NEW ORLEANS — On a night when the NCAA honored some of the legendary names of the early years of women’s college basketball, the Connecticut Huskies continued to remake the contemporary history books.

Their 93-60 win over Louisville on Tuesday ties them with Tennessee for an NCAA record eight national championships. And UConn rolled in record-setting fashion in the most lopsided title game, eclipsing the 23-point margin of victory by Tennessee when it won its first championship in 1987.

UConn's 8th national championship ties Tennessee for the NCAA record. (Photo by Wendy Parker)

That was the last time a freshman, Tennessee’s Tonya Edwards, was voted the best player at the Women’s Final Four. On Tuesday, UConn rookie Breanna Stewart ended that drought with a 23-point, 9-rebound outing to complete a brilliant tournament performance.

For UConn coach Geno Auriemma, who also ties retired Tennessee legend Pat Summitt with those eight titles, the victory “validates a lot of what we wanted to do, what we aspired to be.”

But he found other comparisons — referring to an ESPN graphic showing him on a list of college coaching greats, including John Wooden, Mike Krzyzewski and Adolph Rupp — not quite right.

“I never beat Coach K in a game and I never coached against John Wooden,” said Auriemma, who like Wooden is undefeated in national championship games. “The only person I compare myself to is Pat Summitt. To be there in that spot with her means a lot to me.”

Before he could join her at the top of that list, Auriemma had to figure out how to rectify what at least by UConn’s own standards could be called a funk.

Two confounding last-minute losses to Notre Dame in early March didn’t inspire much confidence.

Neither did Stewart, whose play at times had Auriemma mussing his hair more than usual.

But he said he felt “something click” in UConn’s NCAA second-round game against Vanderbilt, and in successive games against Maryland and Kentucky. By the time their reached the Final Four, Stewart and the Huskies were clicking from every spot on the floor.

“I think a lot of people on the outside doubted it,” senior forward Kelly Faris said of UConn’s reversal of fortunes.

She said that after the Notre Dame loss in the Big East Finals — their third of the season to the Irish — Auriemma told them in the locker room that “I’m going to show you how to win a national championship.”

Added Faris: “I don’t know how the heck he does what he does but he’s pretty darn good at his job. I’m glad he’s on my side.”

Among the things Auriemma did was to tweak  his lineup, bringing speedy guard Bria Hartley off the bench, in part to provide a spark. Stewart, a lanky 6-foot-4 forward Auriemma predicted would be one of the greatest UConn players ever upon her arrival, placed enormous pressure on herself to succeed quickly in a program where national championships are expected.

Extra shooting time in the gym with associate head coach Chris Dailey gave Stewart some solace, and the confidence to crack through mental barriers.

“She has a little kid’s attitude towards everything that happens,” Auriemma said. “She sees the fun and the joy in everything, and there were times that all went away, and I was really, really worried about her.”

Against Notre Dame in Sunday’s semifinals, Stewart scored 29 points, and was just as sterling in the championship game. As impressive as her scoring was her full Final Four storyline — 14 rebounds, four assists, four steals and seven blocked shots.

In addition to her languid shooting form, Stewart demonstrated her pure athletic ability after a missed UConn shot against Louisville, bolting high for the rebound and grasping the loose ball with her long left arm before heaving it back up and into the basket in one motion.

“I don’t think people understood how much we needed her,” Faris said. “If we don’t have her, we’re not here.”

Stewart demurred when asked about her Most Outstanding Player honor: “I appreciate it. But we just won the national championship and that’s the best thing.”

In Louisville (29-9) UConn was facing what Auriemma called “the only team that’s been better than us the last month.” The Cardinals shocked defending national champion Baylor in the Sweet 16, upended Tennessee and prevailed over Cal in the national semifinals in large part due to superb 3-point shooting.

Geno Auriemma said the only team that's played better than UConn in the NCAA touranment has been Jeff Walz' Louisville Cardinals. (Photo by Wendy Parker)

Before Tuesday’s game, Louisville men’s coach Rick Pitino, who traveled from Atlanta after his team won the NCAA title Monday night, gave the women’s players some pre-game inspiration.

They started out fine, leading UConn 14-10 when the Huskies went on a blistering 19-0 run in the first half. It wasn’t just Stewart, who had 18 of her 23 points before halftime. Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis tied an NCAA title game record with six 3-pointers as UConn’s 93 points, including 13-for-26 shooting from 3-point range, represent the second-most by an NCAA champion.

“They just hit big shot after big shot,” Louisville coach Jeff Walz said. “What makes them so unique i their ability to score from all five positions on the floor. You got to kind of pick your poison.”

And UConn limited Louisville to 5-for-23 from the 3-point line, holding hotshot guard Shoni Schimmel to just nine points.

