Extracurriculars

I’ve not found many more refreshing athletes to cover than Brandi Chastain.

And I’ve never been enamored with Republican politicians whose voting records are a predictable laundry list of all the issues, economic and social, that I couldn’t be more opposed to.

But when California Assemblyman Chris Norby expressed his concern this week over court interpretations of Title IX, it became a national story, and for all the wrong reasons.

With Chastain in the House chamber for a 40th anniversary Title IX recognition ceremony, Norby soured the celebrations with some rare public candor:

“We need to be honest about the effects of what I believe are faulty court interpretations or federal enforcement of Title IX, because it has led to the abolition of many male sports across the board in [California’s public universities]. And that was never the intention of this, to have numerical equality. It was never the intention to attain equality by reducing opportunities for the men.”

Chastain couldn’t say anything because Norby was not speaking at a public hearing. Instead, she winced, in an image that was widely reproduced in news outlets all across America.

A sampling of the breathless media response to someone saying something so terrible about Title IX:

Chastain “managed not to blow her top.” She even “kept her cool.” On the other hand, she “bristles.”

Can someone actually be all those things at the same time? Especially if there’s wincing involved? Ah, I digress.

According to the OC Weekly, Norby “inserts soccer shoe in mouth.”

ESPN.com: “Brandi Chastain winces at Title IX flak.”

Poor Brandi! Muzzled! By Flak!

The San Jose Mercury News wrote that Chastain “had to endure” Norby’s remark, adding that “it’s shameful that there are still people out there who think Title IX was a bad thing.”

Except that Norby neither said nor implied such a thing. He made it clear he objected to compliance methods that call for numerical provisions to achieve “equality,” which he accurately pointed out was not the original intent of the law, or the sports regulations that came later.

(If you want to get an idea of the absurd ramifications of a 1993 California NOW Title IX consent decree affecting sports programs at public universities in that state, here’s a recent example.)

Norby didn’t say anything about scuttling the law. But he learned that if you question the Title IX establishment at all, you’re in for a snoot full of blowback.

The Title IX blog: “Brandi Chastain witnesses backlash.” The predictable gender feminist term, trotted out right on cue, and reflexively used to describe any dissenting response to the party line.

Norby is a Republican from the conservative hotbed of Orange County, where he was a supervisor before being elected to Sacramento. I could not imagine ever voting for the so-called “wonk of the right,” especially with so many elected officials of similar ilk in my midst in the Deep South. But I share enough of a libertarian bent to see that he was able to get to the heart of the argument often made by critics of Title IX:

Title IX is a good law, with a bad interpretation.

This is my complaint; not the statute itself. The need for the law remains, because inequities do exist. The way it is being enforced has had a harmful effect on some male athletes in some sports. Not all, and not across the board. But the impact has been strong enough to warrant a closer examination that the Title IX powers-that-be simply will not tolerate.

Norby was condemned not just for what he said, but for saying anything at all.

Later, Chastain was interviewed by The Daily, explaining that her response to Norby would have been this:

“I think there’s missed perspective on what Title IX is. It’s not men’s sports against women’s sports. Let’s be honest about this — men’s football is a big money machine and so there’s a lot of money spent and other sports don’t have the luxury of spending it.”

Unmuzzled, at last!

Of course. It’s all football’s fault. The “other sports” don’t make the money; I invite Chastain or anyone else still clinging to this narrative to check out the high cost of non-revenue sports, for men and women, just at the University of Minnesota. This is where real “arms race” in college sports gets alarming.

The Daily story closed out with an interesting observation from Chastain about the need to “revisit”  the law “on a regular basis, [since] there will be people who don’t understand the history or where it comes from and that’s dangerous.”

I’ve been calling for that for a good long while, making specific suggestions about reworking Title IX here and here that might get the compliance methods back to what the law had in mind in the first place.

For Title IX absolutists, however, “revisiting” the issue isn’t about giving it a critical look. It’s about having another chance to restate their talking points about the law, and daring anyone to disagree.

Last week USA Today wrote about the growing popularity of flag football for girls in high schools, especially in Florida, where it is a state championship sport.

Flag football also has been introduced at the varsity level in Washington, D.C., and is growing as a club sport in parts of Texas.

More girls coming out to play sports — this is a good thing, no?

No, if you’re an official mouthpiece for a leading women’s organization. Neena Chaudry, senior counsel, National Women’s Law Center:

“You can add sports as recreational or intramural — it’s great to have activities to help girls be physically active. If you’re going to add a varsity sport, it is relevant if that sport is going to provide the same opportunities as the boys have. So, to then add flag football as opposed to a sport, like volleyball or soccer, that does allow girls to get college scholarships is not equitable.”

