Geno Auriemma, head coach to the University of Connecticut women's basketball team.
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Is there more parental involvement?
Absolutely. 'You don't understand show good my daughter is. What she can do for you.' There are kids we don't take simply because we don't like their parents. We get a kid visit campus, good kid, good player. And we spend minimum amount of time with the mother and the father and listen to what they say and how they say it, what their expectation level is. Then we just go, 'we're not recruiting that kids anymore.'
There's way more of that. Before, that would have been isolated incident. Now, it's more prevalent than it's ever been.
Men's basketball is plagued by stories of street agents and AAU coaches trying to squeeze money out of colleges for their best players, of coaches breaking recruiting rules to gain an advantage. Do you see such a seedy underbelly developing in women's basketball?
There's starting to be one. People are talking during the summer — who is giving who money? Who is buying whom things? Which AAU guy is getting free dinners and free gear? Which kid goes to camp and gets three warm-ups and gets picked MVP of the camp and gets four pairs of shoes and five travel bags full of stuff? Yeah, you hear all that stuff. And again, as more coaches are being paid more money, and expectations are to do things, it's natural that stuff goes with that. It's a sign of women's basketball success that people are trying to break rules to get players to try to win.
As a man coaching women's basketball, do you think you have any advantages?
Advantages, hmm. The best way I can describe it, is this ... what are the advantages of being a dad, as opposed to being a mom? So you've got kids in your house, what are the advantages that you have, what can you do with your kids that your wife can't do? What can she do that you can't do? How can she relate to kids like you can't? So do I have any advantages? I don't know that I have any.
As a guy, are you perhaps more intimidating to young women? Or more likely to be respected as a father figure?
I don't think so. I just think there are some male coaches who coach women's basketball that don't get anybody's respect, that don't win. And their players don't improve. And there are some women who coach women's basketball, who are not respected, whose teams don't win games and whose players don't improve. To me it's like the teaching profession. You walk in the classroom, you either get male teacher or a female teacher. Your chances of getting a great one or a poor one have nothing to do with them being male or female.
Do you have any disadvantages as a guy?
I don't see any disadvantages whatsoever on my end. I've been lucky enough in 25 years to put together a staff that, you hope, encompasses all the things to make kids comfortable in your environment [Auriemma has three female assistants, including associate head coach Chris Dailey, who has been working with Auriemma since he started at UConn]. You've got this personality type, that personality type.
Is it good for women's basketball that UConn is so dominant?
Is it good? Well, it's good because you're here talking to me. If we weren't you wouldn't. It's good that more people are going to weigh in on whether it's good or bad, whereas if we weren't doing this, there wouldn't be a discussion. I'm in airports all over the country, and guys are like, 'yo, coach, congratulations on the streak.' That's good. People are talking about it, people are interested in it, want to follow it. Then there are those who are like, 'yeah, I'm not interested, they win all the time, who cares, I'm sick of them winning.' I understand that too, I'm OK with that.
When Microsoft came out with what they did at the very beginning, everyone went 'what the hell is that s---? Who thought of that?' And they did it, and they did it better than anybody else, and they so far outdistanced their nearest competitors. Was that bad? Yeah it was bad because you couldn't do anything with your computer unless they were involved. Look what's happened now. Look who's taken over the world of computers? Apple. And they were almost bankrupt.
I'm saying that once you start to outdistance the competition some people are going to give in and say, 'I'm getting out of that business.' And there are a couple of other people who are going to say, you know, I'm going to take the lessons I learned from how they did it, I'm going to do it better than them. And I'm going out there to kick their ass. And that certainly elevates everything.
It's better for the world of women's basketball, once you get past the jealousy of it, the 'here's a guy who thinks he's better than everybody else, he's an egomaniac, he's arrogant, he's this.' Get past all the bulls--- that you think I am, I'm not, or what my program is, or what my program is not, get past all that crap, and then say, 'you know what, there's something there. And if I want to build a program, I want to do something, that would be a good place to start looking.'
Do you think there are coaches in the men's game who don't respect or appreciate what you've accomplished, because you've done it in women's basketball?
Probably. I have a lot of friends who coach at all different levels. What they think of me is probably really important. What the other guys think about me — that's one area where I've grown up a little bit. That I'm not as concerned what people think of me anymore.
You've had a complicated relationship with Pat Summitt, the Hall of Fame coach from the University of Tennessee. At a media event this fall, she talked about how she'd never compromise her recruiting ethics. Many interpreted those remarks as a shot at Tennessee men's coach Bruce Pearl, who took a pay cut because of recruiting violations. But she later told an interviewer: “I didn't have Bruce Pearl on my mind. I probably had Connecticut on my mind. There's a reason we don't play them.” Care to respond?
No.
To be fair, you've said some things that have upset Summitt and Tennessee. For example, in a speech last year, a newspaper quoted you saying: “You know, some rivalries are one-sided. And you know how women can be. Sometimes they get their thumb up their butt and don't want to play you anymore.
I was misquoted. That's why everybody got all bent out of shape. When is the last time you heard someone say 'thumb up their butt?' How about never? What I actually said was, 'you know how some women get, some people get, they get a bug up their butt, and then you can't deal with them.' That's what I said. People can live with that, right?
Hey, you say things and it's something fun, nothing serious. Certainly not as serious as calling somebody a cheater. Put it that way.