UConn’s historic performance came as former stars in the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women were honored at halftime, along with administrators during the period of organized women’s college athletics from 1972-1982.

Among the standouts on hand were Theresa Grentz, of the first three  AIAW championship teams from Immaculata College, as well as Naismith Hall of Famers Lusia Harris (Delta State), Carol Blazejowski (Montclair State), Ann Meyers (UCLA), Lynette Woodard (Kansas).

They witnessed an 18-year-old player who’s been pegged to be the next great star at UConn — joining the company of Rebecca Lobo, Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird and Maya Moore in the pantheon of contemporary college greats.

With them, Auriemma has won all of his titles in the past 18 seasons. It was in 1991 in New Orleans that the upstart Huskies joined storied Tennessee, Stanford and Virginia in the Final Four.

“When we left and we didn’t win, I thought: ‘What if we never go back? What if it’s that one and done?’

“And when we won our first national championship in 1995, I thought: ‘Lots of people won one. What if we don’t win another one ever again?’ So I’m always looking into the future and thinking: ‘Is this it? Is this the last one?’”

With Stewart around for three more seasons and just two regulars departing — although one of them is the invaluable Faris –UConn’s run appears to be far from over.

“I don’t see how that’s going to change,” Walz said on Monday about UConn’s dominance, “unless he decides to retire, which I think he should.”

Instead, further comparisons to Wooden and his 10 NCAA titles will continue, probably to Auriemma’s chagrin.

“To see where we’ve come from and what’s happened at Connecticut in the last 18 years, I would say that never in our wildest dreams did we think this was possible.”

NEW ORLEANS — They’ve been underdogs so long that they relish continuing in the role even at the Final Four, and especially after dispatching one of the biggest names in the sport.

The Louisville Cardinals — Undercards? — do have a -2 figure beside their name on at least one Las Vegas sports betting line going into Sunday’s national semifinal game against California.

For the Golden Bears, reaching the Final Four for the first time isn’t as much as a surprise as an affirmation that women’s basketball in the Bay Area doesn’t have to be synonymous with Stanford.

Cal faces Louisville in what’s considered the undercard, both in scheduling and marquée appeal. But being regarded merely as the opening act for UConn-Notre Dame IV disregards what the two programs, and the two coaches in particular, represent for the long-term future of the sport.

UConn’s Geno Auriemma and Muffet McGraw of Notre Dame have 19 Final Four trips and eight NCAA titles combined in a rivalry that will be contested for the fourth time this season — with all previous games Notre Dame wins — and the last time in the soon-to-be-dismantled Big East.

Lindsay Gottlieb has taken Cal to its first Final Four at the age of 35.

But Cal’s Lindsay Gottlieb and Louisville’s Jeff Walz personify a younger, rapidly ascending generation of coaching stars in a sport that has been dominated by a small handful of icons for years.

In her second season in Berkeley, Gottlieb has pulled together a southern California-centric core of players who have endured plenty of heartbreak away from the court, and who aren’t shy about personal expression.

“I’m very secure in the fact that they play for the California across their chest,” said Gottlieb, from a family of lawyers in Scarsdale, Calif. “I’m okay that one of them has a mohawk (starting guard Layshia Clarendon) and another one has pink braids (starting forward Gennifer Brandon). It’s a really unique group that is just comfortable in their own skin and playing for Cal.”

While Walz has been to the Final Four before — the Cardinals fell to UConn in the 2009 NCAA title game — Louisville’s stunning 82-81 upset of defending NCAA champion Baylor and player of the year Brittney Griner in the Sweet 16 still prompted many of the questions during Saturday’s official press conference.

Walz, 41, could have gone all Belichick and rattled off a load of coach-speak and refused to talk about any opponent but the next one. But in savoring the long afterglow of what may be the biggest upset in the history of the NCAA tournament, Walz revealed a glimpse of a coaching style that’s as open and free and easy as it is intense and demanding.

Starting with the open-collar shirts on the sideline, a dramatic difference from Rick Pitino’s pricey Italian threads, because “I can’t stand to wear a suit and a tie.”

“It’s comfortable, I enjoy it,” Walz said of his sartorial preference. “And I’m going to continue to wear it. I’m trying to start a trend, it just hasn’t picked up.”

But it’s his work with high-maintenance, big-personality players that’s notable. While Walz inherited Angel McCoughtry, the mercurial All-American and centerpiece of the 2009 team, he recruited openly cocky junior guard Shoni Schimmel, who hails from the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon.

Shoni Schimmel has fueled Louisville's improbable run to the Final Four.

In the heat of an already-heated game against Baylor, Schimmel drove on the break against Griner, whipped out a behind-the-back dribble, then flipped in an over-the-shoulder layup that scaled Griner’s reach and bounced off the glass and in. When Griner pulled herself up off the floor Schimmel met her, eye-to-eye, emitting something like a primal scream.