Nancy Hogshead-Makar, director of advocacy for the Women’s Sports Foundation, echoes Chaudry:

“The thing that makes sports valuable is having a goal and postponing the short-term. If you want to have fun, you don’t train for the Olympics. What purpose would anybody have to swim four hours a day if they didn’t have a long-term goal?”

Hold on now. I’ve never seen anywhere in my reading of Title IX a stipulation about high school sports being added to accommodate athletic scholarships at the college level. Just because flag football doesn’t translate doesn’t mean it should be nixed from consideration in high schools for Title IX purposes.

On the other hand, women’s sports activists have endorsed the addition of college sports for women — such as rugby and bowling — that have little to no interest or organization at the high school level, just to meet Title IX demands.

Both of these women are lawyers, and I’ve heard them and others like them say often that the law is meant simply to give females an opportunity to play. It says nothing at all about whether such activity is required to be a gateway to a college scholarship.

The reaction of these activists smacks of the fight over varsity cheerleading at Quinnipiac University. A federal judge ruled in 2010 that it wasn’t a sport for Title IX purposes, satisfying the urgings of women’s sports activists when the Connecticut school dropped its women’s volleyball program.

The latest crusade from the NWLC is to go after school districts that aren’t doing right by Title IX, and here are some school districts that are trying to address those disparities. We have two activities here, in cheerleading and flag football, that are generating some considerable interest from young females, and the activists are resisting this.

Is it because these sports are considered just a bit too traditionally feminine?

The sport that Pat Summitt helped transform is going through a massive upheaval just as she steps away from the sideline.

The designation last month of the Tennessee Lady Vols legend as “head coach emeritus” added to the more than 60 head coach openings in women’s Division I college basketball in one of the busiest hiring off-seasons in years.

After 27 years as Pat Summitt's assistant, Holly Warlick is the new Tennessee head coach.

While the Tennessee job was immediately filled with the appointment of longtime associate head coach Holly Warlick, Summitt’s departure comes as a great generational shift continues in the coaching ranks.

With nearly 1,100 wins, eight NCAA titles, multiple SEC crowns and dozens of Olympians and All-Americans in 38 seasons, Summitt was one of the last coaches dating back to the days of the AIAW, before the NCAA sanctioned women’s sports in 1981.

All that’s left of that small group with 30-plus years as head coaches are Vivian Stringer of Rutgers, Tara VanDerveer of Stanford, Georgia’s Andy Landers, Jim Foster of Ohio State, North Carolina’s Sylvia Hatchell and a few others.

By the time Geno Auriemma’s heralded incoming class finishes up at UConn, he’ll be in that club too, and he might well have surpassed Summitt’s national championship haul.

The coaching personalities who shaped women’s college basketball in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, with greater resources and media exposure, are giving way to a new breed with the additional burden — and I cringe to write this cliché — of greater expectations than their predecessors have ever known.

The money being spent on the sport is colossal and growing. More than 70 Division I programs budgeted at least $2 million for women’s basketball for the 2010-11 season, with 30 of those earmarking at least $3 million. (As these numbers indicate, 228 of the 338 D1 schools are into seven-figure spending.)

Summitt and Auriemma have led the pack of a handful of million-dollar coaches. The next one figures to be Kentucky’s Matthew Mitchell, who signed a nearly $8 million extension last week that makes him the highest-paid coach in the SEC. A good BCS job pays in the mid-six figures these days, as Purdue coach Sharon Versyp’s extension last week revealed.

The number of schools getting serious about women’s basketball increases. Just in my backyard in the ACC, Duke and Maryland remain strong, but in recent years Georgia Tech and Miami have burst on the scene, with hungry, extremely energetic and ambitious coaches in MaChelle Joseph and Katie Meier, respectively.

College stars in their playing days in the early NCAA era, as coaches they truly enjoy recruiting and have relished building national powerhouses despite what were seen as difficult odds. Joseph and Meier are 40ish, part of a generation of Title IX beneficiaries primed to step forward and command the coaching spotlight.

Miami coach Katie Meier, a former playing standout at Duke. (Photo by Arlene Langer, IDI Sports)

Yet some highly accomplished coaches not much older than them are hitting the wall. Gail Goestenkors cited burnout as a factor in her decision to resign from Texas after five seasons. Here’s a million-dollar coach whose enormous expectations for herself and the iconic Longhorns program may have been unrealistic, given the national championship success of Baylor and Texas A & M.

When Nell Fortner stepped down at Auburn in March, three years removed from an SEC title, she talked about wanting to get on her paddleboard and “swim with the dolphins” to re-energize herself, if not as a coach for now, then just as a human being.

These women are in their mid-to-late 40s to early 50s. So am I. It’s an interesting age, as you receive notification that you’re eligible to join the American Association of Retired Persons, but you don’t really feel old. You certainly don’t have any desire to retire, even if you could afford it.

