Interesting article

[Dan_ref]

Women's NCAA basketball....

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/09/sp...ll/09LIPS.html

[BktBallRef]

Dan, how about a copy and paste for those of us who aren't members?

[Dan_ref]

Here it is (BTW, it's free to register, I don't think I've
ever gotten spam from them...)

Copyright 2002, The New York Times COmpany

June 9, 2002

Behind the Scenes, Sexism Is Now Subtler

By ROBERT LIPSYTE

ack in the good old boy days, female coaches were allowed to use the gym whenever they wanted, so long
as it was before breakfast and after midnight. They were welcome to all the boys' old junior varsity uniforms
they needed, unlaundered. Their most experienced head coaches were paid less than the men's assistants.

After the enactment of Title IX, which is celebrating its 30th birthday, discrimination against female athletes
became less obvious. Male coaches and administrators forgot to invite female coaches to university events. If the
women showed up, the men would forget to introduce them to visiting politicians or to rich boosters.

Such petty incidents of disrespect and inconvenience can cumulatively become soul-killing. Is this what eventually
got to Cheryl Burnett, who is still struggling to understand why "my dreams have been squelched by frustrations
and discouragements?" She didn't quit over money. Burnett made more than anyone at Southwest Missouri State
University, including the president and the football coach.

She wasn't frustrated by a lack of success. During her 15 years as head women's basketball coach, the Lady
Bears won 319 games and lost 136. They went to 10 N.C.A.A. tournaments and reached the Final Four twice,
most recently in 2001.

She hadn't lost her popularity in the community. Burnett was a major celebrity in Springfield, Mo., as a jock
goddess and as a spokeswoman for United Way and other charities. Women packed her Fast-Break Club
fund-raisers, and shook out the pockets of their bosses and their husbands.

So when Burnett, 43, resigned abruptly seven weeks ago, citing philosophical differences, everyone in the
Southwest Missouri State administration expressed shock.

"A total surprise," said Dr. Darlene Bailey, who has been the associate athletic director for the past four years.
"Yes, there are always situations between coaches and administrators. She was coaching one sport and we were
administering 21. There could be differences in philosophies."

• • •

But this is not happening in the philosophy department. Burnett was hired to teach female athletes, to win games
and to attract fans. She won more games than any other basketball coach in the university's history. The Lady
Bears outdrew the Men Bears. One of her recent players, Jackie Stiles, now with the Portland Fire of the
Women's National Basketball Association, set National Collegiate Athletic Association scoring records.

"What happened to Cheryl is puzzling," said Dr. Mary Jo Wynn, who retired four years ago as associate athletic
director after 41 years in the department. "I had a wonderful experience with her. I was honored to work with
her."

Wynn, then director of women's athletics, promoted Burnett from assistant to head coach in 1987 because she
was so impressed by Burnett's enthusiasm, her work ethic, her knowledge of the game and her willingness to pay
the personal costs of becoming a champion. Burnett coached the Lady Bears to more Missouri Valley
Conference victories, 200, than any other coach.

Did she just burn out? She sounds ready to coach some more. There are no rumors of scandalous behavior. For
years, she has turned down jobs in fancier places. How can the administration keep shrugging in public, while
supporters of Burnett express outrage?

" `Philosophical differences' sounds like a nice way for Cheryl to say they lied to her," says Joyce Mahoney, a
political activist, who was inspired by her Lady Bears fandom to bring a Title IX complaint against the university.

Wynn said: "As long as we were nonentities, the men didn't pay any attention. Then, when we became more than
just there, when we won games and got attention and put people in the seats, they started — well, it's hard to talk
about because it was so subtle."

It's clearly hard for Burnett to talk about it. "It became less and less fun to go to work," she said last week in a
long and halting telephone interview.

She was concerned that publicity would make her unemployable. "Little things," she said. "I began to hear myself
described as a bad person, the *****y one, lazy and selfish and ungrateful. Demanding, that's O.K. Maybe if I had
been less successful I'd have had less of a problem. Maybe it was an ego thing with the good old boys, but that's
your word."

