After Atalanta

Or maybe the more appropriate title is "youth basketball these days." Let me first state my general lack of expertise in youth sports: I am not an expert in youth sports. I've doen the requisite reading but do not have an in-depth knowledge of the workings of youth sport. Say youth sports in the form of AAU basketball, the subject (kind of) of this article which, ok, is mostly about Geno Auriemma. Coach feels like kids, I would assume girls specifically since those are the players he is interested in, are not trying very hard these days when they are on the court: "I think what's happened in the AAU world in the last 10 years or so is kids don't play to win. They just play to play. They show up at a tournament on Friday and play a couple games. They play four or five more on Saturday, then play all morning Sunday before the leave." Hmm...perhaps the problem is that these girls are playing nearly 10 games in one weekend. One of the commenters to the artic...

The current issue of ESPN Magazine, which appeared on stands this week, features a very good article on homophobia in college recruiting. The story originally was published online at the end of January and thus has been well-covered in the blogosphere. But I would be remiss not to mention it--especially since several people have emailed me the link to the story thus making me think that it's kind of my bloggerly duty. "On homophobia and recruiting" co-written by Luke Cyphers and Kate Fagan acknowledges, actually focuses on the subtly of homophobia in recruiting. It's a major point that needs to be highlighted in this way. Homophobia is not dead just because fewer people shout dyke or fag to your face (or to your back as you walk down the street). And every coach knows overt homophobia will not be accepted by most administrators and recruits these days. The language cues center mostly on a family values and morals rhetoric. Not news to many of us. But again, glad to ha...

The smaller problem: the women's basketball team is losing freshman forward Samarie Walker. Walker was number 10 in her recruiting class--the number forward in the country coming out of high school (in Ohio). But apparently there was discontent from the start. Like Elena Delle Donne (though, yes slightly different, I know), Walker thought she didn't just want to play basketball any more--or at least that is what she told people last fall. But also like Delle Donne, turns out she just doesn't want to play for UConn allegedly because of the pressure and scrutiny. It seems that UConn was her mother's dream. Walker is headed to Kentucky where she will be eligible to play in spring 2012. She has already made the move to Kentucky and is a matriculated student. She will be practicing with the team. Obviously Auriemma has spoken about the situation as have some unnamed sources. But we'll never really know what happened, in part because it likely remains pretty confusing for...

...who was up in her players' business and who ran a team with an iron fist; who was controlling and a little bit out of control... Think again. The story of coach Shann Hart, who is currently at University of Indiana-Purdue University Indianapolis, and the alleged violations of NCAA rules and general good behavior broke a while ago. It was well covered elsewhere and since I have this whole dissertation thing looming over me, I opted to bypass this one. But the news that Hart, who has now earned a spot at the center of an internal investigation by a three-person UIPUI committee, perpetuated many of these same abuses when she was head coach at American University kind of has me perplexed. With a naivete so uncharacteristic of me, I had assumed that only male coaches got away with bad behavior at one institution only to get hired (and revered) at another institution. But some not-so-deep digging into Hart's tenure at American reveals similar patterns of NCAA violations of recru...

The NCAA has been meeting this week . They decided that 7th graders are now officially "prospects." Only in basketball and only boys; but still. The organization was concerned that college coaches were attending camps for elite 7th and 8th graders, something the NCAA could not monitor or regulate because the former cutoff for a prospect was 9th grade. The DI Legislative Chairman noted that it was "just a sign of the times." What times? Apocalyptic ones? Okay, that's slightly hyperbolic. But, come on--7th grade? This seems almost like the futile performance enhancers war. Someone finds a loophole, an administrative body addresses it, then there's another loophole, another rule and so on and so on. And all the while we do nothing to address the underlying problem(s). Have we learned nothing from the Elena Delle Donne situation? So many times since I started this blog have I wanted to title a post "You big stupid head"--except that's the cleaned u...

...doesn't mean you have to use it. I'm talking about text messaging. As I wrote about not too long ago, the NCAA DI committee voted to uphold the ban on text messages to recruits. I thought it was a good move, but others think it shows the fuddy-duddy side of the NCAA. An editorial in The Baltimore Sun says the ban flies in the face in the way things are today. I agree if the writer means by that sentiment that we seem to have constant instant access to one another. Email, pagers, cell phones, Blackberrys--all these in addition to old-fashioned phones which still exist in homes and businesses. If you can't be reached instantaneously, people start to worry or grumble. But that's not what he means. The writer means that texting is now a way of life--for the younger generation anyway--and that coaches should be allowed to use it. Concerns over cost (to the receiver as well), harassment, volume, times of day can all be worked out, the editorialist states, with a little re...

I came across this very interesting story about Elena Delle Donne, considered the number one high school basketball player in the country and the top class of 2008 recruit. Burnt out by all the attention from recruiters and the media, who suggested that the battle over getting her was at the center of the recent decision by Pat Summitt to end the UConn-Tennessee regular season match-up, she has decided to take a 2-month hiatus that will end in early September. She is not taking calls, text messages; she is not playing; she gave up the opportunity to play for the USA U19 team. She is spending the rest of the summer volunteering at a school for children with disabilities. Her decision, and her willingness to talk about it, sheds some light on the craziness that is college recruiting--especially when we are talking about high profile sports and players. And perhaps it will lead to stronger and/or more specific regulations. Of course, this story is only news because Delle Donne is the numb...

LSU announced a couple of weeks ago now that they had found a new head coach for the women's basketball team. They hired Van Chancellor, a former WNBA, Olympic, and intercollegiate coach. I did not blog about it then because all I had to say about it was this: I am certainly not surprised LSU went with a male coach.* I am pleased that at least it is a coach who has substantial experience coaching women's basketball but I think LSU could have made a strong statement by hiring a woman and I worry about the repercussions the Chatman incident will have on other hiring decisions. But I had nothing else of substance to say about the decision. The New York Times, however, has delved a little deeper . The article examines the decline of female head coaches and cites the big names in the sport sociology/sport management field who all, not surprisingly, agree that the fear of predatory lesbians is a huge factor in the lack of women head coaches in intercollegiate athletics. This is still...