But rapid changes in so many fields, especially mine in the media, can have the effect of making you feel more antiquated than you know you are.

These coaches have worked extremely hard, made sacrifices, done everything right, certainly won enough and have been excellent representatives for their profession and their athletic departments.

Their resignations also may be viewed as two coaches who ran into some rare adversity in their careers, and decided to say goodbye to all that.

Regardless, the energy level that’s required to get ahead in the women’s coaching profession now is heading off the charts.

For several years now, the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association has scheduled sessions on “work-life balance” at its national convention. Head coaches and assistants alike openly bemoan the non-stop pace of travel, compounded by social media and text message communication that make it easier than ever to stay in touch with recruits. And make it harder than ever to get off the grid.

Last season Arizona State head coach Charli Turner Thorne wasn’t around at all, taking a nine-month unpaid sabbatical to spend more time with her children. She’s set to return in the coming season, her respite cited as a symbol of the relentless grind the women’s coaching life has become.

This toll is being felt by more than coaches. In response to criticisms of Baylor coach Kim Mulkey and the NCAA sanctions imposed on the recent national champions, Brad Wolverton of The Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned a 2010 NCAA survey that reflected growing player dissatisfaction in women’s basketball. The blame was placed primarily on coaches, with their increasing demands on the time of players listed as a major factor.

With increasing salaries come more pressure to win. The growing pains of the women’s game, now 30 years into the NCAA area, have reached this point, and there are varying opinions on whether this is a good thing. As WBCA CEO Beth Bass noted last year, for some coaches this moment may be a breaking point:

“You have to be careful what you wish for. You have to be careful of the devil at the bottom of the wishing well. … You’re going to be held to the same standard as on the men’s side. We have make sure we’re ready to go for what comes with that.”

That these concerns are ramping up as Summitt takes her leave as an active coach is more than ironic. The sheer force of her will and personality has been widely hailed in tributes, including corners of the sports media that don’t pay much attention to women’s basketball. Her decision nearly brought a champion NBA coach to tears. Summitt transcended her sport as perhaps no other woman has, with the exception of Billie Jean King.

When Summitt said at the formal announcement of her emeritus status that coaching basketball has been “the great passion of my life,” it was more than an understatement. The most driven individual in the history of the women’s game has simply had no equal in that department.

So many young coaches have cited her as a role model, mentor and even a reference. Meier has never forgotten the good word that Summitt put in for her as she interviewed for an assistant’s position at Tulane, her first full-time coaching job. Will this reaching out continue as the stakes get higher? As ESPN.com’s Dana O’Neil wrote last week, old-school coaches on the men’s side are lamenting the loss of tight-knit relationships and even friendships.

The frosty relationship between Auriemma and Summitt that led to the cancellation of the UConn-Tennessee rivalry thawed a bit at the Final Four, as they were seen visiting courtside on the open practice day. Auriemma, like Summitt, is in his late 50s. His personality, drive and vision carry on. So does Mulkey, who’s about to turn 50.

There’s budding 40-and-under coaching talent in every corner of the country, including unexpected ones.

But who’s got the outsized personality and ridiculous drive and energy level that Summitt demonstated for nearly four decades, and that is needed more than ever to accommodate the increasing demands of her beloved profession?

That’s a question that has no easy answer now.

I don’t imagine Sports Illustrated or espnW will be inclined to get into this at all during their rhapsodic celebrations of Title IX, but there are those who believe the law needs to be re-evaluated after 40 years — and even reformed.

And, contrary to what you may hear, they are not all people who hate women’s sports, or who wish for Title IX to go away.

The Independent Women’s Forum has trotted out this analysis of what it calls “Title IX’s Mid Life Crisis” with some suggestions to retool the sports regulations back to the original intent of the law. That’s a clever and apt title for what those of us critical of the interpretation of the law believe is a good law with antiquated provisions.

There are some sensible ideas here, and last year I devoted posts here and here for specific ideas. Changing course is necessary not just to diminish the harm caused to some male athletes in certain sports, but also to reflect the current status of female college athletes now, and not 30 years ago.

However, I do wish the IWF, which is a conservative organization, would cool it with partisan dog-whistle language. It’s not because I consider myself fairly liberal. I’m no fan of proportionality, but insisting on using “quota” will not engender a wider reception of its ideas.

The IWF and the American Sports Council use the “q” word like sports feminists gripe about the “patriarchy.” After a while, it gets tiresome, as entrenched battle lines harden and opposite sides tune one another out. Like so much of American political “discourse,” the rest of us feel left out.

Americans, male and female, support the intent and spirit of Title IX, and they support it overwhelmingly — for academics, athletics and everything else the law was meant to address. Those who believe the implementation of the law as it pertains to sports has gone wrong need to make a very compelling case for why the regulations need to be revised.