In conversation, Burnett sounds more wounded than angry. Because her friends include Coach Roy Williams of
Kansas, Charlie Spoonhour, a former men's S.M.S. coach now at Nevada-Las Vegas, and the present S.M.S.
men's coach, Barry Hinson, she is uncomfortable characterizing her problems as gender-related. She is aware that
the undramatic little incidents seem individually petty, and open to interpretation. But their corrosive accumulation
did her in.

In an exception to university policy, for example, the men's basketball team and many of its supporters received
rings from the university for making the Round of 16 in 1999. Meanwhile, the women's team was told it would
receive fewer rings of lesser quality for reaching the Final Four in 2001. And they have yet to get them.

Burnett's Final Four incentive bonus, a simple check to cut, was run through the payroll system in such a way that
the contracted amount was more than halved. She had to fight for what should have been hers routinely. Money
she had raised publicly for a trophy case disappeared into the system and the case was never built. Burnett
experienced the incidents as humiliating.

One incident directly affected the team. When she attempted to hire a strength and conditioning coach who had
specific expertise with female athletes, she was told there was no money in the budget. Yet after she privately
raised $20,000 in two weeks, she said the administration ordered her to use football's weight coach. That never
worked out. She said he seemed "totally offended dealing with women coaches," and quit working with the
women in midseason.

• • •

Bailey and an athletic department spokesman, Mark Stillwell, were generous in their praise for Burnett. After all,
they said, her contract kept being renewed and enhanced (her annual "package" was close to $250,000 in salary
and the usual TV and radio deals.) But they would not comment on specific matters. Both denied that a negative
recommendation that surfaced at Vanderbilt University had come from their department. Burnett was never
seriously considered for a job for which she was certainly qualified.

Wynn, who senses something "vile and evil" in Burnett's treatment, had been the coach's most powerful protector
at the university. Burnett lost that protection when Wynn retired in 1998.

Along the way, Burnett picked up two powerful fans, the 72-year-old Mahoney, who is a local golf champion,
and the 82-year-old Bee Payne-Stewart, mother of the late pro golfer. Both women are political activists,
particularly for women's issues.

"I was inspired by one of Cheryl's fund-raisers, the Free Throw Extravaganza," Mahoney said. "It was such fun. I
could imagine myself at the foul line in a real game, in the final moments. I saw the strength that women have now.
I was born in 1930 when you were only supposed to be a baby maker."

Mahoney and Payne-Stewart became aware of the disparity in the university's spending on men's and women's
sports. After several years of fruitless meetings with university officials, Mahoney filed a Title IX complaint last
year charging that the university is nowhere near mandated gender equity. The university, which has a year to
show at least an effort toward compliance, claims it was on that track anyway.

The local reaction to Mahoney's complaint was vicious. ("I was compared to Osama," she said.) But with no
economic ties to the university and married to "a retired investment guy," she felt the freedom to make the case.
As a veteran of various political, health care and arts financing campaigns, she fought right back when a radio
personality attacked her. Using the federal protection provisions for whistleblowers, she filed a second complaint;
the radio personality worked for the university and thus might be charged with seeking retribution.

Burnett said she had nothing to do with either complaint, although she was blamed for them. She says she is just
looking forward to a quiet summer. She would like to sell her home and buy a house on a lake. She wants to
coach again but refuses to engage in speculation that if she can sit out a year, a job for her will open at Kansas,
her alma mater.

Meanwhile, S.M.S. has hired a new coach and is careful to avoid any disparaging public remarks about Burnett.

"Once she's out of the news long enough," Mahoney said, "they think they'll just do away with her. But her
followers will never forget what she did here. The town came alive when the Lady Bears season started.

"You know, Title IX is peripheral, it's really about big-time sports corrupting higher education. And it's about all
those good old boys thinking, `What can two old women do?' "

[Dan_ref]

BTW, the ***** rhymes with witch.

[mick]

Originally posted by Dan_ref
BTW, the ***** rhymes with witch.

Good read, Sparky!
Thanks.