Area coaches bear witness to NCAA gender inequities
‘Wrong then, and it’s wrong today’
It was back in college at West Liberty State in the northern panhandle of West Virginia when Dan Burt first began to grasp the inequities between men’s and women’s basketball.
A member of the Hilltoppers’ men’s basketball team, Burt played for a full-time head coach with a full-time assistant coach on staff.
Their women’s basketball team was, as Burt remembered, led by the school’s baseball coach who was picking up some extra money on the side. The differences in gear and equipment were glaring, as well.
“Someone who has grown up around women’s basketball like myself, from the time I was young at summer leagues, I thought that was wrong then, and it’s wrong today,” said Burt, who recently finished his eighth season as Duquesne’s women’s basketball coach.
Some of those same disparities Burt noticed 30 years ago — and has lived through as a women’s basketball coach for the past 23 years — are now on full display for a much larger audience.
In the days leading up to the start of the NCAA Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments two weeks ago, photos and videos emerged from the two sites showing two gallingly different experiences for the athletes. In Indianapolis, the men had a spacious weight room that took up an entire hotel ballroom, complete with weights, racks and benches.
Meanwhile, in San Antonio, the women had a single dumbbell rack and a stack of yoga mats, making it more like a tiny fitness room at a Comfort Inn than an area for elite athletes competing on the biggest stage of their sport to train. The imbalances between the men and women didn’t end there, extending to the reliability of daily COVID-19 tests administered to the food they were served to the gifts in swag bags, down to the number of pieces in a puzzle they were given.
“That was just a sad attempt at a weight room,” said Suzie McConnell-Serio, a former Pitt and Duquesne coach who won a gold medal as a player at the 1988 Olympics following a decorated career at Penn State. “Honestly, I think they may have been better off not having anything at all as opposed to what they did display.”
Those various anecdotes and images elicited a passionate, visceral reaction. The photos and videos told a plain, easily understandable story in a way a financial spreadsheet or a lengthy study couldn’t.
“How is that possible? How could you take that [weight room] and put that there and then take the women’s facility and put that in there and walk away from it and say, ‘OK, we’re good to go’?” Robert Morris coach Charlie Buscaglia said. “The first thing I thought about was not so much about the disparity. To me, it was, ‘Is that the facility that you want to provide for a Division I athlete, period?’ ”
While much of the country was surprised, local women’s college basketball coaches weren’t.
“That’s the hardest thing: These kids work just as hard. They put in as many hours. They’ve had to deal with the same COVID world the men have had to, and then that’s what they see: that they’re viewed as less than,” Pitt coach Lance White said. “That’s a shame. It’s not right.”
The sizable gaps have raised questions and prompted introspection.
The men’s tournament is more profitable — it earned $864.6 million in 2019 while the women’s tournament lost $2.8 million, according to NCAA figures released last week — and has a far more lucrative television contract. But when it comes to fair and basic treatment, how much should that matter, especially for a nonprofit organization that touts itself for providing athletic opportunities for unpaid amateur athletes? And is that financial gulf a reflection of years of neglect, of not investing in and promoting women’s basketball in the same way it has for the men’s game?
At the NCAA level, the organization has launched an independent gender-equity review of its championships across all divisions and sports. The Women’s Basketball Coaches Association sent a letter to NCAA president Mark Emmert stating the external review was inadequate and, instead, there should be a “Commission on Gender Inequity in College Sports” led by individuals selected by the WBCA and NCAA.
Locally, the story is different from a facilities standpoint, as those setups are handled by individual schools, not a single monolith like the NCAA.
The men’s and women’s teams at Pitt, Duquesne, Robert Morris and Penn State all share the same weight rooms and practice courts, all of which have been built in the past 25 years. White, Burt and Buscaglia all praised their employers for the efforts they’ve made to make things as equitable as they can. At Pitt, there’s even a strength and conditioning coach who works exclusively with the women’s basketball team.
“It’s great to see that level of support — nutrition support, strength support, athletic training support,” said Chris Hoppe, Pitt’s executive associate athletic director. “We try to keep it, if at all possible, identical.”
Still, women’s basketball doesn’t get anything close to the same kind of financial support as its male counterpart.
During the 2018-19 academic year, the most recent year of data provided by the Department of Education, Pitt spent $11.01 million on men’s basketball and $5.95 million on women’s basketball; Penn State spent $7.34 million and $6.16 million, respectively. At Duquesne, $5.61 million was spent on men’s basketball, compared to $2.36 million on women’s basketball; Robert Morris spent $2.66 million and $1.56 million, respectively.
The percentage difference in budgets between Penn State’s men’s and women’s basketball programs is the lowest among the Big Ten’s 14 schools, aided in some part by having the smallest men’s basketball budget. Pitt’s is the sixth lowest in the 15- school ACC. Duquesne’s is 11th lowest in the 14-school Atlantic 10, and Robert Morris’ is the ninth lowest in the 12-school Horizon League. Penn State’s women’s basketball budget is the highest in the Big Ten. Pitt’s is fifth in the ACC. Duquesne’s is 10th in the Atlantic 10, and Robert Morris’ is second in the Horizon League.