Given what they are up against, the task of cutting through the dogma and uncritical cheerleading needs to be as broad-based as possible.

The IWF gets it mostly right, but not quite.

Both espnW and Sports Illustrated have compiled lists of the Top 40 women athletes of the Title IX era, and they’re both revealing in their approaches.

First of all, SI’s list is already done and available on one link, in a very compelling photo gallery. There are some notable omissions. No Dot Richardson, softball gold medalist and a key ambassador in her sport’s growth in the 1990s. No Cammi Granato, who in 2010 became one of the first two women inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

And Diana Taurasi as the top basketball player, ahead of even LPGA legend Annika Sorenstam? I’ve always been a big fan of Taurasi, but to put her ahead of hoopsters Cheryl Miller, Teresa Edwards and Ann Meyers? Hmmmm.

Sports fans love to argue about lists like this, however, and perhaps this list will create some passionate discussion as the 40th anniversary of Title IX approaches next month.

But espnW’s Top 40 list figures to create discussion for the athletes it is including — even women athletes whose careers have not been affected by Title IX at all. This list is being added once a day, and today’s No. 37 pick is Granato. But she’s the first athlete profiled who competed in college athletics. And this is just the problem.

The others thus far: Mary Lou Retton, jockey Julie Krone and Chinese Olympic diver Fu Mingxia. The disclaimer says”an industry-wide panel of journalists and women’s sports experts have cast their votes, which were tabulated by an independent, outside agency.”

That’s all good and well, but to declare that Title IX is a “law whose ripple effects extend far beyond the U.S., creating a women’s sports culture awash in opportunity” is more than a stretch, even for the purpose of this list.

The SI list contains no tennis players, no figure skaters, only two golfers — Sorenstam and Nancy Lopez; and just one gymnast, former Georgia All-American Courtney Kupets. No Mary Lou. No Venus. No Serena. No Martina. No Chrissie. No Steffi. No Nadia. No Picabo. No Kristi. No Lindsey. No Danica.

And this is as it should be. SI’s disclaimer noted that athletes on the list had to have competed at least one year in college sports, and that its list was compiled by its staffers.

By clicking through the SI photo gallery, you begin to see where Title IX has had its greatest impact — on women’s team sports in particular, and in some individual women’s Olympic sports, such as swimming and track and field.

But even then, there’s no acknowledgement that non-scholastic competition and development played much of a hand in the rise of these athletes. Mia Hamm was a member of the U.S. women’s soccer team before she ever stepped on a college soccer field. Sorenstam gave up college eligibility at the University of Arizona to join the LPGA Tour. Marion Jones cut short her basketball and track career at the University of North Carolina to pursue Olympic glory. Janet Evans, a teenage gold medalist in Seoul, later found the practice and competitive limits of college swimming too restrictive.

Even the LPGA Tour that Lopez and Sorenstam graced with their presence is becoming more global, with Koreans and the Taiwanese star Yani Tseng dominating. The American pro Natalie Gulbis bypassed a college apprenticeship, playing just one season at Arizona.

These matters cannot be pointed out during a time of “celebration,” of course, except by skunks at a garden party like me. But they are important to note.

For all of the marvelous things Title IX has done, it does have some significant limits. Its true cultural impact around the world isn’t as broad as the espnW disclaimer. To cite one very immediate example, Saudi Arabia is flat refusing to send women athletes to the London Olympics.

Brazil has a female head of state and the best female soccer player in the world in Marta, but its soccer federation and its society treats the distaff side of the sport with utter contempt. Indeed, America’s embrace of women’s soccer is not the rule, but the exception.

It’s fine to honor and point out the accomplishments of women athletes around the world, and those American women who did not compete in college athletics. But not on a list designed to commemmorate Title IX.

For the women’s sports that are the most popular, lucrative and commercially viable are those that have not been dramatically affected by the impact of the law. Most had decades of a head start on basketball, soccer and hockey.

I’m hopeful this will change in my lifetime, but it is not the case now.

DENVER — Ken Starr was thumbing his smartphone as Kim Mulkey speculated about the response to Baylor’s NCAA women’s basketball championship Tuesday night.

“At Baylor they used to not let the Baptists dance,” Mulkey said. “I’ll bet they’re dancing now.”

Kim Mulkey with daughter Makenzie, a Baylor team member, and son Kramer.

Starr, the Baylor president, guffawed with the audience of reporters as Mulkey, perhaps more than anything else, just wanted to take a deep breath and relax.

Baylor had just flattened Notre Dame 80-61 in one of the most dominating defensive performances in NCAA history.