“I just had to do the little circus shot because I just mess around in practice sometimes doing it and it worked out for me,” she said.

Which is just fine with Walz, whose younger sister is Jamie Walz, a hotshot guard in her playing days who became a Kentucky high school basketball scoring legend. He said Schimmel’s maturity this season has led to better decision-making.

“She came in with flair, that’s what she does,” he said. “I understand how she plays. I recruited her. I let her play. I let kids play. I work them hard in practice but when it comes to the game, they’re going to take some shots that aren’t great shots. And that’s okay.”

It was 22 years ago at nearby Lakefront Arena that Auriemma and UConn experienced a Final Four for the first time. On Friday, he and McGraw gave Gottlieb what she called “the most genuine hugs” in joining some select company. When asked if he still enjoys it, Auriemma was wistful and sarcastic at the same time.

“Leading up to this is getting harder and harder and harder for me every year,” Auriemma said. “And Lindsay doesn’t know it yet, but 10 years from now she’s going to look back on this this year and go, ‘Man, that’s when it all turned for me. I used to love this game.”

Can the outgoing trifecta of women’s college basketball’s most visible stars attract a bigger spotlight for the WNBA?

That’s what both the league and ESPN are banking on as they held a tightly-staged press conference Thursday to announce an extension of their long-standing television partnership.

The six-year deal, which Sports Business Journal reported ahead of time is worth an estimated $12 million a season, was unveiled along with the WNBA’s new branding campaign and logo.

At times during Thursday’s media event, it was hard to tell whether it was about ESPN’s self-proclaimed commitment to women’s sports more than the WNBA. But it is quite clear that Brittney Griner of Baylor, Skylar Diggins of Notre Dame and Elena Delle Donne of Delaware, who figure to be top three players taken in the April 15 draft, have generated the kind of national press that the WNBA has dreamed about.

For as loaded as the pro league has been since its inception with former college All-Americans and Olympians, their visibility drops during a time of year when most fans (this one included) don’t have much basketball in mind.

The question at the top is one that has been posed many times before. Here’s another one: Remember Diana Taurasi? UConn’s iconic guard and three-time national champion has had a stellar WNBA career leading Phoenix to two titles, as well as three Olympic gold medals and European crowns in Russia.

But as she completes her first decade after college, Taurasi’s feats have largely flown under the larger national sports radar. When Griner joins Taurasi in Phoenix — the Mercury won the draft lottery — will that truly generate a closer look at a WNBA that has been around for 16 years? Griner’s potential dominance in the pros could be as unprecedented as her spectacular impact on the college game.

Diggins has become something of a national sports celebrity thanks to her social media acumen, counting the rapper Lil Wayne (reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated) among her many admirers. Whether she goes to Chicago with the No. 2 pick or Tulsa at No. 3, she’s easily the personality player of this trio. But will that interest wane as she takes her game to the dead of summer, and then overseas, where the real money is earned by female pros?

Delle Donne, the one-time UConn signee, is as pure a shooter and scorer as the women’s game has had in years, and there’s no doubt she can gun it in the pros. She’ll have to learn to play some stellar defense in the W and get used to its rather rugged physicality.

The hope is that they’ll do for the WNBA what Magic Johnson and Larry Bird’s arrival did for the NBA — broaden its appeal far beyond the purists.

The WNBA is coming off its lowest average attendance for a season since it began in 1997, and Griner is a once-in-a-lifetime-player whose presence has been compared to that of Wilt Chamberlain.

While reading through some Tweets of WNBA players during the press conference, it’s easy to understand why seasoned pros, most of whom are now playing in Europe, Asia and Australia for their real living, might chafe at the hype.

Most revealing were the comments of Erlana Larkins, a former college standout at North Carolina who plays for the WNBA champion Indiana Fever and is currently winding down her Turkish domestic league season. In response to another Tweet she said:

league has superstars that have proven themselves how can u be a superstar & have yet 2 play in a pro game yet

And this:

Griner is huge & everything but unless she gets get weight up she won’t be as prosperous as everyone thinks

While I groused (only once!) on Twitter about ESPN’s relentless promotions of “3 to See” during the NCAA Tournament, from a business and promotional point of view it makes sense.

At the same time, the Phoenix marketing staff isgiving away tickets to men in an attempt to appeal to a segment of the sports-watching public that supposedly doesn’t think much of female athletes.

Not only that, but the Mercury has set up Twitter hashtags #ManUp and #CureTheCooties as part of this campaign.

Yes: “Cure the Cooties.”

Welcome to the fourth grade, fellas.

A franchise with Brittney Griner coming on board is resorting to a gimmick like this?

