Bent Out of Shape About Gender

Geno Auriemma and Rene Portland, whose Connecticut and Penn State teams play today in an NCAA women’s Mideast Regional semifinal, don’t bite their tongues or hide behind platitudes. So they didn’t exchange fake air kisses or arm’s-length hugs here at media day.

Whether it’s in Ames, Iowa; Boise, Idaho, or Raleigh, N.C., at the women’s tournament the talk is worth listening to. No bland, we’re-here-to-play-our-best, mind-numbing, cliche-spouting coaches’ session here.

Two of the four No. 1-seeded teams in the women’s tournament are coached by men. Auriemma leads undefeated Connecticut, and Jim Foster coaches Vanderbilt. They are Philadelphia guys, gym rats raised on basketball courts. They started coaching grade-school girls’ teams because they just wanted to coach. And they are always beleaguered this time of year.

They love their jobs and don’t want to “move up” to a men’s team. “Why would I want that?” Auriemma says. “All the hassles.”

The issue doesn’t go away, though. Should men be coaching women’s basketball teams? After all, women aren’t coaching men’s teams. But shouldn’t the better person get the job, any job? Don’t we want our women’s teams coached as well as possible?

That’s what Auriemma says. Don’t you want your athletic daughter to receive the very best in coaching, in motivation, in strategy, in drills, in everything? If two candidates for a job are equal, Auriemma says, fine, hire the woman. But if they are not, don’t you hire the best? And if that’s a man, what’s the problem?

The problem, says Portland, is that she could be the best candidate for the Penn State men’s job and she would not get that job. Not now, not ever.

“It wouldn’t happen; it won’t happen,” Portland says.

For two years now, several high-profile men’s coaches, among them Auriemma, Foster and Georgia’s Andy Landers, have suggested that the women’s NCAA tournament committee has stacked certain regions with most of the male coaches, hoping the men will knock each other off.

Horsefeathers, says Portland.

“It’s a false issue and it’s wrong,” she says.

What’s not right, says Portland, is the way men have become more interested in women’s jobs as women’s programs have grown in prestige and remuneration. It’s an issue of fairness, says Portland. Where is the equal opportunity for women in the men’s coaching profession? There is none.

Horsefeathers, says Auriemma. Do women want men’s jobs? Then get qualified.

“It’s not just about the coaching,” Auriemma says. “It’s about the recruiting, the contacts, all that stuff.”

If women want to coach men’s college basketball, Auriemma says, they should do what he did.

“Coach boys’ grade-school basketball,” Auriemma says. “Move up to junior high. Get an assistant’s job in high school. Then a head job. I was making $400 a year coaching junior high girls and had to have two other jobs on the side.”

If this seems like so much “he said, she said,” it wasn’t.

What is refreshing is that two adults were willing to speak passionately about a real issue, a controversial topic. There is nothing politically correct about women’s college basketball.

Auriemma says he’s tired of hearing how men are getting all the good jobs.

“Men get jobs at programs that are in the dumper,” Auriemma says.

And if the women don’t want men coaching women, “Why,” Auriemma asks, “do so many women head coaches hire men as assistants? We’re good enough to be assistants but not head coaches?

“Let’s just be fair. Let’s give the best-qualified person the job.”

Diana Taurasi, Connecticut’s sophomore guard from Chino and the nation’s top recruit two years ago, says she has always played for male coaches and always wants to.

“Being coached by a woman would be like having my mom yell at me all the time,” Taurasi says.

Sue Bird, Taurasi’s All-American backcourt mate, says she’d play for a man or woman but adds, “I know a lot of players who wanted to play for a man.”

What’s hard to argue is that Auriemma has built the dominant women’s program in the country. He has passed Tennessee’s Pat Summitt. Connecticut is on every top recruit’s must-visit list.

The Huskies are 35-0 and have won by an average of 37 points a game this season. What bothers Auriemma more than the sniping about men having women’s jobs or women ghettoizing the men coaches in regional draws is, he says, that women athletes aren’t being pushed harder.

There is grumbling that Connecticut’s excellence and dominance is hurting the game, taking away interest, sucking the life from the tournament.

That’s silly, Auriemma says, and he’s right.

The problem with women’s basketball is not that Connecticut is so good but that other teams aren’t good enough.

“Too many coaches don’t push women as hard as men are pushed,” he says. “When I play basketball in the driveway with my son, I knock him around, I rub his face in the dirt. With a girl, if a pitch hits her in the chin, you run out and take her for ice cream and hope her mother doesn’t get mad at you.

“When people look at us, I would want them to make their programs better. Push the women. Why would you coach girls different then you would coach boys? Expect the same things from them, coach them the same way.”

And there’s the issue.

Who cares whether a team is coached by a man or woman? Just care about trying to be Connecticut.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.

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Dual Qualifiers

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