The Lady Bears became the seventh NCAA women’s team to go undefeated and the first to go 40-0. National player of the year Brittney Griner was in devastating form, with 26 points, 13 rebounds and 5 blocked shots.

With Griner and the nucleus of Baylor’s team, including another punishing defender, All-American point guard Odyssey Sims, returning next season, Baylor is occupying the space normally reserved for UConn and Tennessee.

And having to answer a similar battery of questions. Such as:

How do you top perfection?

“You’re making me embrace this now instead of letting me enjoy this,” Mulkey said. “We’re going to embrace it. I don’t think you guys are going to let me hide it.”

She could have been excused for sounding exasperated, but if she did, Mulkey hid it well. All season long she urged her players to get comfortable with being the strong favorite to win the title. Along the way, Lady Bears took down Notre Dame, Connecticut, Tennessee, a rugged Big 12 Conference, Tennessee again in the Elite 8, Stanford in the national semifinals and the Fighting Irish for a second, and convincing, time.

Yet the Irish trailed only 34-28 at halftime. Griner had just nine points as Baylor couldn’t take advantage of foul trouble to center Devereaux Peters and poor shooting from its backcourt trio that keyed Notre Dame’s semifinal win over UConn.

All that changed in the second half as Griner went to work on the Irish, with Peters sitting down with four fouls. She reeled off 11 points in a nearly four-minute span midway in the period as the Lady Bears pulled out to a 69-50 lead.

Amid the flurry was a splendid sky hook shot from right side of the basket, as smooth as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and just as effective. Baylor, which shot a sizzling 63 percent in the second half, got 19 points from Sims and 12 from Destiny Williams.

“When I hit that little hook, it just got me energized,” Griner said. “I was kind of shocked it went in, but it definitely got me going.”

A shell-shocked Notre Dame (35-4), which lost to Texas A & M in last year’s championship game, got 20 points from its All-American guard, Skylar Diggins, but little else. The Irish simply had no answer for the 6-foot-8 Griner, who was named the Most Outstanding Player at the Pepsi Center.

“I think she’s one of a kind,” Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said. “I think she’s like a guy playing with women. There are so many things that she can do that I’ve not seen a lot of women [do].”

McGraw’s comments were amplified on ESPN and greeted by some on social media outlets with contempt (the team’s publicist issued a clarified statement by McGraw on Twitter), but not by Griner. “I definitely take it as a compliment,” she said.

While Baylor’s exploits set a new mark in NCAA annals, this team isn’t the first to win 40 games in a season. In 1979-80, Louisiana Tech notched a 40-5 record, getting extra games in a state tournament that was a hallmark of the AIAW era, and winning a third place national consolation game.

That was the season before Mulkey’s arrival as a player. In her first two seasons, the Lady Techsters absolutely dominated, going a combined 69-1 and winning AIAW and NCAA national titles.

As a coach, Mulkey has Baylor poised for similar greatness. She’s not picky about a won-loss record as long as she gets the same result next season.

“If we lose two,  three, four, five or we go 30-10, I don’t care. But that’s what we want, another national championship.”

As for another national championship coach who’s already expressed the desire to aim for perfection, Mulkey offered a brief thought, perhaps in a be-careful-what-you-wish-for vein:

“I saw Calipari wants to go undefeated. Good luck to him.”

DENVER — She has one eye that barely blinks and a side of her mouth that doesn’t move because of a recent diagnosis with Bell’s palsy.

None of that deters Kim Mulkey from looking the questioner straight in the eye and telling her exactly what she thinks. Especially if the question is meant to put her just a little bit on the spot.

On Monday, the day before her Baylor team faces Notre Dame for the women’s NCAA basketball championship, Mulkey was asked if she understood why there are those — primarily women’s sports activists — who find the Lady Bears’ nickname offensive.

Mulkey, a self-professed “country girl from Louisiana,” didn’t hesitate to reply, and in a gentle Southern manner hinting at deeper subtleties the questioner may not have fully understood.

Baylor, with coach Kim Mulkey and player of the year Brittney Griner, could become the first 40-0 NCAA women's team if the Lady Bears defeat Notre Dame in Tuesday's national title game.

“We’re from the South. We still say yes ma’am and no ma’am. I think it’s a tradition of respect, believe it or not, than it is disrespect from people on the outside.”

Mulkey also wondered aloud that “too much is made of it.”

She wasn’t the only one, given the enormous stakes on the line Tuesday at the Pepsi Center.

The Lady Bears — for that is what they call themselves — are 39-0, matching the record of Tennessee’s 1998 NCAA title team and UConn championship squads from 2002, 2009 and 2010. In going 40-0, they would set a new mark for wins by a title team.

With the 2005 NCAA title in tow and most of her core team returning next season, including national player of the year Brittney Griner and All-American point guard Odyssey Sims, Mulkey has the makings of a dynasty in Waco, a true threat to the dominance UConn and Tennessee have enjoyed since the mid-1990s.