The gap between men’s and women’s basketball expenditures can be explained by varying amounts of money devoted to coaches’ salaries, travel accommodations and game-day expenses, among other things.
Part of the challenge in overcoming that rift is historical. The first NCAA women’s tournament wasn’t until 1982, a year in which the men’s tournament championship was already being played in a domed football stadium housing 61,612 fans and aired before a national television audience. The men’s game, Burt said, got what amounted to a “50- to 60 -year head start” to generate interest and build a marketing machine.
There have been moments of progress, when it seemed like a long-awaited breakthrough was coming. In the 1990s, for example, the WNBA launched, a high-profile rivalry between the programs at Connecticut and Tennessee began to blossom, and Sheryl Swoopes, who starred at Texas Tech while White was a student assistant there, became the first woman in American sports history to get her own signature sneaker.
There’s a sense, though, things have plateaued.
“Throughout my career, you’ve seen it, and you’ve pushed, and you’ve pushed,” White said. “But still, 20 or 30 years later, it’s still not equitable.”
A budget report released by the NCAA showed the organization allocated $28 million for the 2019 Division I men’s basketball tournament, nearly double the amount it budgeted for the women’s tournament. The lack of equity includes the payouts schools receive for advancing in the NCAA tournament. By winning a game, a men’s team earns its conference a unit, which is worth about $300,000. A women’s team, even if it wins the entire tournament, doesn’t receive anything.
That chasm goes beyond financial figures.
The NCAA’s trademarked “March Madness” brand is exclusively tied to the men’s tournament, an issue raised by South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley. Other coaches, including White, have pointed to how men’s basketball hardly ever needs the gender modifier women’s basketball does. To so many, it’s simply “college basketball,” a perceptual hurdle that needs to be cleared. There’s disparate media coverage, as well, from the size of television contracts to the number of stories and resources media outlets like newspapers devote to the women’s game versus the men’s.
“If you’ve been in women’s basketball for a significant length of time, you see the differences, and you feel the differences,” Burt said. “It certainly is disappointing. The women’s tournament doesn’t generate the same type of revenue as the men but still generates significant revenue where we should not be considered an afterthought.”
The impact unequal treatment has on players is pronounced. It’s hard, if not impossible, for them not to notice.
“It makes our athletes feel that they aren’t as good or that they’re less than,” White said. “I hate that. It’s really hard for a coach to try to make it right or try to appease that. It’s just wrong.”
Whether this outrage is temporary and this increased consciousness is fleeting remains to be seen.
All three local Division I women’s coaches are determined to take steps to make sure it’s not. Burt believes players and coaches within the sport need to be more personally invested in helping grow it, actions that can be as simple as attending local high school or small college games. The visibility thrust upon this year’s women’s tournament could help attract new viewers, especially as freshmen phenoms like Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark continue to shine.
“If the mentality is in that area that nobody really cares, you can go out and be really competitive and really good, have a great team, have a great culture and have a great program, you’re still not going to draw on women’s basketball and people aren’t going to put money back into it,” Buscaglia said. “When you have a situation where that’s the culture and that’s the identity of the program, we’re in a world where people are saying, ‘Why are we going to invest in something that’s not a good investment when it comes to the business side of things and the excitement side of things?’ I think that’s where you looked at it and saw a lot throughout these years with the inequality.”
There are barometers of obvious interest in women’s basketball, measurements that make the inequitable treatment all the more indefensible. At least 3.5 million viewers have tuned into each of the past three NCAA women’s championship games. The 2019 women’s Final Four set attendance records, with more than 20,000 fans present for the championship game. This year, ESPN has shown all of the NCAA women’s tournament games.
“That has been tremendous,” McConnell-Serio said. “I think that’s exciting for women’s basketball.”
The sport’s growing popularity is notable — especially as it relates to its star players, who have an impact and a following that goes far beyond the court. And in that, the greatest source of optimism might be found.
The video that helped the weight room disparity go viral came from standout Oregon forward Sedona Prince, who posted it to TikTok, where she has more than 900,000 followers. Twins Haley and Hanna Cavinder on Fresno State’s women’s basketball team have 2.8 million followers. On Instagram, Bueckers and star Louisville freshman Hailey Van Lith each have about 700,000 followers.
Those followings have turned them into brands of sorts who could profit handsomely off of potential NCAA rule changes regarding name, image and likeness, an issue too often presented through the lens of the major-revenue sports of football and men’s basketball. More than that, it gives them a voice and a level of influence that can bring about change, some of which is long overdue. The past two weeks provided just a small glimpse of the control and sway they wield.
“Smart, empowered women with access to cellphones and social media followings are going to change the world and expose inequities,” Burt said. “It’s as simple as that.”