on the team, Chatman had to go. But we don't know that yet. If she began a relationship with a player after that player left the team, then she's being discriminated against for being gay.

As a sideline, the LSU AD, Skip Bertman, is a real moron. Here's his quote in the initial round of stories about Chatman's resignation:

"The girl did what she did and LSU had no control over that," Bertman said, referring to Chatman.

The girl? Chatman is 37 years old and has coached for LSU for 15 years. Give me a break.

ESPN: Sources: Chatman quit amid sexual misconduct claims

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Chatman to leave LSU immediately
INAPPROPRIATE ACTIONS MAY HAVE LED TO RESIGNATION

NYTIMES: L.S.U.’s Chatman Won’t Coach in N.C.A.A.

I'm Talkin Basketball

Shoulda-been-MVP Kristi Toliver (5' 7") hits a 3-pointer over 6' 7" Allison Bales to send Maryland-Duke to overtime

Fantastic weekend of basketball here in Boston. Saturday night Coach Mom & I went into town to meet up with my sister. We had dinner at Skipjack's in Copley Square. While waiting for a table, seats at the bar opened up, so we got to watch George Mason lose to Florida in the first game of the men's semifinals. I love my family. At one point I asked, "Where did [Florida coach] Billy Donovan play in college?". My sister & Coach Mom answered in unison "PROVidence" (in a tone that said, 'you idiot', which I accepted as my due), and Coach Mom said, "For Rick Pitino." Doesn't everybody know that? In my family they do. Idiot.

I got to have sushi and everyone loved their dinners. We walked on Newbury St. afterwards and windowshopped art and clothes. We left sis who was heading to a WNBA party & headed back to central Mass.

For Sunday's games we picked up my friend's kids, ages 14 and 11. They were excited to go to their first Final Four. We got to the Garden pretty easily, parked in the underground parking garage ($23, ouch), and headed upstairs. I stood in line at the undermanned souvenir stand (why do they only have two people working these booths? They could have sold out the first day with more salespeople.) for 20 minutes and got the kids Final Four shirts with their favorite team's logo (North Carolina and Duke) and a ticket lanyard and a pin for Coach Mom. Then we got hotdogs & drinks and headed up to our seats in the balcony. I was pleased to see that no alcohol was being served. It was a very family atmosphere, especially if you come from a family with lots of tall women (like I do.) I always feel so short at the Final Four. I have to keep reminding myself, You are the average American woman. Not short, average.

Our seats were in Balcony section 307, row 5, in the corner on the same side as the benches. We had a good overview of the court, but I was glad we brought binoculars so we could see the player's faces.

The first semi was a barnburner. We were rooting for North Carolina and Ivory Latta, but she got hurt in the first half and was never very effective. Reportedly, she hyperextended her left knee. She was carried of the court so we were surprised when she returned. Maryland's freshman guard Kristi Toliver was guarding Latta and she used her 4" height advantage to great advantage. She just wouldn't let Latta drive on her which really took a lot away from Latta's game. Maryland ran a couple of clear-out plays where Toliver isolated Latta and drove on her, scoring with ease. Toliver finished with 14 points, as did Latta, but that was advantage: Maryland, as Latta averaged 18.2 during the regular season, while Toliver averaged 11.5.

It was a very physical game. Maryland substituted in a post player, Jade Perry, whose sole purpose seemed to be putting a body hard on North Carolina's talented post player, Erlana Larkins. Larkins finished with 28 points to lead NC but she took a lot of punishment. The terrible officiating crew from the Pac-10 didn't help matters, letting assault go on in the paint while calling touch fouls on outside shooters. They were consistent -- consistently terrible, as was all the officiating in the tournament. (Sally Jenkins of the WaPo says, fire all the officials and start all over.) Some fans from the Pac-10 were sitting in front of us & they groaned when the officials walked out onto the court.

North Carolina never was able to cut the gap and when Larkins fouled out with less than a minute remaining, she went over to shake hands with Duke coach Gail Goestenkors and the game was over.

Between games we met up with my sister after rendevousing via cellphone. (We passed Georgia coach Andy Landers on our way.) She moved us down to centercourt, 7th row seats for the second game. What a difference! We were behind the Duke bench. Allison Bales is huge. Unfortunately it wasn't much of a game. Duke put a smothering double-teaming defense on Siemone Augustus, and no one else from LSU stepped into the void. LSU's 45 points was the lowest point total ever in a semi-final game. It was such a blow-out that we left early with 4 minutes left on the clock, something we never do, but it was almost midnight, and the kids had school the next day.

Why do they start the games so late? The only reason the kids got to see the game is because they were there. If they were home not surrounded by screaming fans they would have been asleep on the couch. How can you build a fan base when the games are played while they're catching zzzz's?

The final last night was great. On our way in Coach Mom recognized former longtime Maryland coach Chris Weller, so we stopped and congratulated her. I'm sure it was a bittersweet moment, as she built the program, then got run out of town by AD Debbie Yow. I'm sure they had her resign or something like that to save face, but everyone knew what had happened.

I couldn't really root for Maryland. First, Maryland AD Debbie Yow, credited with the huge expansion of the Maryland women's basketball program, has been no friend of Title IX. It was Yow, a member of Bush's Title IX commission, who proposed allowing schools to comply with Title IX by offering as few as 43% of scholarships to women, even though women make up 55.5% of undergraduates nationwide. Add to my dislike of Yow all the allegations of recruiting violations swirling around the Maryland women's basketball program. Who wants to have the first women's basketball championship revoked because of later-adjudged recruiting violations?

So Duke it was. The building was packed -- well, maybe there were a few empty yellow seats in the balconies, but at least 16,000 people in the building. The crowd was wild. And Duke came out hot, packing in the defense, denying Crystal Langhorne and Laura Harper, Maryland's leading scorers in the semis, good looks inside. Duke led by as much as 13 points in the first half, but while Maryland continued to play poorly, Duke didn't take advantage and put them away. They got sloppy, threw away passes, missed layups, and at half Maryland was only down by 10.

Maryland hung in there, hung in there, and then with about 8 minutes left in the game, they found their stroke. Duke fell apart. Mistie Williams, who had led them in scoring in the semis, only had 3 points last night, and by the end she was passing up all open shots. No one from Duke seemed to want the ball during the last five minutes or in the overtime.

When Toliver hit her three-pointer with 6 seconds left to tie the game, the Garden went wild. People were shouting, throwing up their hands, shaking their heads, and just screaming. I just knew Duke was dead. Duke has a well-earned reputation as chokers. Goestenkors has built a great program at Duke, but she seems like a tense person, and her teams always play tense in the big games. Exactly what they did last night. Their best player last night was guard Lindsey Harding, but she committed a senseless foul in the final minute to take herself off the court. Mo Currie finally hit two shots in the OT, but never touched the ball again on offense. Duke had one final chance, but the shot was off balance, and off target. Duke melted off the floor, while Maryland streamed onto it, exulting in their improbable win.

Laura Harper was named Tournament MVP. She did lead Maryland with 25 points over North Carolina, but in the championship she had 16 points (same as Toliver and Shea Doron). Toliver only had 14 points vs. North Carolina, but she was guarding Latta, NC's best player, and she took her out of the game. Without her cool three-pointer, Maryland does not go to overtime, does not win the title. Therefore, Toliver was my MVP. She got robbed, IMHP.

Congratulations to Maryland. Fear the turtle!


ESPN: Terps take title and there may be more on the way

SI: Start of something big
Toliver, Maryland have bright future after taking title