While they indulge in the hard sell of “enlightening” men about the women’s game, the Mercury and the WNBA still aren’t addressing why more women don’t watch and become fans. They are dealing in a bottom-line reality that NBA commissioner David Stern has laid out for the women’s league to achieve beyond his departure: To become more financially self-sustaining.

Star power is what got the NBA where it is, so expect a further deluge of ESPN’s “3 to See” branding at the next level. Name recognition beyond what appeals to hard-core fans explains the prominence of Bill Laimbeer during Thursday’s presser. He’s back in the league after guiding the former Detroit Shock to multiple WNBA crowns, and now is GM and head coach of a New York Liberty franchise that has been floundering for too many years.

As Shelley DuBois noted at Fortune.com, three of the WNBA’s 12 teams have turned a modest profit, as well as the league overall. The money per team as part of the new ESPN contract is $1 million a season and that’s nothing to dismiss: “In a way, the cold business of it is heartening: This deal wouldn’t have taken place if it wouldn’t work financially.”

Bingo. The business of women’s sports, especially professional team sports, will always be a sliver of what their male counterparts enjoy, but this is a notable development. Increased ticket sales — not patronizing giveaways — and corporate sponsorships remain just as important as branding campaigns and buzzwords.

As for the new logo, I’ll admit it doesn’t do much for me. Instead of a female dribbling, she is now shooting a layup, which is supposed to signify another phase in the development of women’s pro basketball.

But the less gimmicky the WNBA becomes, the better. If we’re going to have cheesy promos, I’m totally old-school, a hopeless nostalgiac for the funky funky 70s that ESPN reprised in the early years of the league. What’s easy to forget now is how effective these ads were, and how much of a sense of fun they evoked. There’s nothing wrong with keeping that going.

It’s mid-to-late February. The Super Bowl is over, conference play in college basketball is heating up, and pitchers and catchers have reported.

Which means it’s time for the annual flogging of Sports Illustrated for its popular and highly lucrative swimsuit issue, now hitting the stands with Kate Upton leaving little to the imagination.

But instead of the usual sports feminist scolds doing the complaining, we have two middle-aged male sportswriters echoing similar concerns, and in some cases employing buzzwords found in a NOW press release.

I like both of these writers — Ed Sherman, formerly of The Chicago Tribune and now running an eponymous sports media site, and Michael Bradley, who’s written for ESPN The Magazine, among many outlets.

In the span of a week, they have both written that they think it’s hypocritical for SI to roll out this annual paean to red-blooded male leering not long after the magazine dedicated a special issue to the 40th anniversary of Title IX.

Sherman also was concerned that too many of the models were wearing only half of their bikinis, and conducted empirical research — by counting, apparently — to reach this conclusion:

And Vegas, here’s your winning total: 39. And that’s give or take a few I might have missed. Either way, the number seems rather excessive, or as my wife would say, “outrageous.”

Again, what’s the point other than to titillate and sell a bunch of ads? And one more question: How long before SI goes full frontal topless? No arms strategically placed, etc…

But titillating and selling a bunch of ads has always been the point, as much as I wish it weren’t so.

At least Sherman ran his thoughts by an actual woman — his wife — before writing his post. Bradley, writing on the Indiana University National Sports Journalism Center website this morning, just ripped off standard feminist boilerplate in adding to Sherman’s point about the SI Title IX issue:

You can’t be an advocate for women’s rights and contribute to their objectification.

As I wrote in response to Bradley’s post, we live in a society in which women’s athletic developments are celebrated and embraced, unlike my pre-Title IX youth sports days.

Bully for that.

We saw this on display last night in a stirring women’s college basketball game between No. 1 Baylor, the defending national champion, and No. 3 UConn, which has seven NCAA titles to its name.

But we also live in a society in which drop-dead gorgeous women are still regarded as something to behold.

And bully for that too.

These are contradictory and “incongruent” things only to those who fall for simplistic, antiquated feminist rhetoric that’s still stuck in the 1970s. There’s really nothing to reconcile.

To suggest that women’s continued progress in sports must necessitate the eradication of supposedly sexist portrayals of women in general is as unlikely as it is absurd.

SI makes a lot of money with the swimsuit issue. A lot of money. It also is one of the Time Inc. titles up for sale in a panicked decision that media guru Michael Wolff has savaged.

Even if the magazine were in better commercial shape to ditch the swimsuit issue, why should it? Bradley provocatively asks, “At some point, Sports Illustrated’s publishers have to decide that they stand for something beyond profit.”

What troubles me is something else being implied here: That because SI has done good some journalism about women’s sports — this 1973 piece still rates highly in my book — then it somehow should be about advancing the cause of women’s sports.

Bradley’s is a valid question, one that many of us who have been in print media have muttered as we took newspaper and magazine buyouts or dealt with layoffs and early retirements.

