The College Court | “Cold war” deprives fans of great rivalry

Emma Carmichael Columnist

Our worst enemies are sometimes the people we respect the most. Consider the most bitter feud between rappers: Tupac and Biggie, who targeted each other in their lyrics in apparent attempts to degrade the other’s credibility or question their sexuality. But through the insults, they were also inherently showing the utmost respect for one another. They actually wrote entire songs about each other, and while the messages may not have been respectful, their very existence signifies the rappers’ profound esteem for each other. The ostensible adversary poses some kind of threat to the other, and by responding on such a public level, we demonstrate recognition and respect for each others’ abilities.

I started thinking about this paradox last week, when I heard that the very public quarrel blowing smoke from the Volunteer State to the Constitution State and disappointing fans of women’s basketball nationwide had intensified.

This past season, Pat Summitt, Head Coach of the University of Tennessee women’s basketball team, refused to reschedule the annual game between her top-ranked team and the University of Connecticut Huskies, coached by Summitt’s favorite enemy, constant trader of spat Geno Auriemma. The match-up dated back to 1995 and was consistently one of the top-billed and most-viewed games on the entire women’s schedule.

Summitt and Auriemma are, by all accounts, the most dominant coaches to ever patrol the sidelines in NCAA Division I women’s basketball, and Summitt is the most successful coach in all divisions of NCAA basketball, men’s or women’s. Her career record is 983-182, and the last time one of her teams lost more than five games was the 1996-97 season, when her 29-10 squad still took home the National Championship—one of the eight she has collected in her 34 years at Tennessee. There have only been 27 NCAA Championships in the history of women’s collegiate basketball. That means Summitt has won almost a third of them.

Auriemma’s career record is 655-122, which currently matches Summitt’s overall winning percentage, 84 percent. Auriema has successfully hung five Championship banners from the rafters in UConn’s Gampel Pavilion, but he hasn’t quite managed to get the hardwood renamed after him, even after winning an NCAA-record 69 consecutive home games from 2000 to 2003. The court in Knoxville is called—you guessed it—“The Summitt.”

So shouldn’t these two be united by their success and the excitement they have brought to women’s basketball? Shouldn’t they have some kind of illegitimate hoops mastermind lovechild to break all of the records they set themselves?

Okay, maybe they shouldn’t have a kid. It would be genetically predisposed to really, really bad hair and a penchant for unsightly pantsuits.

The fact is that the two basketball geniuses have simply never gotten along, and the conflict escalated this season, with Auriemma and some sportswriters going so far as to refer to the less-than-cordial relationship as a “cold war.”

Summitt skirts around press conference questions regarding the source of the dispute with quips like, “Ask Geno.” And then the reporters ask Geno, and he responds “Ask Pat,” with all the maturity of a third grader.

Last week, though, the source of the childish behavior finally became clear.

Apparently, Summitt and the University of Tennessee had submitted a 30-page complaint to the Southeastern Conference of the NCAA. The report detailed the alleged recruiting violations Auriemma commited during his time at UConn.

The document claims that “multiple NCAA by-laws pertaining to boosters’ involvement, permissible recruiters and offers and incentives might have been violated,” according to an article in The New York Times last Sunday, April 27.

The tipping point for Summitt may have come back in 2005, when the two coaches were engaged in a recruiting battle for the nation’s then-top high school recruit, Maya Moore.

At the time, Connecticut self-reported a minor NCAA rule infringement, admitting that they had arranged a private tour of the ESPN studios for Moore, who ended up signing with Connecticut. She was an All-American this past season as a freshman and is widely considered the greatest player at the collegiate level, especially after Summitt lost her star Candace Parker to the Women’s National Basketball Association.

The ESPN violation was all Summitt could take, and she canceled the annual meeting of the masterminds after the story became public.

And now the audience for women’s basketball is missing out on its greatest potential team rivalry. Hundreds of thousands of young female players across the country don’t define Tennessee-Connecticut as a contest of incredible athletic and coaching prowess, but simply as Auriemma-Summitt and all of the infantile quarrels that come out of it.

I hesitate to say that the coaches’ vocal contempt for one another signifies the kind of respect and resigned admiration that Biggie and Tupac held onto throughout their recordings, as odd as that comparison may be, because a coach’s art is not critique, but coaching.

Making their personal issues public is the most selfish act they can commit, as both are taking away from the experience for their players as a result. To show true respect would be for Summitt to set aside her differences and acknowledge Auriemma as what he is: a talented and incredibly successful hard-nosed coach, just like herself.

And luckily for us, neither has to rap to prove it.

—Emma Carmichael ‘10 is an urban studies major and a member of the Vassar women’s basetball team. This semester she is editorializing on issues in all divisions of college-level athletics