Who cares about a nickname?

USA Today columnist Christine Brennan, does, as she continued her longstanding diatribes against anything the women’s sports establishment finds “demeaning.” During her 161-word question/Women’s Sports Foundation gospel reading (give or take a dozen contractions), The Stenographer of the Sisterhood was sure to mention Title IX and laud Mulkey as a “role model” for young girls and women.

For all of her unvarnished advocacy for women’s sports and complaints about a lack of media coverage of women’s basketball, Brennan might have done better to familiarize herself with the Southern culture of the sport, and Southern society in general. For Mulkey is steeped in the deepest traditions of a game that for girls in her native Louisiana and elsewhere in Deep South was embraced more than it was rebuffed.

A diminutive fireball with braided pigtails, Mulkey arrived at Louisiana Tech out of Hammond, La., in 1980, playing for the flamboyant Sonja Hogg, with her silvery hair, snappy attire and keen sense of marketing and branding. She changed the women’s nickname to “Lady Techsters” from the school’s generic “Bulldogs,” famously quipping that ”I just didn’t want us to be the Lady Bulldogs. I could hear people saying, ‘There comes Coach Hogg and all of her little bitches.’ ”

During the final years of the AIAW era, Louisiana Tech battled Old Dominion for dominance, as the power centers of the sport were shifting from small schools like Immaculata, Delta State and Wayland Baptist and ultimately to Tennessee, UCLA and Texas in the early NCAA years.

As a freshman, Mulkey was the starting point guard for the 1981 AIAW national champions who went 34-0 and prompted Tennessee coach Pat Head (now Summitt) to declare that Louisiana Tech “has the two best teams in America.” In 1982, the Lady Techsters went 35-1 and were crowned the first NCAA champions.

Asked Monday if her present team was better, Mulkey unabashedly declared that it is: “We kick their butt. I’m on that team. I’ll take Odyssey Sims on any day. But I don’t compare teams. I don’t compare generations.”

Mulkey played on the 1984 U.S. Olympic team coached by Summitt, then became an assistant to Leon Barmore, Hogg’s co-coach and sideline wizard, as Tech won another NCAA title (its last) in 1988.

When Barmore retired in 2000, she was offered the job, but with only a four-year contract. Insistent on job security and demanding no less than five, Mulkey turned it down, and went to Baylor, where Hogg was her predecessor but had been only 7-20 in her final year.

In five years, the Lady Bears were NCAA champions, the result of Mulkey’s relentlessness in every aspect of her job. Her memoir, “Won’t Back Down,” describes the tenacity that led her to be the first person to win an NCAA championship as a player, assistant coach and head coach.

Along the way, her Southern swagger — a combination of the ultra-confidence fostered at Tech, her occasional outspokenness, a fiery sideline demeanor and her penchant for eye-catching game outfits — has become the embodiment one of the sport’s giant coaching personalities.

“She tells me all the time she could beat me one-on-one and she could take me to the hole,” says Sims, a rugged sophomore and designated defensive stopper. “I just tell her ‘Your days are over, you don’t do that any more.’ We joke around about crazy stuff but coach is always going to talk noise. We just get a kick out of it. She always tells [Griner] she can take her to the hole too.”

For all the bluster, Mulkey proudly regards her persona as “old school.” The divorced mother of a daughter, Makenzie Robertson, a reserve Baylor player, and Kramer Robertson, who will attend LSU on a baseball scholarship, the 49-year-old Mulkey disdains “all that social media junk.” She ignores blog comments and message board material that truly demean players (especially Griner), far more than calling a female basketball player a “Lady” ever will.

“This is someone’s child,” Mulkey says, with motherly passion rising in her voice. “This is a human being, people. She didn’t wake up and say: ‘God, make me 6-8, make me have the ability to dunk. This child is as precious as they come. She just makes me happy.”

Slow-talking and plainspoken, Mulkey understands the outside image others have of her. She says that raising children changed her life, and that it helps with her Baylor players.

“Really, I’m not tough, that’s what’s so funny,” she says. “You see me on the sideline and that’s what I do. I get a little bit of an advantage because I have to deal with my own children and what motivates them, and they give me some insight because they’re the same age as the athletes I get to coach.

“But yeah, I could coach them. In fact, I could make some of them a little bit tougher than they are.”

DENVER — On a night when the undercard trumped the main event, two players barely mentioned in the buildup to the Women’s Final Four were the unexpected, and undisputed stars.

Fifth-year Notre Dame senior Brittany Mallory was left open by UConn not just once, but twice, in overtime of Sunday’s first semifinal game, and she burned the Huskies both times with critical 3-point baskets.