During its early years, as it strived to fill a niche and develop an identity, SI lost money, a lot of money, according to “The Franchise,” Michael MacCambridge’s 1997 history of the magazine. It eventually became a gold mine before the advent of the swimsuit issue, on the strength of stylish writing, hard-nosed investigations and spectacular photography. Those have been its causes.

There’s a troubling notion at work here that women’s political, educational and legal gains, including Title IX and sports, are being undermined by photos of supermodels in fishnet bikini tops.

Those who follow this line of thought are serving up a set of false choices.

The American feminist establishment relentlessly projects the ideal woman as well-educated, in a successful, high-achieving, white-collar career in which she fights for, and ultimately gains, power and social status that men have long enjoyed. Sports feminists have crafted a similar variation of an “empowered” female athlete, with a healthy body image unrelated to how she looks.

These are all noble things, and I support removing barriers for women who want to pursue those avenues.

But there’s little room in this narrative for the expression of sex, or traditional feminine sexuality, since that plays to male erotic desires which cannot be tolerated in this egalitarian vision.

Even women who choose to pose — and Lindsey Vonn donned a swimsuit for SI right before winning Olympic gold in Vancouver — are regarded as complicit in their own objectification.

While SI’s Title IX issue had some terrific components — including its Top 40 female athletes list — it largely ignored the concerns of those like me, who are critics of how the law is being enforced.

Still, SI displayed a lot more journalistic rigor than espnW, which truly went over the top in uncritical Title IX adulation to mark the 40th anniversary. That espnW has designated the activist Women’s Sports Foundation as its official charity has not generated one paragraph of scrutiny from any sports media party that I know of, nor from ESPN’s ombudsman.

There aren’t swimsuit babes on espnW, which ought to please Sherman and Bradley. I do get their weariness at seeing these displays in a supposedly more enlightened time. Indeed, among the upcoming ESPN/espnW “30 for 30″ documentaries includes “Branded,” which focuses on Anna Kournikova. From the promo:

This film explores the double standard placed on women athletes to be the best players on the field and the sexiest off them. Branded explores the question: can women’s sports ever gain an equal footing with their male counterparts or will sex always override achievement?

Because a “double standard” is presumed, I already know what the filmmakers’ answer is going to be.

If anyone wants to see a powerful media outlet taking on the cause of women and sports, and doing it badly, I give them the latest from featured espnW columnist Kate Fagan, who trafficks in women-as-perpetual-victims-of-a-sexist-sports-culture on a regular basis.

She takes a stupid, infantile comment from one NBA player known for saying and doing many stupid things, and spins it into a broad indictment of American culture:

Some people might shrug and say this type of gender-bashing is bound to happen in a male-dominated environment. But, of course, we know there’s more to it than that: It’s a microcosm of how women are too often disregarded across society.

This is truly lamentable stuff, and it does the cause of female sports advancement no more favors than a topless Kate Upton or a winless Anna Kournikova ever could.

The U.S. women’s national soccer team has a new coach, one with plenty of international coaching experience and success.

But even before Tom Sermanni, a Scot in charge of the Australian women’s team, was hired Tuesday by the U.S. Soccer Federation, there were worries about a factor over which he has had no control.

His gender.

A few seasoned media observers of women’s soccer were grousing on Twitter about USSF president Sunil Gulati’s choice. Phil Hersh of The Chicago Tribune:

“Here’s the deal: Best choice would have been US woman; next, foreign woman; next, US man; last, foreign man”

When reminded by others in the women’s soccer community, including former national team captain and ESPN commentator Julie Foudy, about Sermanni’s qualifications and achievements, Hersh remained churlish:

“If @JulieFoudy likes Sermanni, that’s about the best endorsement he could get. But the best woman’s FB team in world should have woman coach”

Why? There is no explanation, of course. But for sheer outrage, USA Today’s Christine Brennan takes the lead, as usual, when her gender has apparently been besmirched:

“What happened today should never happen again for #USWNT. Time for major USOC, NCAA, NGB initiative.”

(I know I need to sign up for Storify if I’m going to keep doing this. Soon, I keep promising myself.)

And I know Hersh and Brennan well enough to pose this question, not just of them but also those of us who have a bit of history covering, and following, this sport:

Does anybody remember Anson Dorrance and Tony DiCicco?

Two coaches who were the architects of the U.S. women’s program, and who set a very high bar for the rest of the world to follow?

Two coaches who have devoted their lives to coaching women, and of helping develop the women’s game in so many other ways? Dorrance, with the North Carolina dynasty. DiCicco, on the fledgling professional level following his guidance of the 1999 Women’s World Cup championship team, first as an executive in the Women’s United Soccer Association, and most recently with the recently folded Women’s Professional Soccer.

Both authors of noted books on the nurturing of young soccer players, regardless of gender.

Two male coaches?

