But it is all a sham. A complete sham and a big flim-flam. It's a monumental hoax.
25 years ago when I coached, I joked about Title IX, only to have an old coach tell me, "wait til you have daughters and you will think differently." So here I am with a 16 year old daughter and I realize that regardless of Title IX or any other legislation or purple lipstick you put on the pig, women's sports get shafted.
Oh sure, athletic directors can find enough energy to recruit 15 coaches to help out with the football team, but cant find enough money, time or energy to find one qualified coach for women's (you name the sport.) Often its just an assistant football coach who is wasting everybodies time coaching the sport just for the measly supplement.
You can tell the schools that truly invest in women's sports (Kings Mountain, Hendersonville). They understand that our girls need great role models, people that understand the female psyche and also someone qualified to teach a sport. But most idiot AD's find a baby sitter. A make believe coach. A pretend wanna-be coach.
And this is an issue across the board. Look at who coaches the girls and boys sports teams at your middle school. Study who is coaching the JV and Varsity sports teams at your high school. And go find out about pay scales and recruiting budgets for the men's and women's sports teams at a close by university.
If we find obvious inequity we ought to lock that AD in a room with Pat Summit for 30 minutes while she rips him a new one.
My solution is each school should have an AD for men's sports and an AD for women's sports. Let each AD find the best qualified coach possible.
My hat goes off to the AD's that have a vision for all sports and treat women's athletics with the respect it deserves. There are so many great life lessons we learn through competition and the value of our athletes must be equal, whether they are on the gridiron or the tennis court.
Again, most schools can find 15 tobacco chewing, high pocketed, cussing and fussing, can't teach anything football coaches, but we can't find a match for any women's sports? Pisses me off, can you tell?
"Hey coach, Pat Summit's on line 1 for you!"
