McGraw: Tourneys show inequalities that must be corrected

As far as women’s collegiate athletics have come over the last half-century, the progress doesn’t compare to how far they still have to go to reach equality with men’s programs across the country, as details from the ongoing men’s and women’s NCAA basketball championships have revealed.

Just ask Muffet McGraw, the former Lehigh University women’s basketball coach who went on to have a legendary career at Notre Dame, where she produced nine Final Four and two NCAA championship teams during a 33-year span in which her teams went 848-252 before she stepped down last year.

Nearly 50 years have passed since Title IX was passed in 1972, prohibiting sex-based discrimination in any school or other education program that receives federal money. McGraw has been involved with women’s basketball during that entire span and has pointed out that as much as it has worked to advance women’s sports programs, particularly at the college level, it’s held women back.

“Title IX was probably the best thing that happened to women,” McGraw said in an interview this week with The Morning Call. “We had 200,000 women playing sports in the ’70s, and now we have 2 million. So I think that it did what it was designed to do. It gave women opportunities that we didn’t have in the ’70s.”

But once schools began taking the law seriously in the early 1990s and actually started to make legitimate efforts to come under compliance, women coaches nearly went the way of the dinosaurs after that last big meteor struck the earth.

McGraw explains.

“When athletic departments started putting money into women’s basketball, the salaries jumped,” she said. “And so suddenly it became attractive to men who were having trouble breaking in on the men’s side. So they came over to the women’s side.

“But I think the larger issue is that the problem is opportunities for women. Athletic directors, mostly white men, hire people who look like them. And I think there’s just a little difference in the way men and women interview. I think men come across as more confident. And I think that they sell themselves in the interview, where women are a little different about how they interview, even though they are just as, if not more, competent.”

According to a New York Times report in 2019, 90% of women’s teams were coached by women. That percentage dwindled to 40% by 2019 as the money increased and men began to get bigger shares.

Diversity and inclusion are issues that must be fixed at the top, McGraw believes. She pointed back to her home state as an example.

In March, Penn State became the only FBS school to have Black football and men’s basketball coaches at the same time when it hired basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry.

Penn State’s athletic director is a woman, Sandy Barbour.

“I don’t think that’s a coincidence at all,” McGraw said, “and that’s a shame that that is the only one in the FBS.”

But what came to light during this year’s championship tournaments have been the differences between men’s and women’s programs and the access men have long had to elite facilities that women have long been deprived of receiving.

Photos and videos posted to social media went viral and illustrated how inferior women’s workout spaces were to those of the men. When outrage ensued, the NCAA reacted swiftly to upgrade the facilities at the women’s tournament in San Antonio.

But it did nothing to fix a widespread problem that’s existed for generations, as McGraw pointed out in a Tweet on March 20.

“While I appreciate the outrage,” she wrote, “the fact that there’s a huge disparity between men’s and women’s sports is hardly breaking news. We have been fighting this battle for years and frankly, I’m tired of it. Tired of turning on the TV to see ‘NCAA basketball tournament’ only to realize that of course, that means men’s. Tired of seeing Twitter accounts called March Madness and Final Four that are run by the NCAA but only cover men’s bball. Tired of having to preface everything we do with the word ‘Women’s’ which would be fine if the men had to do the same, but they don’t and when they don’t it makes us look like the JV tournament to their event.”

McGraw went on to say that women have “accepted our fate for far too long. We have taken the crumbs from the table we don’t even have a seat at and we didn’t complain. We were happy to be there. After winning a national championship, we didn’t proudly present a big check to our university, we got a pat on the back and a ‘way to go girl.’ Well, time’s up gentlemen. This generation of women expects more and we don’t stop until we get it.”

McGraw is at the forefront of a national charge to put women on more equal footing. And she’s not the only one from Lehigh University who is outraged.

Former Lehigh star C.J. McCollum, who plays for the Portland Trail Blazers, is sickened by everything he’s seen.

“I’ve seen it, I’ve seen some of the pictures that were tweeted,” McCollum told NBC Sports. “I think Sabrina [Ionescu, of the WNBA’s New York Liberty] tweeted something, I retweeted. It’s disrespectful, it’s unfair and it’s kind of symbolic of society, how society continues to disrespect women, continues to disrespect minorities in some cases and I think there’s a lot that needs to be changed. I think excuses are often made based on the amount of money being generated in certain sports but based on where we’re at in our circumstances as we’re playing in the NCAA Tournament, money is being generated.

“You have a hotel. The least you can do is provide adequate training, and I heard about some situations where women are either allowed to bring kids or be provided with certain things that are necessary from a breastfeeding standpoint, but that’s just disrespectful and despicable.”

“I think when you see it side-by-side, right now, it just seems as if we have not made any strides,” added McGraw. “In the past, I’m not sure we knew what was going on with the men’s courts [and facilities]. We were on home courts and then we were traveling and when we got to the regionals, there were nice courts and everything was good. There weren’t as many comparisons.

“But now when you see them sideby-side, think that’s one bonus of the pandemic is that it brought it to light.”

Just because McGraw has retired as a coach doesn’t mean she’s through fighting. In fact, she will have more time now to do it.

“I’m on a couple of committees and I’m trying to stay as close as I can,” she said. “I’m on the Women’s Sports Foundation Board, and they are very interested in trying to help this problem that we’re having so you know I’m available to help ... and do whatever I can.

“But it’s time for the younger women to take on this battle too, and I know [Philadelphia native and Virginia and USA team coach] Dawn Staley is somebody that has been really passionate about it. And I hope that all the women coaches [speak out], which we’ve heard from too few. We need more women’s voices.”