DiCicco vied to get back his old job, and was a finalist. After being told he would not be re-hired, DiCicco complained that he thought Gulati “thinks so little of American coaches. But it’s hard to say for me that he didn’t make a good choice. Tom Sermanni is a good choice and can – as so many of us can – win with this team.”

Isn’t that the whole point?

Those vested in the sport, and who want to see the American women continue the good work of Pia Sundhage, know that it’s not about whether an American woman is in charge. While it’s a good idea to encourage and cultivate women coaches who want to aspire to the national team level, developing that pool is going to take longer than it has to create the playing talent on the field. Women’s soccer is, like many women’s team sports, still in a developmental stage, in so many ways, and the coaching realm is no exception.

Brennan’s pre-emptive strike on all this, launched last week, is the perfect example of the thinking that has pervaded women’s sports activism for many years, centered more on the career prospects of adults and the symbolic value they convey than what might ultimately benefit female players:

“Encouraging U.S. Soccer to hire another female head coach is not about bowing to a quota system or some kind of feminist agenda. It’s about growing their game and the possibilities within it, showing every girl and woman on a soccer field that she can become a leader by seeing someone who looks like her coaching her team — and the U.S. national team as well.”

“Some kind of feminist agenda?” From a journalist who openly spouts Women’s Sports Foundation talking points as a matter of course, even while on official duty?

What she’s getting at here is an argument I know well from covering women’s college basketball for many years. In the early 1990s, there was a highly concerted effort to get athletics directors to hire women for plum jobs, even where male coaches with many years in the women’s game and plenty of qualifications were also being considered. Some guys didn’t get interviewed at all, as younger females were being touted by their elders as their heirs apparent.

Thankfully that conflict has largely been reduced, as ADs are hiring coaches, regardless of gender, race and other factors, who know how to win, above all.

Without the dedication and contributions of two men, U.S. women’s soccer would not be where it is today. To not even mention them by name, much less acknowledge their legacy, is more of an affront to American women’s soccer than the hiring of yet another man to lead them.

Janet Hyde, a former psychology department head and women’s studies professor at the University of Wisconsin, employs a familiar argument in explaining research showing that gender-based differences in the throwing of a ball are considerable:

“The more we argue for gender differences, the more we feed people’s stereotypes. A belief in large gender differences is incompatible with equal opportunity.”

But the theory forwarded by University of North Texas education dean Jerry Thomas is that these differences may be less biological than neurological, and that better techniques can help females improve their performance.

Whether those methods would fully close the “gender gap” is left unexamined — does it need to be closed at all? — but that’s not really the point as far as Hyde is concerned.

For when it comes to belief and science, those claiming to be scientists but whose first duty is to stamp out “stereotypes” are instead the blindest of true believers.

(See Part 4 of my book “Beyond Title IX” for similar examples from women’s sports activists.)

Hyde’s “scholarship” has gained plenty of mainstream currency, especially mathematical aptitude differences between the sexes that she insists are rooted in cultural stereotypes above all else.

When Larry Summers opened up his big mouth about all this as Harvard president, it was such easy low-hanging fruit to pick.

I’m neither a scholar nor a researcher, but a former youth athlete (and lousy at math) who had just as good an arm as the boys until puberty.

Perhaps it is too anecdotal to admit that I realized then that I was actually a girl, even though I’ve never thought I threw like one.

I would love to believe that continued research into these topics would include the scholarly freedom to honestly explore where the line between culture and biology exists, no matter how blurred.

But the virtually unchallenged respectability that Hyde enjoys is not encouraging.

Keeping tabs on which country is “winning” the Olympics — and we know which country this is — is one of the most jingoistic activities of an already jingoistic event, at least what is presented to American viewers.

Much has been made about the success of U.S. women athletes at the London Olympics, and there is quite a bit to celebrate. From gymnastics to women’s soccer and now boxing, the triumphs of American females at these Games were noteworthy.

Whether it’s Gabby or Alex, Missy or Candace, Sanya or Abby, they’re “our girls,” the newly-minted heroines of Olympic glory, as important to American medal collection as the men. The “Title IX Olympics,” some have proclaimed. In fact, this Tweet was making its rounds quite frequently:

“If US Women were a country, they would be ranked 3rd in Medal Count. Thank you Title IX.”

In the myopia of American culture, especially when it comes to the Olympics, this means that women have now become an integral part of the jingoistic narrative of how we will officially remember London.

This began early during the Olympics with the Stenographer of the Sisterhood, naturally, who clucked as only she can::

“The last grouchy anti-Title IX holdouts must have succumbed by now. Either that or they are hiding in their closets. Americans love to win more than anything else, and the nation’s greatest winners are now women.”

To not wax euphoric about what she does, of course, is to be “anti-Title IX,” and suggesting otherwise was implied repeatedly to those of us in supposedly resistant precincts by the American sports media herd in London.