Stanford dared another senior, Baylor’s Terran Condrey more times than that in the finale, and she made the Cardinal pay for the repeated gamble nearly every time.

Notre Dame and Baylor reached Tuesday’s national championship game for plenty of other reasons, but their multiple-threat attacks caused UConn and Stanford to take some calculated risks.

The Huskies’ gambit paid off for about 43 minutes, even after Mallory, a hard-nose defensive specialist, buried a trey early in the overtime period that would prove to be the final go-head basket.

It wasn’t until Irish All-American Skylar Diggins’ block of Bria Hartley’s attempted layup with 1:43 to play, and her kickout to Mallory for another 3, that Notre Dame got the momentum it needed. In winning 83-75, the Irish took down their Big East rivals for the third time this season.

“Sky told me to keep shooting,” said Mallory, who finished with 11 points on 4-of-9 shooting and who never felt more confident than on her last bucket of the game. “I  took a deep breath and I let it go and I was thinking to myself this one’s going in. I was so happy, I couldn’t believe it. I was so happy.”

Said Notre Dame center Devereaux Peters: “She almost cried.”

UConn coach Geno Auriemma wanted to cry too. “Brittany Mallory made two huge shots, and that’s who we wanted to shoot the ball. And God bless her, she stepped up and made the shots.”

In unbeaten Baylor’s gutty 59-47 win over Stanford, Brittany Griner and Odyssey Sims, the Lady Bears’ All-Americans, weren’t at full tilt, at least offensively. With the Cardinal sagging and doubling down on Griner and making sure to have a body on Sims, Condrey found plenty of room to shoot mid-range jumpers. She scored 10 of her 13 points in the second half, converting 5-of-9 field goal attempts, and matched Griner’s output in scoring.

For only the third time this season, Condrey scored in double figures, coming up one point shy of her season high.

“Brittney Griner is the face of women’s basketball right now, and we embrace that,” Baylor coach Kim Mulkey said. “But our team is not just Brittney Griner.”

Stanford had a moderately successful game plan, with All-American Nneka Ogwumike driving right at Griner most of the night. Ogwumike scored 22 points but didn’t get the help she needed from the Cardinal’s perimeter scorers, who were 2-for-17 from 3-point range.

And in the second half, Baylor turned up its defensive pressure and made a steady march to the free throw line, hitting 19 for 26.

“Defensively to me wasn’t the problem, except for our fouling,” said Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer, whose team has come up short in five consecutive Final Fours. “I just felt like we needed other people besides Nneka.”

People like Condrey and Mallory.

DENVER — One of the most refreshing storylines about this Women’s Final Four is the fact that for the first time since 1989, all No. 1 seeds have advanced.

In a sport where the handwringing over the lack of parity is an abiding concern, should “chalk” be applauded?

Absolutely, because of  the star power that Baylor, UConn, Notre Dame and Stanford bring: The talent on the court, coaching wizardry and personality on the sidelines and the brand names of their programs.

Yet novelty abounds despite the dominance and familiarity. In the first game tonight, there’s the fourth Big East meeting of the year between Notre Dame and UConn. The Irish are 2-1 in head-to-head meetings but los the Big East Tournament final to a Huskies team that for the first time in years doesn’t feature an All-American.

In the finale, there’s the dunking, game-changing player who is Brittney Griner of Baylor, which would become the first NCAA basketball champion to go 40-0. The Lady Bears will be opposed by Stanford’s sensational sister duo of Nneka and Chiney Ogwumike, and coach Tara VanDerveer’s bid for a first NCAA title in 20 years.

While VanDerveer and Muffett McGraw of Notre Dame and VanDerveer are models of coaching probity on the sidelines, contrast that with the sideline operatics and wisecracking of Baylor’s Kim Mulkey and Geno Auriemma of UConn.

Mulkey, diagnosed just this week with Bell’s palsy, has a partially paralyzed face and admits to being blinded by the bright lights and bothered by loud pep band sounds. But as she said during Saturday’s press conference:

“As far as the distortion or whatever you want to call it of the face, hell, I’m just another ugly coach. It is what it is. And I’m not vain, it doesn’t matter.”

A year ago, the sport was basking in the novelty of a new name — Texas A & M — winning the national championship. During this season, great stories coming out of Delaware, St. Bonaventure, Gonzaga and Wisconsin-Green Bay had us wondering if one among them might become the first mid-major to reach the Final Four since Jackie Stiles and Southwest Missouri State in 2001.

While I do wish the women had the early-round upsets that helped build the popularity of the men’s NCAA tournament and March Madness, the sport just isn’t there yet, and it may not be for quite a while.

While we are wonderfully deluded by the desire to have a Butler, a VCU, a George Mason of distaff hoops, the reality is that the more burning desire is for the sport to be showcased as strongly as it can.

