Dawn Staley put together a basketball career as good as anyone over the last few decades. She was twice national player of the year in college, won two Olympic Gold medals, had six All-Star seasons in the WNBA on her way to being voted one of the top 15 players in the history of the league by fans and is in multiple halls of fame.
After her playing career she turned to coaching, dominating at Temple before taking over South Carolina and building it into one of the country’s top programs and winning the national title in 2017.
When Dawn Staley speaks, people should listen.
And on the issue of the NCAA’s unthinkably shabby treatment of women’s basketball teams and players this year … Dawn Staley has really spoken.
The paragraph that sticks with me here — that makes me more sure than I was before that NCAA President Mark Emmert should shuffle away and disappear forever — is this:
What we now know is the NCAA’s season long messaging about “togetherness” and “equality” was about convenience and a soundbite for the moment created after the murder of George Floyd.
She’s absolutely right, of course. I’ve been writing about the NCAA’s hypocrisy for a long time, but even I’m shocked by this. I didn’t think the organization would fail to at least pretend it cared about the women’s game. The NCAA has always chased the money, but it at least knew there was a charade to uphold for the sake of public perception.
Yet here we are. Hemal Jhaveri put together an exhaustive list of all the ways the NCAA has made it clear they view women’s basketball players as second-class citizens. Please read it.
Let me intercept your lousy logic before you can even get it out there: Nothing about the difference in revenue generated by these events justifies any of this. There’s plenty of money to go around, and creating equal opportunities for athletes is supposedly one of the guiding principals of the NCAA. It’s supposedly one of the reasons players in the men’s tournament can’t get paid; that money supports other sports!
But of course that’s just a convenient justification. The truth is plain for all to see. The NCAA thinks women’s basketball players should just be happy they even get to have a tournament. That’s the clear message here.
College athletes are waking up to the exploitation inherent in this system, edging every closer to dramatic action. Meanwhile, the NCAA slow plays all the various movements to get athletes the rights to their name, image and likeness. It also continues to make absurd arguments as the Supreme Court prepares to consider the matter of compensating college athletes:
The NCAA reply brief to the Supreme Court in Alston is infuriating. Arguing agst increased compensation for educational benefits for FB MBB WBB athletes bc fans might care less about college sports is a hell of a message.
Your role is to entertain the fans we value, more than you— Victoria Jackson (@HistoryRunner) March 19, 2021
Only an organization fighting imminent change it is powerless to stop could flail and fail as badly as the NCAA has in recent days. It’s a clear sign that the power brokers in college sports are hanging on and getting out what they can while they can.
All the ways the NCAA has failed its Women’s March Madness teams