None could be bothered to point out that Title IX has had absolutely no impact on quite a number of these sports, most notably gymnastics, tennis and boxing. Teen swimming sensations Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky are where they are — just as Janet Evans was nearly 25 years ago — because of superb club training programs more than scholastic sports, which limits their time in the pool and access to world-class competition.

This is not to diminish what Title IX has produced, but to illustrate that it’s never been the predominant factor in some sports, contrary to the assertions of women’s sports advocates and journalists pandering to an easy storyline.

The second portion of the above quote is more to the point. The maturity of women’s sports in the U.S. is feeding into our “winning” culture, which attracts all-important media and corporate sponsorship attention that improves mainstream standing. Title IX has been an important vehicle to an end that, when you think of it, runs counter to what the law was supposed to be about.

That’s an irony that will always be missed by the celebratory American media. What also isn’t being written is how truly gargantuan the gap between U.S. women athletes and female athletes around the world has become. The London Olympics revealed that the American Olympic industry — for men and women — is as strong as it has ever been. That’s the real difference, as much, if not more, than the long-term effects of Title IX.

Meanwhile, for female athletes in other countries, who in some cases were trotted out as tokens for Western media consumption, or were seen as victims of the “gender police” for other cultural reasons, their prospects don’t appear to be all that brighter with the London Games complete.

Outgoing IOC president Jacques Rogge hasn’t exactly been a paragon for gender equality in his tenure. But he is a realist, as he showed Sunday when asked about the next steps for the progress of women in sports, at least outside the United States:

“We are going to continue to discuss with the local authorities and sports ministries and try to find strategies and solutions to improve the situation.

“It will take time. The ideal situation will not be found tomorrow. This is work for probably a decade at least to see major improvements.”

In the understandable excitement over the female American exceptionalism demonstrated in London, these comments will be utterly forgotten — if they were noted at all — on these shores.

The reaction to Jeré Longman’s story on American Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones in The New York Times Sunday was as swift and harsh as his piece that slammed her for waging “a sad and cynical marketing campaign” around her sex appeal, in lieu of what he claims are any significant athletic accomplishments:

“Women have struggled for decades to be appreciated as athletes. For the first time at these Games, every competing nation has sent a female participant. But Jones is not assured enough with her hurdling or her compelling story of perseverance. So she has played into the persistent, demeaning notion that women are worthy as athletes only if they have sex appeal. And, too often, the news media have played right along with her.”

This is one of the most sexist things I’ve seen written about a female athlete in quite a while, and it comes from a journalist who professes to care deeply about women’s sports. Unfortunately, Longman doesn’t seem to respect the individual choices of female athletes to do, and be, as they damn well please.

Deadspin’s Isaac Rauch jumped all over Longman in a flash, pointing out that he “pretty explicitly calls her a traitor to her gender” for risqué magazine poses, including ESPN The Magazine. More than that, however, the Times writer — whom I first met covering the Women’s World Cup in 1999 — is guilty of missing what has made Jones a hot media commodity. It’s not necessarily her body, or her looks. Writes Rauch:

“As it has with many other athletes, the media has allocated attention to her because she’s more interesting than most of her peers. She’s comfortable talking about a troubled childhood in public; other athletes aren’t.”

This is the most surprising thing to me about the diatribe by Longman, a talented reporter and storyteller who specializes in the kind of human interest profile that’s tailor-made for the Olympics.

However, his complaints about the alleged “sexualization” of female athletes are nothing new.

As one of the few mainstream journalists in the country exploring the cultural parameters of women in sports, Longman has fallen under the spell of a small handful of women’s sports “experts.” They are mostly academic feminists, lawyers and activists he approvingly cites in stories that rail against the “stereotyping” of female athletes. Some of them he quotes repeatedly, without any critical eye at all.

(I examine them, and his stenography of their arguments, in my recent e-book, “Beyond Title IX,” specifically chapters 11, 13, 15 and 19.)

Longman has parroted their singular critique often, on topics ranging from college basketball star Brittney Griner punching an opponent in a game; a female college soccer player, Elizabeth Lambert, getting in a fight with a foe; and Alex Morgan, a rising star of the U.S. women’s soccer team, who has no qualms about displaying her attractiveness for cameras.

In that last piece, published in April, he takes Morgan to task for posing, like Jones, in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue:

“Presumably, Morgan wanted to show that she was strong and feminine. Instead, she reinforced the unfortunate notion that to be successful, female athletes must position themselves as sex objects. And endure more undercoating than a Toyota Corolla.”

Yet that all seems tame compared to his hatchet job on Lolo Jones, who, by the way, won her first heat in the 100 meter hurdles Monday morning.