This Women’s Final Four has all the ingredients for that to happen.

It has been duly noted that the Kentucky-Kansas men’s final Monday night features the winningest teams in NCAA history. A “titanic battle,” in fact.

Nobody’s complaining about that, nor should anyone.

The same goes for what transpires in the Pepsi Center tonight, and on Tuesday.

I had no sooner pushed the button on yesterday’s post on the issue of gender and coaching women’s basketball than ESPN The Magazine, as part of the Worldwide Leader’s flood the zone Title IX coverage, published “The Glass Wall” on the same topic, but that reached an entirely different conclusion.

Written by Luke Cyphers and Kate Fagan, a former basketball player at Colorado, this very long piece examines the dearth of women in the college coaching ranks, why so many more men are itching to coach women’s teams and what happens to women coaches who fight for gender equity.

As I Tweeted upon first reading this, I thought this was a crock, and at so many levels. After several more closer readings, it is sadly nothing more than the dogma of recycled, decades-old cultural grievances from a handful of women’s advocates. Cyphers and Fagan have provided an updated shine, designed to give the impression that the professional prospects for women coaches are grimmer now than ever.

This claptrap has been peddled by women’s advocates since the demise of the AIAW in the early 1980s. It is less about the development of women’s sports than the careerism of adult women, whose interests and desire for power have always more been paramount than the athletes under their charge.

There is quote after mournful quote of women coaches, administrators, academics and even NCAA officials about how it’s unthinkable that women will ever have a chance to coach men as they watch men easily cross the line in the opposite direction.

Cyphers and Fagan “report” these disparities with skimpy “research” conducted by advocates who have an axe to grind. It is astonishing in its willingness to shallow whole a fallacious ideology, and even more astonishing for the serious journalistic questions it does not pose.

It wasn’t until the 43rd paragraph — the 43rd! — that I finally came across the lead, as we say in the journalism world. Here it is in full:

“Athletic directors who spoke with espnW for this story say they consistently receive significantly more applications from men for all coaching vacancies. ‘There isn’t a job that’s not dominated by male applicants,” says [former Notre Dame and Northwestern women's basketball coach Mary] DiStanislao.’ “

The writers try to explain this away, blaming long-standing sexism and homophobia in an intolerant male sports culture as the real culprit for the lower-than-desired numbers. To prove their point, they simply quote the aggrieved, with no other point of view evident or even possible. Here’s Helen Carroll of the National Center for Lesbian Rights:

“When you look at the decline in the percentage of women coaches, sexual orientation has a lot to do with it.”

What else is she going to say?

The poster child of the persecuted woman coach in “The Glass Wall” is former Oregon women’s basketball coach Jody Runge. The story severely downplays the fact that Runge was a polarizing figure within the Oregon athletic program, and within her own team, for many more reasons than pushing for better support for women’s sports. There’s an excellent book on the subject that illustrates the complexities of her time there. To hoist her as a victim of a female-unfriendly environment is misleading, at the very least.

This story’s treatment of gender equity issues at Fresno State also does not tell the full story, some of which I wrote about last summer. While there certainly was a high degree of gender-based hostility within that athletic department, this is not a one-way street. There was too much mistrust and animosity going back and forth to blame one side as the source of the problem.

Curiously, none of the women coaches quoted by Cyphers and Fagan talk about whether they’ve expressed an interest in coaching a men’s team, or even applied. Surely the writers should have known that Stanford women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer’s name was bandied about in the early 1990s for men’s openings. Did they bother to ask her about it?

Here’s another glaring omission from this story: In women’s basketball, men are quite often more willing to take a job at a mid-major or small-conference program and work their way up. While an increasing number of women are doing the same thing, those women touted as the “hot young coaches” are primarily top assistants at BCS-level programs, usually in charge of recruiting and waiting for their first head coaching job, ideally at another major school.

Cyphers and Fagan can’t be bothered to question this further, nor to mention that the percentage of male coaches abounds most notably at the lower college, high school and AAU levels. Are more women not willing, or just not interested, in starting out at the very bottom? Have they been encouraged by women’s sports leaders to aim higher before they may be ready? Are they being properly prepared for the rigors of contemporary coaching by their mostly female mentors? These questions also do not seem to have been asked.

During the 1990s there was a concerted effort to hire women as much as possible. Starting in the last decade, athletics directors have been hiring coaches, regardless of gender, who they believe will win. It’s a cold bottom line, but it’s a trend that figures to escalate.

To continue to blame the same old bogeymen for the changing nature and demands of the coaching profession is to continue to fight the past. “The Glass Wall” perpetuates a narrative of unwarranted victimology that ESPN, with its earnest diligence to chronicle “The Power of IX,” has gotten badly wrong.