Who made Jeré Longman the arbiter of what’s a sex object, and what’s a “persistent, demeaning notion” about how female athletes make themselves worthy?

Why is a middle-aged male sportswriter taking it upon himself to instruct a younger generation of female athletes how they should portray themselves?

He’s succumbed to the same impulse that has driven his “experts” to assume they know what’s right for female athletes. When they reject that patronizing, as Brandi Chastain, Lindsey Vonn and Amy Acuff have done, among others, these young women are then declared either to be brainwashed by the spotlight or powerless victims of a sexist media culture. But Longman’s breaking new ground here with his heavy-handed allegations against Jones.

I don’t like writing this. Longman’s a nice guy, has always been kind to me, is mild-mannered and funny. But he’s really gone off the rails here, following the tiresome sports feminist line that female athletes should not be about themselves, but the greater cause of women’s sports.

And the cause cannot be advanced if they take their clothes off, play to the desires of heterosexual males, or present themselves to the public as they choose.

For women athletes to be scolded this way is to defy everything that the women’s movement was supposed to be about: Allowing them the legal and cultural freedom to be themselves, and to direct the courses of their own lives. Nothing more, certainly not a brain-dead devotion to a cause.

What Longman and his “experts” represent is a new kind of sexism, feminist style, that dismisses women as individuals, and the choices they make.

As the Hope Solo-Brandi Chastain feud sucks up American media attention in London, the matter of other female athletes touted by Western women’s sports activists has flown under the radar since their notable entrance during the Opening Ceremony Sunday night.

Late yesterday an agreement was reached for Saudi Arabian judoka Wojdan Shaherkani to compete with a hijab, which International Olympic Committee and International Judo Federation officials said presented a safety concern.

The Saudis had threatened to withdraw Shaherkani as a competitor if the IOC and IJF had its way. Her father also objected to her appearance without the headgear that conforms to Islamic prescriptions for women’s clothing.

Under late and reluctant pressure from the IOC, Shaherkani and 800-meter runner Sarah Attar became the first two female Saudi Olympians, prompting happy proclamations in the West that all nations competing in the Olympics included both men and women.

Few noticed that Shaherkani and Attar were not allowed to march with Saudi Arabia’s male Olympians but behind them. And as she marched, Shaherkani, 16, was unsure she would be competing at all.

Attar, 19, has spent her entire life in the United States. Her father is a Saudi national and her mother is American. Born and raised in Escondido, Calif., near San Diego, Attar has dual citizenship and is on the women’s track and cross country team at Pepperdine University. Any photos of her in American-style clothing have been removed at the request of the IOC and she is now seen only in attire that covers her hair, arms and legs.

When both women are set to compete, no doubt the Western media will be fluttering about how the Saudi womens’ appearance will represent more than mere symbolism. But as I wrote recently, the entry of female athletes from the last three gender holdout nations allows Western feminists and human rights activists to tick off a few more items on their gender equity checklist.

Those who track the plight of women in Arab and Muslim nations actively hostile to them having any kind of public existence seriously doubt that this kind of pressure from the West will produce significant cultural change.

You won’t be reading much about those concerns in the American and Western press, which very well may eat up Attar’s All-American attitude. I wish her and Shaherkani well and hope they inspire women of their faith to pursue sports. It’s been encouraging to see the support they’ve received from various corners of the Middle East.

But I’m a bit skeptical of claims that this a “giant leap.”

My post yesterday about female athletes and posing nude for magazines prompted Laura Taylor, one of my Twitter followers, to dust off a 12-year-old open letter she sent to USA Today columnist Christine Brennan, the now-defunct SI for Women magazine and Gary Miller, then of ESPN (!).

The essential point in this sharply written missive (and I mean that as a compliment) is this:

“When female athletes sell sex, it can be a step backward for all women in sports. But this is not a new phenomenon, and it is not the root of the problem. That lies in society’s perception that being a beautiful athletic woman is an oxymoron. That is not the athletes’ fault, nor should they be bound by such arcane limitations.”

Boldface emphasis mine. Thank you for saying so long ago what I couldn’t quite articulate the way I wanted in my book “Beyond Title IX” about this subject.

The perception, though, isn’t the larger society but with a small band of sports feminists who lack any of the nuance or sophistication to understand how some of these athletes see themselves.

The scolds are so convinced that expressions of traditional femininity and sexuality are incompatible with their desire to overhaul the male sports culture that they don’t have a proper response when some of the women they claim to represent have different ideas.

Taylor reports that Brennan and the others receiving her letter didn’t respond, which isn’t a surprise. Taylor concludes, again years ago better than I just have, that:

“Those who seek to protect these women from having to submit to these horrible prurient photo shoots instead place them squarely in the sexist box they so loudly decry.”

You would think, given the fanatacism fomented then and now on this topic, that the only acceptable pose for women athletes would be this one.